Is Online Church Really Church?

  Your Facebook feed, like mine has probably been inundated recently with images like this, ministers recording sermons for Youtube having the most embarrassing thumbnails created. It has been amazing to see the way that the church has responded to the Covid19 crisis and things that seemed impossible or unthinkable six months ago are now commonplace. Yet with the restrictions on worship being lifted in the U.K. at least it got me thinking about the issue of what church is.

Fundamentally the church is a gathering...its a group of people, however big or small coming together to praise and worship God and to encourage one another in our walk with God. The classic proof text of this is of course Hebrews 10:25,

    "not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near." (E.S.V.)

Now we should be clear here and say that this verse in context was written to a group of Christians who were tempted to turn their back on Jesus and go back to the Old Covenant way of doing things, the letter is written to encourage them to cling to Christ and not to go back. So we cant just take this verse and say you see every church should be meeting this Sunday because its a clear command of God. Yet this verse does help us because its clear that meeting together should be the norm for Christian people, why? So that we can encourage one another, so that we can spur one another on towards love and good deeds. The Christian life lived in isolation is a difficult life, the Christian life in isolation will be a struggle, will be a Christian life where we remain blind to our own sins and difficulties.

Yet this isn't the only text in the bible that speaks about Churches, yet I cant find a reference to church in my bible where it is to an individual, there may be small churches, there may be house churches but an individual, one person church, is an oxymoron.

Which brings us back to online church and the question if it is really church or not? This is where I am struggling because i am not sure that it is, it is impossible to gather online in any meaningful way, we can watch the same sermon, we can listen to the same songs at roughly the same time but thats not the same as church in my opinion. We can zoom afterwards to our hearts content but that isn't the same as looking someone in the eye, as seeing their movements and their body language.

I wonder if we are so reluctant to return to church services because online church is so much easier? Its nice to sit in our pyjamas with a cup of tea and watch, its nice to be able to pause and rewind as a child screams about something insignificant but friends we are missing out on so much by not being able to meet together.