On July 30, 2012, lifechurch.tv, an online church, programmed a “message” entitled At the Movies 4 by Pastor Craig Groeschel. It was a forty-minute presentation that encouraged listeners to fight for family by extending forgiveness to one another. The message incorporated extended clips from Warrior—a movie that climaxes with two brothers wrestling each other in a competition to win five million dollars. In the heated exchange they found a newfound respect for one another while their previously drunken father watched on proudly.
At the end of the presentation, those in online attendance were encouraged to extend the same kind of forgiveness to others. The catch phrase was, “Fight for your family.” Prayers were offered for those who wanted to join the battle and online observers were given an opportunity to respond by clicking a button to raise a digital hand. Those who responded were directed to a page where they could provide personal contact details and receive more information about lifechurch.tv. They were offered a free Bible and encouraged to commit to a three-month pledge to support lifechurch.tv. The pledge came with a full money back guarantee if the person was not blessed and happy with their investment.
While watching the message, a chat room popped up in an adjacent window. A wide range of different people occupied the chat room. There was an online host who tried his best to guide discussion in the chat room, but his job was difficult to say the least. One visitor asked incessantly for a sex movie. Another couldn’t type a coherent sentence, or maybe he was just trying to be a nuisance. Another announced this was her church experience for the week and was excited about the “rocking music.” None referenced Scripture and none talked about anything spiritually thoughtful—not even the host. Most of the discussion revolved around simple introductions—Where are you?—I am in Alaska—It must be cold there? etc. The host did his best to make it a welcoming environment, but he spent more time promoting the ministry than providing any kind of spiritual encouragement to the attendees. He was simply glad people were there.
The name of the ministry is ‘Lifechurch,’ but is it really church? Does this kind of experience fulfill any of the mandates in Scripture that encompass church life? In future blog posts I will answer that question.
Another form of online church experience is provided by VirtualChurch.com. There you can experience programmed and choose-your-own-adventure types of worship services. The VirtualChurch.com software design provides “over 365 billion different possible worship-service combinations.”[1] The website promises that no two worship services will be alike and each person’s experience will be unique to themselves.
These web-based worship services make the role of the onlooker just that—an onlooker. The problem is that most onlookers do not see themselves that way. They are self-deceived. The reason why people love to watch reality television shows like Survivor and The Amazing Race is because they enjoy participating in civic groups without actually participating in them.[2] Yet, we don’t realize we’re not participating in them. The players on these shows become our friends, but they’re not really our friends. We just pretend they are. We are merely observing “friends,” not being friends.
So too in the streaming church. The so-called “attendee” is in attendance only as an observer to a previously produced show. The observer might think they’re involved, but they’re not.
Douglas Estes rightly explains the limitations of streaming services: “While we may applaud the power of streaming technology and random number generators to deliver unique, on-demand sermons and worship services, those technologies do not foster community. You can be present, but you’ll be alone.”[3]
Estes’s critique is correct and presents a very real concern. In streaming churches, body-life, fellowship, worship, and sermon-listening become compartmentalized. So to resolve this problem, tech-savvy and community-wanting critics of the performance-based online church services have taken the online church experience to another level—a virtual church populated by virtual people—“avatars.”
I’ll describe these avatars next week.
[1] Douglas Charles Estes, SimChurch: Being the Church in the
Virtual World (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing, 2009), 72.
[2] A concept discussed in
Satoshi Kanazawa, "Bowling with Our Imaginary
Friends," Evolution and Human Behavior 23 (2002): 167–71.
[3] Douglas Estes, SimChurch, 72.
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