Charlotte was hit by an ice storm, resulting in the closure of just about everything - including area churches. We didn't have a chance to do a church visit, so we decided to take a completely different approach. We visited eight churches online, to participate in their online worship.
We started in Singapore and ended up in Honolulu. We will count this as a single church visit, as we are calling this a visit to The Online Church.
All of the churches that we visited were evangelical in theology and format. Many had some form of charismatic worship. These churches all showed significant investment in their technology and production. All were contemporary in musical style. There wasn't an organ or a hymnal in sight.
The only other time on this spiritual pivot that we "attended" an online church was when we had Covid in early 2021. Otherwise, we have made in-person worship our priority. But online is here to stay and it made sense to explore it in this way today.
As a phenomenon, watching worship on a screen is not new. People have been doing it via television for decades, although most TV services are pre-recorded. With the advent of the internet, the ability to watch worship has proliferated hugely.
You could call the two of us traditionalists in the sense that we would never do online church on an ongoing basis. While it may be an option that we can avail ourselves of when we need it, we will always seek the actual company of other humans for corporate worship.
But it is important that such options are available, as some people may not have another way to worship.
Some people watch worship online because they are in the hospital and cannot attend in person.
There are people who may be in a family where no one shares their convictions and no one is willing to take them to a church.
There may be converts who follow Jesus from places where it is illegal to do so publicly. In Saudi Arabia and Iran, for example, there is the death penalty for converting out of Islam.
There may be women caught in abusive relationships whose only chance to experience worship is a quick moment on their phone behind a locked door.
There are almost certainly families who have emigrated to another country who would like one more Sunday with their church in their homeland.
And on and on, we can assume there are many reasons why online church is essential for some people.
***
What could technology bring next to corporate worship?
It's an intriguing question and I have an anecdote related to it.
In late 2020, I went to my friend Bill's house to check out his Oculus VR set. It was a fascinating experience.
At one point my avatar was walking around a room filled with other avatars, which led to me speaking French with a group of people. We were face-to-face (although we weren't really) and in a common room (which didn't exist) speaking a language we all knew. In the real world, there was a group of people in Canada, France and the US wearing Oculus headsets who were "meeting" each other in a very new way.
The experience left me very amused and slightly in awe.
Afterwards, Bill and I sat in his basement and talked about this new technology. We conjectured on how it would change things in years to come. He mentioned that people were starting to hold Virtual Reality church services.
I had an immediate reaction to this idea - I was appalled.
But could there be reasons why VR church would be useful? I think there may be.
More than anything else, I am convinced that it is important for the gospel to be in any place that humanity chooses to go. In the spirit of evangelism that has allowed individual lives and whole societies to move from darkness into light, the church will need to be in the VR space.
With all of that as background, we started watching church Saturday night, starting at the tip of the Malay Peninsula.
***
Singapore :: City Harvest Church (https://www.chc.org.sg/)
This church was in the midst of their start-of-the year fast. Pastor Kung Ho was emphasizing the importance of spending the year as he had spent other years - "Praying. Reading. Helping." He was speaking in the form of English unique to Singapore, colloquially known as "Singlish."
Singapore is made up mostly of Malays, Tamil Indians and Chinese. The church was almost entirely Chinese.
The service we watched:
Pretoria, South Africa :: Christian Revival Church (https://crcchurch.com/)
Pretoria has a bit of a reputation for being the heart of the Afrikaner people, a conservative hotbed in this country. A great deal has changed. This multi-racial church has multiple campuses all over South Africa, each of them filled with people from every community in the country. This would have been inconceivable only a couple of decades ago. Pastor At Boshoff gave a strong sermon on new life.
The service we watched:
Kumasi, Ghana :: Pillar of Zion International Church
This was an amazing church visit, it was in the city of Kumasi in Ghana, West Africa. The music was incredible and people were dancing with a level of enthusiasm that is uncommon. It was hard not to smile.
The language of the service was Kwi, which we don't speak. We did hear a thickly accented "Praise the Lord" often, though.
A great deal of fun watching this.
Palm Beach :: Christ Fellowship Church (https://www.christfellowship.church/)
Christ Fellowship Church has multiple campuses around South Florida. Pastor Todd Mullins was talking the congregation through the three-week fasting and prayer time that they were in. He reiterated time and again how transformative one's life would become as and when they took up the habit of reading the Bible daily. He was advocating that the congregation make a commitment to read Scripture every day for three months.
The service we watched:
Charlotte :: Freedom House Church (https://www.freedomhouse.cc/)
Freedom House had an Encounter Night worship on Saturday evening, about six hundred people were in attendance, we were among the attendees. It was an amazing time with a huge amount of enthusiasm. The replay acted as our #FHSnowday on Sunday.
It was as good the second time!
The service we watched:
Dallas :: The Potter's House (https://www.thepottershouse.org/)
TD Jakes is one of the best-known Pastors in the United States. He serves a mostly black church in Dallas named The Potter's House.
At one point during the sermon, he spoke in glowing terms about how the American Revolution was a seminal event in human history, where a group of people rose up against colonialism and said that they didn't want their country to be an outpost of another country.
Then he said, "At that point, they go their independence. We didn't have ours yet."
The audience reacted.
He smiled and said, "I'm just tellin' it like it is."
The service we watched:
Los Angeles :: Bayside Church (https://www.baysideonline.com/)
We could not find any West Coast churches on YouTube, which is not to say that there weren't any open. But it was hard to find any. So we did some quick research and went to the website of Bayside Church, a huge church in Southern California that has seven campuses. We watched the service from Orange County.
Pastor Ray Johnston was preaching on how to raise children with a high degree of innocence in a culture that is quickly moving against children. He spoke about the key characteristic of adolescence, that of testing boundaries. It's normal and is intended to help a young person understand healthy and boundaries.
He also had everyone in the audience raise their hand if they had ever "screwed up" when they were young. Everyone raised their hand.
Be a positive parent was the impactful point that he made.
Honolulu :: Word of Life (https://wolhawaii.com/)
Word of Life is a church that has been in Honolulu for a couple decades now. Pastors Art and Kuna Sepulveda put on an incredible service, with music that appears to be composed just for them. We had not heard of any of these praise songs before.
During the sermon, Pastor Art sporadically spoke in tongues and would look backstage and say, "Have some interpret that."
We've not seen anything quite like that before.
The service we watched:
***
What can we say about watching churches online?
It is an option, but for us, not even a close analog for in-person worship. While it was interesting to do this, we found that we were in more of a "watching" mode than worshipping. We were viewers, not participants.
With that said, we got a chance to see our brothers and sisters around the globe, having a proper worship. That was really neat.
Ten churches to go! None will be online. Excited for this last stretch!
