While many churches have been engaging with social media and establishing an online presence, others among us have felt less enthusiastic for Facebook and Twitter. Such platforms have felt either intrusive or superficial and the concept of virtual church a contradiction in terms.
But all such thoughts are now pre-Covid. Since the virus, even the most technophobe among us have been mastering virtual backgrounds in Zoom and exchanging comments on Facebook Live. For better or worse, the church has fully embraced the Internet age. At Moorlands College we have shifted all our teaching online and my local church now has two Internet Sunday services along with a daily prayer meeting and weekly homegroups. Things will change again as the lockdown unwinds, but ministry will never be pre-Covid again.
I want to make a plea that we maintain our commitment to healthy apologetics in the material that we place online. One of the dangers we have is that we capitulate to the obsession with image that social media encourages. Of course, we do want to present ourselves well. We want ‘likes’. We need to pay attention to audio quality and camera angles. Please let us stop showing our nasal hair by badly-placed camera phones – the Lord is not glorified by it. We also need to be wise stewards of time and resources. Perhaps our online sermons need to be a little shorter and more accessible given the way we can now reach many more people who may have never attended a church.
