Online Church, A Return to Embodied Faith
When people criticize the idea of online church, they often talk about how online worship services feel disembodied, disconnected from the physical experience of community. Is there another, better way for us to think about online church?
9. Weaving the Church into the Physical and the Digital
We, the body of Christ, cannot content ourselves to sit back and watch as these new media become the message without us; the world needs God’s story of hope and humanity to be woven into the fabric of its life, everywhere that life is found.
8. Handling Conflict, Bodily Presence, and Gathering Together
Part of the challenges to doing church online is in actively managing conflict, protecting privacy, encouraging participation in local communities, and gather together in-person as a church body for sacraments and celebrations.
7. Developing Online Leaders and Worship Practices
Church culture is dramatically different than what we see happening on social media, and members entering an online church for the first time will bring their assumptions about social media into this new context. How might we bring people into this posture of cruciformity and reconciliation, when that posture is so foreign to today’s online…
6. Harnessing the Potential of Online Church
How can we translate Paul's concept of the church into an online context? How can we match his understanding of community, mission, and service with the technological tools and resources we have available to us today?
5. Worship, Sacrament, and Conflict in the Corinthian Church
Let us consider how Paul structured worship and leadership in the Corinthian church, as well as how he handled conflict within the church body to maintain growth and faithfulness.
4. Paul and the Church in Corinth
Paul's leadership and communication with the church in Corinth in the first century provides a basic framework that we can use to explore the application of an online church today.
3. Limitations and Dangers of Social Media
If you ask almost any social media user today, they will tell you that the incredible potential of social media is often not fully realized—sometimes as a result of the nature of the medium itself, and sometimes as a result of the way we use it. In this post, we will examine some of the…
2. The Promising Potential of Social Media
The emerging technologies of online connection are powerful tools. But to what extent does social media provide incredible opportunities, and to what extent does it hurt our real life communities?
1. Why We Should Think About Online Churches
Since the beginning of the 2020 pandemic, many churches have begun streaming their worship services online. But what would it look like for us to actually engage our communities in online community? Is this even something we should be talking about?