All of the comments, the leading article, and the book excerpts give examples of humans benefiting in virtual settings and talk about the benefits of their virtual presence (soldiers, shut-ins, and the like). How does God Himself work through a virtual environment? It is His presence I’m concerned about people experiencing.

At this point, technology, cost, and bandwidth issues would prevent the church service I attend in the real world from being effectively done in a pure computer driven environment (specifically with a completely distributed member base). I’m not willing to say that would never be possible or cost effective but it isn’t now.

The problem is only partially the downstream feeds from the church. Not everyone has a computer, let alone a high speed internet connection. They would not be able to participate, just as the shut-ins can’t participate the other way today. Even if they could, most networks are managed for downloading. Uploading bandwidth is limited even on most “high speed” connections. So the effective participation that we would get in a virtual service from a real world audience would be limited at best.

Some denominations might not find that an issue, but I would feel much was missing if there was no effective way for the Holy Spirit to work through His gifts with a particular group of members and have that transmitted to the entire body. This is especially true when the members might change from week to week.

I’m not saying God couldn’t find a way to work around those situations, but I’m constantly reminded of His unchanging attributes when I think that. There certainly were occasions in the Old Testament where people presumed to think they could do things a bit differently and found out that they not only couldn’t but would be struck dead for trying it.

We must be careful in what we do. The printing press opened up the words of God to common man and made it affordable. I’m not against change if God is with it. I just want to be sure He supports a particular path before trudging out there myself. It can be lonely on point if the army doesn’t decide to follow.

Well, here's one place I think you're off: "Church attendance will decrease, the offerings will decrease…" Yeah, these things have been happening across the board in western Christianity LONG before online churches came on the scene. Even churches that are growing are only doing so at the expense of other churches. The kingdom (in the west, at least) is shrinking. On the contrary, if you count online churches in the mix, they offer the possibility of an increase in church participation and offerings. But from your comment above, I doubt you'd be open minded or far sighted enough to count online churches as churches at all. Good thing (for my online church) that Jesus is the groom and not you 🙂

Rev. Marilyn Fisher

"Make it so, number one!"