Pentecost Sunday.  With some work to get going on, and being without my family today (they get back later today), I am in my home office this morning,  with Pentecost very much on my mind.  I was recalling how 20 years ago on Pentecost Sunday, I preached a sermon in the Church where I had been Minister of Youth/Associate Pastor for about 3 months.  It was my 27th birthday that day. 

Today,  as I sit here in my office,  still looking for work,  I feel more confident that I would be better served sitting here and writing,  perhaps making some online connection to the soul of another,  than to expend gas and time to travel down to Church.  It’s not that I haven’t found some good, caring people at the Church we’ve been visting since January,  but I feel like I need to save some money (this an increasing concern),  make good use of my time (the Church is too far away to make it less than a 3 hour block of time to get in the car and drive 30 minutes,  go to the service,  and drive back)  and think some about how the idea of Pentecost impacts the notion that God can (and does) work “amongst us” in an online setting.  Many will protest that the story clearly suggests that “they were all together in one place”,  and that this seals the deal concerning whether one can experience the prescence of The Spirit anywhere but in face-to-face gatherings.  But “place”,  you see,  is not a rock-solid concept in the world of online sociology.  And there are PLACES in the online world where the activity and the sense of “persons” is much thicker and palpable than it is in ftf situations.  This trend seems to also be on the rise.  As more and more Church services and Church gatherings become more and more “mass event” and less and less deliberate effort to provide an experience of personal interaction and sharing of personal stories,  then the appeal and power of the online places committed to such encouragement will continue to rise, and to begin to unseat the traditional Church as  “holy place”.   And this is not a good thing.  I am not an advocate for replacing tradtional Church ftf events with online events. We still NEED the physical gatherings.  I advocate USING online avenues to actually demonstrating that people in the Church CARE about who we are,  what moves us, and what concerns us.  It is becoming increasingly diffcicult to have the opportunity to express those very personal matters in ftf gatherings.  And this calls into question what the ftf gatherings are intended to be.  If they are a form of “celebration” of the Body of Christ,  and yet there are many — WAY too many — people who feel there is much more unknown about them than there is KNOWN,  then the value of the celebration is ,  in a very large sense,  questionable for them.  Indeed,  it is not even a real celebration for them if there is not a sense that they are bringing WHO THEY ARE to the table.  They may have a PRIVATE sense that God is present and is speaking,  but the notion of “all together in one place” has lost its sociological, Pentecost power.  The power of Pentecost is that the community is experiencing God, and is being called into a covenant with one another.