Is it real or is it satire? Hard to say... and THAT'S probably the saddest part. 

(Hint: It's not real, but still...)

Sunday nights tend to be harder for me as the day is so long. I'm usually at it pretty early, refining my sermon or working on last minute details. And If I've preached, then done something like lead a new people's group, there's not a whole lot left in the tank for Sunday evening. But yesterday I wasn't preaching at our 3rd/evening gathering, so it was a little less of an issue. 

First, the good. Last night I kept Jack, our 5 year old with me in the gathering the whole time. He did (mostly) great. We could probably think of it in terms of thirds. The first third he was excited to be with us (the cookie I promised him helped), he actually read the words and sang aloud (loudly! No discernible tune!) to the first song. And THAT was the highlight of my evening. Seeing Jack engage in what we were doing was wonderful for me- it's not an exaggeration (though maybe an overly-flowery way of saying it) to say my heart swelled with joy to see my son worshiping Jesus.  Probably the highlight of my week. 

Of course, the second third where I was just trying to keep him quiet and the last third where he was almost in tears and saying "I hate it in here!" were a little different story, but... baby steps!

But that wasn't the frustration. 

As a community, we've always been on the young side. And in fact, over the last 5 years together, we've actually gotten younger- we have more people under 25 than over 35. So we've always talked about how cool it would be if we had more gray hair among us (I guess my beard doesn't cut it). 

But two things generally happen when older folks step into one of our gatherings. 

The first is that they genuinely seem to like the community, participate, have encouraging words for us afterwards and end up hanging with us for a week or two. And when they find a lack of people in their life-stage, they move on. This has happened so consistently, I've actually developed a speech around it. "Hey! So glad you are here! These young folks really, really need you! The reason you don't see others like you around is that they tend to come and not see people like themselves and move on. So if you can hang out for a bit, be patient, pretty soon others closer to your age will come along and they'll see you here..."

Yes, it's desperate. But they always totally understand the dynamics. AND they always move on. Sigh. 

Then there's the other "older person" experience. They tend to interact in a totally different way. 

We have a more open format than many communities- we still preach, but there are a lot of places along the way where we're asking for interaction, where people are talking to the whole community, or asking questions... and that means a risk. People often ask- "What about heresy?? You open things up like that, and people are going say stuff that's wrong!" Indeed- people often say things that are wrong, including the one with the lapel mic, but that's never really been an issue. The group is mature enough to self-correct- to say when someone floats an idea that is pretty off-base something like "Well, another way to look at that would be..." or "I'm not sure that really gets at what God is saying here" or even "I disagree!" It's a beautiful thing. 

The thing we tend to struggle with though, is not the person who says egregiously wrong things, but the person who says egregiously much. And in my experience, some of the folks who tend to be most excited by the opportunity to speak and, ahem, avail themselves of the opportunity our community provides the most are the older folks. They almost always mean well, but quite often it comes over with a "Let me correct ALL the misconceptions you are all laboring under" kind of vibe. 

And we're a pretty polite bunch, so no one is going to say "Hey- you are talking waaay too much! Let someone else speak!" 

Last night we had something like that happen, not a big deal, but a good reminder to me: We often dream about the people we want to see come to our communities. But that's not who God usually brings. 

As Henri Nouwen said, "Community is the place where the person you least want to live with always lives." For us, in our context, that often looks like the guy who talks a little too much, wants to make the conversation more about him and what he thinks than anything else... and we bear that burden because we believe that's a piece of genuine, authentic community. The impulse to make everything just the way we want it, to quality-control everything has to be pushed down in favor of the idea that God may want to do something different than what we thought needed to be done in a particular gathering. 

Sometimes He may want to bring us wisdom and sage words through the mouth of someone who's lived longer than anyone else in the room. 

And sometimes, He may just want to teach us patience. 

I think to some extent that may be true- especially for those of us who tend towards the co-dependant. Being driven more by who we feel others want us to be. 

But I think it might be more precise to say we often become people we didn't intend to be. And we do so by living reactively- taking each day as it comes, dealing with the facts (and fires) on the ground, avoiding the 50,000 foot view altogether. 

And the 50,000 ft view is a picture of who we want to be down the road. 

This week I was reading Letters To A Skeptic by Greg Boyd. In it, he talks about a woman he knows who had been a bright, vibrant and happy person early in her life. All that changed when her sister ran off with her fiance. Or maybe I should say, all that began to change with how she reacted to that event, and how she chose to continue to react- nurturing bitterness and unforgiveness- until at the end of her life she was regarded as a difficult, bitter and angry old woman. 

As I thought about that story and overlaid my own life on top of it, I realized a piece of something I had let creep in to my emotions and come out in certain actions just wasn't congruent with the person of peace I hoped to be in old age. That realization alone was enough to get me off my chair and into making a concrete change.

In other words, I realize it's not just that we make choices- it's that our choices are very literally making us. And unless those choices are guided by a picture, a blueprint of who we want to be, we'll end up becoming someone purely by accident- shaped more by our circumstances and reactions to those circumstances than by any values or vision we might have. 

So here's the question: Who do you want to be? And what are you doing to become that? What are you doing that is at odds with that, that is taking you in another direction. 

And more importantly, what are you going to do about it? 

And that's just the first page. 

Despite the stated purpose of Sim Church being to counter the "fluff pieces- pretty pictures, nice ideas but little substance" that the author identifies as so far making up the discussion on virtual church, I can't help but feel like, based on the first few pages, that's exactly what I'm I'm in for. 

Let's lay aside (for the moment) theological considerations of just what it is that breaks down barriers, unites people and builds the kingdom (hint: it's called the Gospel!), I think this book already suffers from the main problem of most books looking at issues of virtual church, video venues, etc, that is, begging the question. Assuming that "God is in this" and it only remains to work out the details. It IS church (the refrain throughout the opening chapter is "Today a new community of the people of God has begun"), now we just have to figure out what kind of church. 

And I say, hold on. It's not that simple. 

"Church" is defined by certain markers, the presence of certain elements, without which it may still be helpful, still be worthwhile, and yet not rise past the level of para-church. AA does a lot of good things, builds community, meets needs- but it's not Church. The Masons do most of the things Church does. Service? Check. Ritual? Check. Gathering together? Check. Funny hats? Double check.

But it's not Church. 

I'll get more in depth into what is and what isn't Church as I interact with future chapters (particularly chpt 2 where the author, very briefly, takes up the most critical question: What is Church and does Virtual Church qualify) , but I wanted to do two things by way of intro- push back against the initial first-line-of-the-first-paragraph assumption of this book that Virtual Church is Church and say- that's the very question you need actually to wrestle with, not tip your hat to and move on. 

And second, to point out this. The author makes this statement in closing chapter 1: "The Christian church is engaging far less than 1 percent of the seventy million people who are active in the virtual world. This means the virtual world is by far the largest unreached people group on Planet Earth... We have great work to do."

The obvious flaw in that reasoning is this: the (mistaken) assumption that these people are "unreached" in real life. They may have no credible Gospel witness in their lives, and virtual efforts at evangelism may be worth pursuing. But... it is seriously doubtful that, in missiological terms (and that's exactly what "unreached people group" is)  these folks are online and logging in to Second Life and are "unreached." This feels like a calculated attempt to draw parallels between virtual environments and real ones and play off our emotions regarding unreached people groups who have never had even an opportunity to respond to the Gospel and to bring a sheen of missionary respectability to efforts at building virtual churches. And again, that begs the question. Not an auspicious beginning. 

If you are new to this discussion you can catch up by reading my article There Is No Virtual Ecclesia here (part 1 part 2, Doug Estes' response here, and my response to his response here

Brick-and-Mortar Pastor Defends Virtual Church as Real

By Lillian Kwon|Christian Post Reporter

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The Christian church is engaging far less than 1 percent of the 70 million people who are active in the virtual world. This means the virtual world is by far the largest unreached people group on planet Earth, says one pastor.

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Douglas Estes, a pastor from San Jose, Calif., has no vested interest in virtual or internet churches – a relatively new phenomenon – but given the large "unreached" population on the internet, he says he has a desire to see healthy churches proliferate "regardless of context."

Although he leads a brick and mortar church (Berryessa Valley Church), Estes defends virtual churches against critics in his newly released book, SimChurch: Being the Church in the Virtual World, maintaining that they are real churches with real people.

He summed up his argument in a recent post on Christianity Today's Out of Ur blog: "People are led to believe that members of online churches all connect to their video-game church as anonymous zombies in a Tron-like world. Supposedly these virtual (fake) Christians never really know each other, it’s all a facade, and that this is the sum and total of a virtual church.

"The real truth is that every virtual church I’ve ever attended has flesh-and-blood people in virtual (real!) community with other flesh-and-blood people whose primary meeting place is in synthetic space."

In recent years, Christians have begun to take on the internet by building church communities in virtual worlds like Second Life and The Sims and launching internet campuses where anyone from around the world can join weekend worship services live on the Web. The growth of virtual worshipping communities, however, has sparked debates on whether such churches are effective and biblical.

A major argument against internet churches is that they lack physical contact, Estes pointed out. But that same argument could be made against megachurches and any other church, for that matter, where people never really touch or come to know each other, he argued.

Virtual churches, critics say, also don't have real community.

Estes, however, pushed back by pointing out that church isn't about where it meets. "Isn't church supposed to be about people in communion with God rather than the building? ... Since when does the location of a church determine the quality of its community?"

"Virtual churches may meet for services in the virtual world, but they are not the one-dimensional illusion that critics like to easily prop up so as to knock down for their friends to applaud," he maintained. "And here’s the irony: Even as virtual churches seek to create community in both virtual and physical space, so too do their critics use virtual space when it is convenient for them in their brick and mortar ministries."

Bob Hyatt, pastor of the Evergreen Community in Portland, Ore., didn't buy Estes' argument.

He stressed, "It’s not where we meet, but that we meet," according to his post on Out of Ur.

"And whether people are actually meeting together – that is, whether you and me watching the same video stream, silently reading the comments in the chat room as we sip our individual portions of grape juice and eat crackers, rises to the level of 'ecclesia' and the picture of Acts 2:42 – has yet to be determined.

"In other words, I have yet to be convinced that simultaneity equals community," Hyatt stated.

Read the rest here

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Last week, Doug Estes, the writer of a new book called Sim Church posted on Out of Ur what was essentially a response to my thoughts in previous Ur articles regarding the idea of Virtual Church. He wanted to avoid responding to me by name, but there were too many pointed comments to avoid the conclusion. 

You can check in out here: "In Defense of Virtual Church."

I wrote and sent a response that was pretty quickly made superfluous by the (now) 87 (and counting!) comments on the original post. 

I reproduce some of it here. I hope you'll read it (and the original article that inspired it) and come back here to answer this question: What do you think of this debate? 

It's my contention it's an important one to have (in fact, I think I need to write a post on why!)- but I'd like to know what you all think. 

Here's my response to Mr. Estes:

October 27, 2009

Virtual Church is STILL a Bad Idea

Online churches are missing a few essential ingredients.

by Bob Hyatt

**Editor's Note: I apologize for the lack of posts in recent days. We've been experiencing some technical difficulties. -Url Scaramanga**

I was disappointed to read Douglas Estes’ piece last week on Ur, for a number of reasons, but chief among them is this: it fails to deal substantively with a single serious critique that has been raised regarding virtual church. In fact, Mr. Estes not only fails to address the critique, but he seems to fail even to understand it.

So in a spirit of Christian love and good dialogue, let me respond point by point!

First, Mr. Estes asserts that critique of virtual church can be boiled down to “Internet campuses and online churches are not true churches because they don’t look like and feel like churches are expected to look like and feel like (in the West, anyway).”

Respectfully, nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, my concern about internet church is that it’s too much like what we expect (and want) church to look and feel like (at least in the West).

Video venues and internet church are the logical next step to the celebrity and consumer culture of America, and they represent a threat to both the overall maturity of the Body of Christ and our counter-cultural mandate. Celebrity elevation of pastors who have begun to franchise themselves and their “brand” around the nation should concern us for a number of reasons I’ve outlined elsewhere—they draw down people and resources from other church communities and they are unable to do mission-critical activities.

I’d say those are pretty substantial concerns.

Second, this article repeats what I see as the major scriptural argument in favor of virtual church—“Nowhere in the Bible does it preclude online church.” The argument from silence, as we all remember from high school debate class, is the weakest. And in this case, I believe the Bible isn’t silent. Let me ask very plainly...

READ THE REST AT OUT OF UR 

Time to start writing again. By a sheer ACT OF MY WILL... 

:)