Ecclesiology for a Digital Church

Theological Reflections on a New Normal

Campbell, Dyer, Campbell, Dyer

• Publisher: SCM Press
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9780334061618
• Topic: Teología y religión
• Subtopic: Teología sistemática y ética

What are the ecclesiological challenges and opportunities raised by technology? How have developments related to the COVID-19 global health crisis impacted churches, forcing a swift move to mediated and online worship? And how will this change the shape churches of theological and programmatic choices for years to come?Drawing together a diverse group of theologians and media scholars, this volume considers the key theological question churches and religious leaders need to engage with as they look towards long term strategies involving church life and technology.

Part 1: Theorizing the Digital Church

1. Exploring Mediated Ekklesia: How We Talk about Church in the Digital Age

JOHN DYER

A message on social media reads:

Virtual Church Service: gather with us for online church with a special sermon recorded at Christ Chapel.

In the pre-pandemic world, most people would generally have understood this as an announcement for some type of internet-based church service. But in a post-pandemic world, when many Christians have experienced not only their own church’s digital offerings, but also a sampling of others, this announcement generates several questions.

For example, is the service ‘online’ or ‘virtual’, or are those words being used as synonyms to cover all the bases? How is the church ‘gathering’ – is it a Zoom call, a virtual reality room, a Facebook livestream, a video posted on YouTube? Does knowing that the sermon was pre-recorded make a difference for the experience? Underneath these technological questions lies an older, theological one: can whatever this is truly be called ‘church’? And, if it can be called church, how might this use of the word ‘church’ relate to the biblical uses of the term and the theological categories so carefully mapped out by our theologians?

In this chapter, I will propose language that categorizes and describes different types of technologically-mediated church services in order to help scholars and practitioners speak more clearly about the experience each offers. I will then connect these categories to the biblical uses of ekklesia found in the New Testament, the local church and universal Church. I will show that technology has always functioned as a bridge between the local church and the Church universal, and that each technology has something unique to offer the Church as a whole. Exploring these technological and theological questions together will help us appreciate the wideness of what God is doing in the world and deepen our identity as the people of God.

Words, metaphors and categories

For many churches, the initial process of moving online for the first time during the pandemic came with some technological struggles. Cameras were at odd angles, mics were not always muted and many wonderful memes were born. But pastors, priests and clergy quickly adapted, and many became quite skilled at using these new tools. Now with the luxury of time for reflection, we can similarly refine the language we use when we discuss technology and ecclesiology.

In the study of digital religion, there is a long history of putting forward clarifying terminology. Twenty years ago, Chris Helland (2000) proposed a distinction between religion-online (when a religious organization provides information over the internet) and online-religion (when religious people engage in spiritual activities on the internet outside a formal structure). The line between the two was somewhat fuzzy, but Helland’s categorization spurred new conversations and ways of thinking about how faith was being expressed and changed online. A decade later, scholars like Heidi Campbell (2012) wrote about online and offline religion, showing that most Christians do not choose one or the other, but rather move fluidly between the two spheres as they connect and interact with overlapping networks of relationships. ‘Online’ and ‘offline’ are still useful distinctions but labelling one real and the other unreal is neither helpful nor accurate.

However, in popular-level discourse about the relationship between in-person church and digitally mediated forms of church, sometimes terms are presented as unhelpful dichotomies that frame some expressions of faith valid and others invalid, but which fail to recognize the actual experience of using these technologies. For example, the term ‘virtual’ has sometimes been juxtaposed with the term ‘real’ in a pejorative way that suggests a digital experience is illegitimate in some way. The question ‘Is online church real church?’ sets up the discussion in such a way that one must either affirm that online church offers the fullness of Christian expression or deny that there is anything worthwhile about online religious expressions. One benefit of the pandemic is that it allowed many more people to experience a digital service and realize that while online and in-person are clearly different, they are both still ‘real’ and worthy of affirmation. Rather than position the term virtual as the opposite of real, I suggest that we avoid using the term real except in the context of virtual reality technology which is used to conduct a specific form of worship.

Another commonly made and similarly inaccurate distinction comes in the terms ‘embodied’ and ‘disembodied’ which are portrayed as being parallel to offline and online, meaning that any online experience is disembodied. However, the experience of lockdown taught us that human beings are always embodied, whether they are sitting at home peering into a screen or sitting in a pew peering up at a screen. Psychologist Margaret Mary Wilson (2002) explores the relationship between mental states and the body which led her to differentiate between what she calls ‘on-line’ and ‘off-line’ embodiment, even in non-internet related activities. Her research shows that while humans are never truly disembodied, the way we are embodied changes the way we experience the world. This means that, theologically speaking, we cannot make a hard distinction between embodied worship and disembodied worship; rather we should be attentive to the different forms of embodiment we offer in our online and in-person gatherings and to the way these activities are formative for individuals, relationships and religious communities. For example, an online church service that is primarily a one-way broadcast (such as YouTube) invites a different state of embodiment than a service that uses two-way interactive technology (such as Zoom). And an in-person religious service can have a different experience depending on whether or not it is being live-streamed.

Digital delivery methods

We have seen that strict dichotomies between real/embodied and virtual/disembodied are not helpful for describing the experience of technologically mediated services. With this in mind, we can continue in the work of Helland, Campbell and others, and refine the terms we use for different forms of technologically mediated expressions of church.

Rather than framing these either/or terms, we will create distinctions that describe the formats and key traits of different technologies with the goal of clarifying the experience of body, community and worship that each form of gathering offers.

Online Church – networking and connecting with other believers through digital media. Because the term ‘online church’ has been used to mean a variety of things, I suggest using ‘online church’ as a catch-all umbrella term that describes any use of digital media by Christians, including formal digital services as well as one-to-one connections between members of in-person churches or other networks of relationships. This includes email, text messages, video chat, virtual services and other media, some of which are used to initiate offline, in-person experiences. An ‘online-only church’ would be a community that uses a variety of media but has no physical gatherings.

Broadcast Church – a service delivered primarily through a one-way medium. This form of church can be traced back to the first broadcast technologies like radio which has long been used to rebroadcast sermons from popular preachers or to reach into closed countries. Religious television was an expansion of broadcast church, and today, when a church makes their songs, sermons, and sacraments available to consume through internet platforms like YouTube or Facebook, they are continuing in this tradition of ministry through broadcast. An individual could consume a broadcast service on a phone or laptop, or a family could gather around a larger television screen and participate together, each of which offers a different state of embodiment and interaction. This form of technologically mediated service is largely non-interactive in the sense that the participant cannot interact with the clergy conducting the service, but they may be able to leave text comments for others watching. Broadcast church is likely the most common form of online church offered.

Interactive Church – church services and group gatherings that use two-way interactive mediums. One of the key factors that distinguishes the internet from previous technologies is that it allows two-way or multi-way interaction. In contrast to a one-way broadcast church service where participants watch a live or pre-recorded video, the term interactive church refers to Christians who connect and worship through more interactive mediums. Some level of interactivity has been possible in previous internet technologies like message boards and a chat box that appears next to a video stream, but video conferencing tools such as Zoom have introduced new levels of synchronous ‘face-to-face’ interactions. Instead of watching pastors and others, worshippers often show themselves on a video which invites a level of intimacy between participants not found in a broadcast service. When a participant’s video or microphone is turned on that person may experience a range of feelings such as being more self-aware of one’s appearance, but also of being heard or seen in significant ways, even while distanced. During interactive church sessions, two or more people can share a device side by side, but the usual mode of engagement is one person per laptop or phone, creating a different experience from broadcast-only church. Although interactive church is less common than broadcast, many churches have added ways to interact if not on Sunday, then throughout the week in small group settings.

Virtual Church – a service or community that meets in a fully virtual environment. Though the term ‘virtual’ is often used as a synonym for online, I suggest that it would be clearer to reserve ‘virtual’ to describe church experiences in virtual reality (VR) environments like Second Life, Roblox and the metaverse. Rather than broadcasting video, a virtual church creates something entirely new, and by engaging more of our senses, it mediates worship in a unique way. The VR environment allows participants to do things they cannot do in person, such as flying around or changing their appearance, but it also recreates a sense of space and limitation that allows for intimate, one-to-one conversations after a service, an experience that is harder to recreate in 2D spaces like a comment box or video conference window. However, while the body’s spatial sense is engaged in a virtual service, each person needs his or her own headset, meaning that two people in the same room cannot experience one another’s presence in the same way they can when watching a broadcast service on a laptop or television screen. Because of the current cost and complexity of the technology, virtual reality services may be the least common form offered today.

Hybrid Church – a local church that includes both digital and in-person experiences. One of the ‘new normal’ conditions that has emerged in the post-pandemic world is that many churches that experimented with the technologies above will continue offering some form of broadcast, virtual or interactive offerings. These offerings will allow churches to meet the needs of those that cannot or prefer not to meet in person for a variety of reasons including medical conditions and travel. Some churches may choose a broadcast option for their Sunday service, but an interactive medium for their other gatherings. In some sense, churches in the digital era have been somewhat hybrid as their people use media to connect with one another and move between online and offline contexts.

These categories allow us to describe more clearly the way a church service is technologically mediated and to probe important differences between mediums. For example, a virtual church that uses AltSpaceVR offers an immersive experience and requires each participant to have their own headset, while the broadcast church on YouTube offers little interactivity but allows a small group of physically proximate people to worship together around a screen. In both cases, a person need not show their face or their name, but an interactive church service conducted on Zoom encourages individuals to represent more of their identity.

Even with these t...