Since we are still evaluating the reality & potential of church online the question just keeps coming up: “Of course, [virtual church] is possible. But is it biblical?”

The following is a response to me from Douglas Estes, author of SimChurch regarding his reflections on this post by Drew Goodmanson – Is Online Community real community; Questions about the virtual church?

A virtual church is just as biblical as a Baptist church, a house church, a Lutheran church, a megachurch, a Pentecostal church, a contemporary rock church or a traditional American fundamentalist church. Why? Because the Bible doesn’t prescribe one type of culture or ‘format’ for doing church. Period. I know that most Christians—even pastors and church leaders—will grudgingly admit this in public and not believe it in their hearts though it is the biblical viewpoint. Everyone who is passionate about the church views their version of the church to be the best, most right, most biblical, most blessed, and closest-to-the-New-Testament version of church as possible. This is not wrong but it does become a problem when we try to say that other people don’t have biblical churches (with the exception of churches whose theology/practice fall outside of historic orthodoxy). We can group current criticisms of online church into 2 main areas—and the first area, rightfully labeled, is denominationalism. This may seem kind of funny because I don’t mean that online churches are a new denomination; I mean that some people are reacting to them through the same lens (not our way = different = not biblical). Let’s consider the second area in more detail.

One important part of writing SimChurch was my starting point: I did not start with virtual churches. I started with the Bible and church history. A critical part of the research was investigating both with discernment to see if there would be anything to prevent an online church. The answer is no. And this is not an argument from silence (like those folks who say it’s okay to do drugs because they Bible doesn’t directly say we can’t), this is a ‘no’ from a close reading of the Bible and church history. In fact, anyone who has studied church history understands that God moves the church in seemingly radical directions at times. So far, most of the arguments against online church are the same types of arguments as those leveled at every new Christian group that has come along since Jesus left us.

Many of the criticisms I read seem to be written by people who are using the internet circa 1999. They forget that even older technologies such as Skype allow for a great deal of interaction, except fully physical (there is some physical because you can see the other person, wave, make faces, laugh, etc). More specifically, Drew (and others) cite verses in the Bible that deal with community and then argue that this community must be rooted in physical proximity (but not the SecondLife or Skype kind). I don’t want to (mis)characterize Drew’s argument here; and to be fair, Drew listed a few verses in a 200 word post whereas I wrote a whole book on this issue. Still, I need to point out a few serious problems with arguments like Drew and others use. SimChurch goes into much more detail, but let’s briefly look at the issues:

First, Drew lists 27 verses (all from the New Testament) that allude to community, or more specifically, what he calls “one-anothering.” These verses include loving one another (1 John 3:11) and the holy kiss one (1 Peter 5:14). In SimChurch, I defined a church as “a localized assembly of the people of God dwelling in a meaningful community with the task of building up the Kingdom.” Now, some people may tweak this but overall I feel it is a solid definition of church from a biblical and church-historical perspective (within a Protestant tradition such I come from). I think we can agree that church must be both local and a meaningful community. The problem comes in when we try to take the verses Drew cited and decide the physical extension of them. As with most of the Bible, these verses are communicating spiritual truth more so than physical truths. When the Bible tells me to love someone else, hugging is probably included in this but it is not the central meaning of the verse at hand (it is greeting). I can prove this: We don’t literally greet people with a holy kiss (at least I’ve never attended any church anywhere that does) at church. Why? Because we understand that the spiritual reality of greeting and loving another follower of Jesus is so much bigger than the physical expression. This is not to say the physical expression is not important; it’s just to say that certain physical expressions are just one aspect of it. Please note that I am also not trying to over-spiritualize this issue; I’m neither downplaying nor disregarding the physical aspect just pointing that it is only one part of what it means to have community. Again, consider people riding the NY subway to work—if you’ve ever done this, you know you unwittingly touch a lot of people due to the crowdedness of the train, but no one would consider a subway car (real) community!

Truthfully, none of the verses Drew lists speak to whether a church should meet in a building (been there), under a banana tree in a jungle (done that), or in synthetic space over the internet. In fact, as Drew admitted in his post, and any honest Christian will admit, we don’t get the type of community that the Bible describes in some/many/most/all ‘regular’ brick and mortar churches to begin with! But just because no one seems to love each other (or greet each other with a holy kiss) at First Baptist doesn’t mean we should declare it unbiblical or not a church.

Since this is a blogpost not a book, let me wrap up by saying that Drew is correct in his conclusion—we need to focus on creating biblical community. Chapters 2–4 in SimChurch go into great detail (for a non-academic book) on what church and biblical community is and how Western Civilization has so influenced this discussion as to make everything about community be tied to the physical where the Bible (primarily, but not only) ties it to the spiritual. In fact, it is the radically-skeptical Western worldview of Descartes and others that has shaped the definition of community for the average Western Christian far more than the Bible has (protests aside). In fact, we could say that if many of the virtual-church skeptics are correct—that to have real community with someone we must be in close, physical proximity with that person—then we cannot have community with God here on Earth because we can’t touch him either. Biblical community, and true presence, is far more nuanced than our materialistic, Western sensibilities can sometimes grasp.

Douglas Estes

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