One of the biggest obstacles online churches face is figuring out how participants can serve one another. Is physically serving one another essential to being a “real church?” Can online churches do these things? If so, how?
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When discussing online churches that never gather in one physical location, two questions that often come up are
How do you do baptisms?
How do you celebrate communion?
In SimChurch, Douglas Estes does an excellent job of looking at the various options online churches have for the sacraments. He breaks them down into 4 categories.
Which if any of these expresses of baptism and communion are (most?) biblical and why?
A new study published on emarketer.com indicates “The anonymity of the Internet leads people to behave differently than they do face-to-face.” Sure you could take that to mean people feel empowered to misbehave online, but it also indicates an opportunity to meet new people and have spiritual conversations with people who might be reluctant to do either in an offline setting. What do you think?
In the discussion surrounding Online Church Part 1: What is a Biblical Church? it seems that everyone agrees that for a church to be a real, biblical church it must gather together regularly to worship God. The question for today is…
In what ways can online churches excel at gathering for worship and where are there difficulties?
As mentioned yesterday, we’re kicking off an in-depth conversation about online church. I think the place to start this conversation is by looking at what specifically an organization must be and do to be a “real,” biblical church whether online or offline. Which of these do you believe is necessary for a church to be a biblical church? And why?
As I mentioned in my review earlier today, Douglas Estes’s book SimChurch takes the conversation about online church to the next level. I would like to build on what that by organizing a more in-depth discussion about various aspects of online church. Here’s a tentative schedule of the topics we’re going to cover here over the next several weeks.
“Is a virtual church a real, authentic and valid expression of the church of Jesus Christ?”
This is the question Pastor/Dr. Douglas Estes explores in his book SimChurch.
The Alva Review-Courier, based in the megalopolis of Alva, OK (pop 4,848) published an article today entitled Social Networking Sites Benefit Pastors, Congregations in Many Ways. The author if the piece, Kathleen Lourde, interviewed several pastors in Alva as well as some guy with the same name as me. 😉
It explains many of the benefits to pastors using social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, and Twitter.
Leverage is where Chris Brogan and Julien Smith take us throughout the second half of chapter four. But it was one sentence toward the middle of chapter four that’s been swirling around in my brain for the last few days… “Don’t ever sell to your audience. Instead, be their gatekeeper.”
Does social media empower or impair our call to act as the body of Christ? Let’s examine together how we…