This is something I’ve never really talked about. It’s nothing new. Churches everywhere stream their services online. Others even have full blown internet campuses (with internet campus pastors). At heart, I am a total technology geek and anything dealing with processors, giga-anything, and has a power chord gets me excited (my wife just wants to destroy them all, I don’t blame her).

The camps have staked out their tents, gathered their compadres, passed out the e-leaflets, and have begun to spread their viral message about how they like or dislike the idea of internet church. The debate is laid upon the foundation of this heavy question…

“Is the ‘online church’ experience- church?”

In essence what people are asking is:
“Does it count?”
“Is God going to decide to not let me into heaven because I went to internet church? (or maybe send me to Second Life Heaven where you interface with your MacBook Pro in the lonely basement of someone else’s mansion in heaven.)”
“I feel weird not going to a building, but does that matter?”
“When I attend, I’m in my boxers and taking communion with Frito’s & Apple Juice. Is that cool?”
“I read in the Bible about community. Is online chat and social networking community?”

I’ve read quite a bit from both sides of the internet church debate. Everything from people saying, “You’re not a true Christian if you think the internet isn’t a way to do church,” to “If you attend a service online you’re going to Hell.” Now these aren’t my words or feelings, but I wanted to share how passionately people feel about this fairly new embodiment of internet church.

I’m not here to condemn people to hell for attending internet services or to sing it’s praises and move the church solely online. But, there are some true lessons to be learned as we dive into this idea of “internet church.” Advancements in technology are a tricky thing to dive into and as leaders we need to be aware of the pros and cons before we blindly adopt new ideas & concepts. Before we dive into that- I’ll share some things involving why we did a live webcast church service and some of the feedback we received from it in our next post. Until then-

Jason *over and out*