Browsing: virtual church

Christianity Today has published an interesting article by Chad Hall discussing online churches. Much of the article covers issues we discussed last month in our 9 part series on the challenges and opportunities of online churches.

But there were a couple of things that stood out to me.

When discussing online churches that never gather in one physical location, two questions that often come up are

How do you do baptisms?
How do you celebrate communion?

In SimChurch, Douglas Estes does an excellent job of looking at the various options online churches have for the sacraments. He breaks them down into 4 categories.

Which if any of these expresses of baptism and communion are (most?) biblical and why?

In the discussion surrounding Online Church Part 1: What is a Biblical Church? it seems that everyone agrees that for a church to be a real, biblical church it must gather together regularly to worship God. The question for today is…

In what ways can online churches excel at gathering for worship and where are there difficulties?

As I mentioned in my review earlier today, Douglas Estes’s book SimChurch takes the conversation about online church to the next level. I would like to build on what that by organizing a more in-depth discussion about various aspects of online church. Here’s a tentative schedule of the topics we’re going to cover here over the next several weeks.