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Tag Archives: covidchurch
Kids, Teens, Worship, and Tech
I’ve been thinking and writing about technology and how it affects worship for quite a number of years. When I wrote a series about ‘online church’ and the importance of in-person worship during COVID, one of my main concerns was … Continue reading
Guest Post: Is COVID Bringing the Church to a Screeching Halt?
Our governments are against in-person Church attendance because congregating undermines their attempts to contain and subdue the pandemic that has thrown our world into such chaos. The Church needs not to be brave enough to defy the authorities merely for the sake of rebelling against human authorities. Neither should the Church be asleep when battles of cosmic nature are raging. Each congregation and believer need to seek out God’s will. When we know God’s will, we should be willing to lose our lives for the realization of that will; if we must heed the command to honor authorities and obey them, fine. However, we can still meet in our homes. In these small group settings, every member is indeed known, discipled, and held accountable to walk according to the calling they have received from God. Relationships flourish in small groups. Each person gets ample opportunity to exercise their gifts to build up the body in small groups. If we cannot meet in our thousands like we are used to, maybe God is drawing us back to what has worked in the past: house churches. The Bible warns that persecution will break out. Continue reading
COVID, Tech, and Church: Some Links
I’ve accumulated quite a few readings that relate to the church’s response to the pandemic, which is something I’ve been writing about in the last year. I’m trying to stay away from scientific topics per se, because I’m not a scientist–I’m a biblical scholar, a pastor, and (dare I say it) a theologian. Nevertheless, the limits and proper place of science in society is an issue that I feel needs to be addressed by the church exercising its prophetic witness in society. Continue reading
Performativity, Privacy, Scrutiny: More Concerns about “Online Church”
The concerns about performativity, privacy, and scrutiny are linked by this idea of maintaining proper boundaries between the church body and the rest of society. Just as the skin barrier that (imperfectly) protects a physical body is sometimes breached in a sterile, surgical theatre for the good of the body–so also the local church should reserve its space to be a hospital for human souls. Continue reading
Posted in Bible-Theology, Culture-Economics-Society
Tagged Church, covidchurch, Technology, Worship
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Re-Forming Church Biblically
Each tradition needs to think critically before simply adopting practices from other traditions—and perhaps seek out and retrieve better alternatives from its own past. Moreover, churches should be extremely cautious about introducing technology into our worship; it never merely replicates … Continue reading
“Ancient” Re-Post: Screens, Fatherhood and Distractions
Screens let me be “present” in some limited way with my sister and her husband across the country or across the world. But they also make me absent from those actually in my presence. Screens connect and disconnect. Continue reading
Guest Post: Why Go Back to Church?
Jesus wants His people to love one another. To love others, you sometimes have to be in the same room. Sometimes you have to hold their babies, wash their dishes, or look them straight in their unmediated eyes as you listen to them share their story. You have to stay in the room when the stories get rambly. You might have to get up and get a box of tissues. You may have to lay hands on them and pray for them. Yes, sometimes you have to touch them. Continue reading
Pandemic Sermon: Job 42:10-17 and Isaiah 49:14-23, “Receiving Double from YHWH’s Hand”
COVID-19 and the reaction to it has caused deep divisions in our societies, and right down the middle of Christian communities as well….When we come back to meeting together, as a full church, or as an LCC family, or as societies reckoning with the effectiveness of policies (as I hope there will be investigations and evaluations, based in actual scientific understandings of how these viruses work that we had at the time), there will be anger and resentment that has to be dealt with….If we don’t, we could have a permanent division in our communities, which would be tragic.
…As we build back our lives, and build back our church community, can we think of our process as parallel to this—and also see it as an opportunity? Can we articulate our losses, express our anger and our sorrow, hear the anger and sorrow of others, and pray that God would help us to direct it and deal with it appropriately? Can we accept that nothing happens outside of God’s knowledge or control? Continue reading
Online “Church”: Are the Kids Really Fine?
The older generations, having come of age in cultures of society, church and education that are formed by reading physical books and encountering peers and authority figures in physical space and time, are better equipped to transfer those educational, spiritual, and social habits into the digital realm and to cope with the shortcomings of digital media, than are younger generations. Put succinctly, we think the kids are fine (even perhaps doing better than we are with all this Zooming!), but they’re not. Continue reading
Pandemic Sermon: Ezekiel 11:14-25, “I Have Been a Sanctuary”
The human desire to commune with God is very powerful, and when sacrifice according to God’s law was not available, it was very painful. Many allowed themselves to be squeezed into worshiping God on their own terms, rather than according to God’s law. But other Judeans were faithful and accepted the promise of God’s continuing presence through this time of suffering, a presence revealed in ways that they hadn’t seen before, and trusted that he would eventually bring this time to an end. For these Old Covenant saints who were truly seeking YHWH God, this disruption was a time of “creative destruction” that stripped away many beliefs and practices, and allowed them to see just how big and powerful YHWH truly is. Continue reading
think hard, think well 