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Soul Enterprise Can Zoom replace face-to-face contact?
The Analog Church: Why we need real people, real places and things in the Digital Age. Jay Y Kim (Intervarsity Press, 2020, 203 pp., $18 US)
By Fred Redekop
I received this book March 18. I had been in self-isolation for almost 10 days, at the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis.
The purpose of the book is to convince the readers of the need for in-person church, and to move away from technology in worship. Virtual spirituality moves us “toward performance rather than worship.”
A timely read for these times of lockdowns and isolations.
We cannot currently meet together in church buildings so we are meeting online. Churches are trying to meet together over the airwaves. Even the Old Order Mennonite Church in Pennsylvania meets with the aid of telephone conference calls. Kim’s thesis is at the moment not possible, so it invites the opportunity to reflect on what might happen to us as we meet as a virtual church. Can positives come from forced isolation?
Jay Kim is a pastor from California. He is a young church leader on the ReGeneration Project, and has a podcast, Regeneration Podcast. Kim is not anti-technology in his following of Christ, but his book asks questions about how the techie stuff changes some fundamental things that we need to be an authentic Christian community.
Kim’s thesis is that we have to continue to meet together, and not be dependent on technology to meet virtually. We should not try to be church through cool technology. He writes, “And in the digital age, one of the most upside down things the church can offer is the invitation to be analog, to come out from hiding behind our digital walls, to bridge our technological divides, and to be human with one another in the truest sense — gathering together to be changed and transformed in real time, in real space, in real ways.”
The book has three parts: Worship, Community and Scripture. In the worship chapter he talks of the aspects of worship, focusing on preaching and singing.
For preaching he writes, “the sermon is much more than prepared content of the communicator and its public delivery; it is the sum total of its various elements — speaking, listening, delivering, responding — and it involves everyone in the room.”
He is not saying good things cannot happen when the sermon is projected to a variety of sites, but it is better in person.
As I have been preaching for many weeks to an empty worship space, I agree with him. It is not normal, but it may continue to be normal. How is this experience for the “hearers?”
The Scripture section has a chapter on communion. In the times we are living in today I would have said, you cannot have the Last Supper digitally, but at the church where I pastor, we had to do it.
I said the words, “take your piece of bread and your cup of juice.” Kim states, “We must invite them to show up, hungry for the body of Christ, because as much as modern technology wants to tell you so, you can’t eat and drink together online.”
But various governments legislated that we could not meet as churches and eat and drink.
How did your experience of communion invite you to deepen your relationship with God? Is Zoom, Facetime or Skype a real community? Discuss. w
Fred Redekop pastors Poole Mennonite Church. He also serves as a Woolwich Township councillor.
