Zoom Church: The Bad, the Weird, the Great
One of the great social shifts in this pandemic era is that we’ve finally broken the back of video conferencing. It’s opened up a whole new world for the way we run our church, not just the services, but the organisation of things too. Ironically perhaps, it’s been a god-send to the elderly who are reluctant to drive in the wet or at night, and yet they can still connect in and contribute to book groups, interest groups and yes, services too.
I still remember the first time I clicked on the ‘admit all’ button on the last Sunday of March 2020. The music playing was a cutesy midi version of Third Day’s “Your Love Oh Lord” from Psalm 36 (what was I thinking?!). But as the music bounced along I was somewhat overwhelmed by the sheer beauty of what was unfolding before me. In grid view, people from all over Auckland, Red Beach to Pakuranga, the Waitakere Ranges to Eastern beaches, they appeared and went through their little rituals of settling back into their seats with smiles on their face. I still get a buzz when I see it even now, but that first time was so warm and special.
Like many ministers around the country that morning, I was a bit nervous about it but as we moved through the service I relaxed and just kept being pleasantly surprised. After our optional random breakout rooms for morning tea at the end of the service I closed the meeting with a sigh of relief and a terrific sense of joy. Somehow, this really worked.
It was clear a few things weren’t going to work—communal singing for a start. So we opted to have a musician sing and play live to us songs that meant something to them. No-one would want to listen to a 15 to 20min sermon, so I cut it down to 7mins max reflection. We created a 3min curated silence in the middle where we simply sat ‘together’ with our attention turned toward God. We had someone lead a prayer of confession and for “prayers for others,” we had a camera directed at a candle tray where people wrote their prayers in the chat, someone read them out and I lit a candle for each one. The prayers just kept coming and we had around 40 candles by the end of it. We also enjoyed the cacophony of saying our benediction to each other unmuted at the end. The random breakout rooms for morning tea would last for an hour as people talked to people they’d hardly spoken to in meat-space.
It felt like we stumbled on a good formula and with a few tweaks it was sustainable and interesting enough for supporting the spiritual formation of our people. We quickly began to have conversations about what we could translate from this experience into our normal services. Lots of ideas emerged and we tried a few.
After ‘normality’ had returned and we were back to regular services, I’ve reflected a lot on what made it a success — well for Level 4 anyway. In Level 3 the attendance started to drop a bit and by the end of lockdown it was clear we were ready to meet in person. The main enduring aspect of the online experience is that we still stream our services, using one (decent) webcam connected to OBS which sends a youtube live stream to our web page. It takes 5mins to set up and is designed for those who are unwell or unable to attend (live more than 25kms away) to take part.
The most important reflection is that the online service was a set of compromises that were masked and/or accepted because of the novelty and necessity of it all. As a Baptist, I believe that the gathered community is where Christians more fully incarnate Christ. The Spirit is present in this new temple which is made up of the believers (as opposed to the singular body being a temple as this is often reduced to) and that the Spirit operates within a community who is covenanted to love God, love people and love self. When we are apart then, things are just not the same.
That being said, it’s not like some of the dynamics of Zoom, or videoconferencing sermons are entirely modern or unique. It could be argued that the New Testament letters were a form of this preaching by proxy. But, the recipients generally were communities of faith with the aforementioned desires. The Spirit would still be speaking into the gathered community and together they would discern what the Spirit is asking of them—as if the writer were present with them.
So the message doesn’t require shared presence to be articulated, but is it best in a shared presence to be received?
I’d like to journey back in time to the late 1990’s when the internet was a massive experiment and was full of promises. One of these promises was that we would be able to make physical distance irrelevant to meeting together. Blogs took off and became an important space for dissemination of ideas, and on the more popular blogs, little communities would form in the comments sections. Trolling wasn’t the thing it is today so generally it was safe. But we did see the beginnings of the “anonymous coward” (to use Slashdot’s phrase), who could say “whatever they want however they want.” With a disillusionment with the mainstream church motivating them, some creative and tech savvy Christians would try online church services. One, which I can’t find now, had a virtual chapel where you could go in (with a few clicks) at any time and contemplate. I went once—it was eerie and weird. I think there was one other avatar there and frankly it just didn’t mean anything—see, I referred to that person’s presence as an it. Enough said. Most of these experiments are remembered by nothing but dead links now.
However, spurred by evangelising the masses some people are using Virtual Reality to create worship spaces. It’s a fascinating idea that raises interesting questions. I have to admit, it’s incredibly hard for me to take it seriously but that’s just me wondering how a reindeer on its hind legs sharing space with a purple robot (and some kind of cat thing, and is that a fox?) makes for a less than comical event, but I don’t inhabit that world.
The wild world of virtual reality church.
On the massively multiplayer online (MMO) platform Rust, for example, some have hosted virtual reality church services. In one such ‘gathering,’ in the middle of the preacher talking about prayer, one of the congregation drove a pickaxe into the leg of his neighbour. And the clip of practicing the piano beforehand, that’s another league altogether. How about this guy preaching?
On a more serious and earnest note, take a look at this example of a virtual reality baptism:
How does this stand up to the scrutiny of baptist criteria for baptism by total immersion? Can we question the integrity of those involved, and can we question whether the Spirit is present? On what basis, when God is omnipresent? And also, is water that important? For all intents and purposes, the one being baptised is still emotionally experiencing the process.
What is missing is the physical experience, so how important is physicality in spirituality? It is important, every church has its physical liturgical practices: raising hands, kneeling, standing, closing eyes etc. but the question is how important is it for our spiritual formation?
But those questions, doctrinally important to some, seem trivial because I think the serious and critical theological question is “what comprises self and how much does the body’s presence with others actualise that self?” Our answer to this will define how we understand community (comhumanity?)
When we are together, our humanity is expressed much more fully than when we are not. Our theology of the church being the “body of Christ actual” in this world, Jesus’ hands, feet and heartbeat, is a beautiful analogy of our interdependence on each other and our need to be present.
I came across a study showing how in a group gathering respiratory and cardiovascular rhythms begin to synchronise between people—part of being human is attuning to the presence of others. John Cage’s famous 4′33″ shows the power of a collective experience of ‘nothing’ very well as we hear the rustles of clothing around us, the clearing throat, the dropped keys etc. We do not feel alone because our senses are attuned to others being present (we might feel isolated, but we are not alone). It is not the same without others. This is missing online and I miss it. In fact, it’s quite awful not hearing chuckles, affirmations and even sneezes while someone is speaking. It’s like participating in a void.
But on some level, it still works albeit as a compromise.
I’ll point out too that we do not record our services. The ephemeral nature of them is important for the community aspect of it. In that sense I think it emulates the Sunday morning experience well in that there’s a togetherness about it. Just like in meat-space, if you don’t turn up on a Sunday, no judgement at all, but also, no need for us to accommodate for that either.
The service (and sermon) is not about information dispersion or entertainment (okay, I’m being cheeky here!) where it can be viewed at your own convenience. Our services are not designed to be consumed, they are designed to be shared together. When the preacher preaches, the singers sing, the prayers pray, it is with those who are present, recipients of the Spirit through their humanity: heart, mind, body and soul. They take it, digest it and embody what the Spirit is saying and I think the physical presence assists greatly in this process. But at the moment, Zoom is good enough.
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Stu McGregor is minister at Cityside Baptist in Mt Eden.