I was sent this link (Why Internet Church?) by by friend Larry, about the Church of England’s new venture: an Internet Church, led by a paid pastor. the article is written by the Oxford Diocese Director of Communication, Richard Thomas.

It has some important things to say, such as:

And it may be that the increasing failure to participate is a direct result of a loss of faith in such institutions as places that are effective in their key tasks, and that make demands on us that do not contribute either to mission or personal growth.

Loss of participation in the traditional church (traditional as in “ftf”) due to a perceived lack of emphasis in, or concern for, their own concerns and convictions about what Church should be. I perceive the main problem to stem from the almost total lack of communication among the many. The information is largely one-way, pulpit centered, and the populace is increasingly becomng aware that much more “conversation” and “exploration” is available elsewhere. The pulpit is no longer a conduit of information as it was in pre-information age days. But also , and as the Cluetrain authors insist, the thing that most people are interested in is the “Real market”, which is the conversation.

The power behind this reality; what actually undergirds its status as “reality” or “driving force” is that the Christian community is dependent upon just that: Community. The Pentecost event occurred as they were “gathered together in one place”. The question we are now asking, rather than “What is truth?”, is “What is place?” What is the power of “one place?” Is this a physical reality or does it have something to do with the things that can happen there (and in the first century, people could not ‘exchange” in the immediacy of give-and-take except by physcial prescence. But……

Physical prescence is by no means de-emphasized. The article obsevers that One of the key discoveries about internet communities is that their members soon express a desire to meet.. This is born out time and time again. I went to an Ecunet meeting in Baltimore, a 10-hour drive, to meet people with whom I had been introduced online, on the Ecuent system (in 1995). I would , if I could find such online, be similarly driven to seek out the company of those who would indicate to me online that they have been seeking an expression of Church similar to that of my own (like trying to embody and structure a community which seeks a Journey Inward/Journey Outward type of theology of Church — as in the kind I see in The Church of the Saviouir. In fact, I hope to find a way to help them (The Church of the Saviour in Washington, DC), to provide some sense of their “place” in the online world. Their fellowship is the most “immersed” in the journey of “seeking mission” and “recognition of gifts” and the seeking of missions FOR the UTILIZATION of THOSE GIFTS than any Church I have ever known.

Just as many have been “compelled” or “led” over the years to take a sojourn over to Washington , DC and visit those people, and their many ministries, to seek out what it is that gives them such reach and such “place”. The wrtings of Elizabeth O’Connor did that for many people (like a group from my Church), and many others hear of it by word of mouth as a part of the testimony of others who were forever touched by what they experienced with them and among them. Today, the Web and its many tools can provide a new avenue to “tell the story”, and include in that story an unlimited amount of “individual stories, reflections, and questions” from those who are living that story, or seek to more fully live it.

I sense a kindred “goal” and hope in the article as it seeks to describe the possibilities: One of our aims will be to facilitate new kinds of meeting, meeting based on knowing one another at a much deeper level than is possible simply by sitting next to someone for an hour on a Sunday morning. To “be known” is a powerful incentive to seek, and keep seeking. Once the bay doors are opened and we begin to “identify with each other” and know others, and be known, the chains that shackle our giftedness begin to be loosed and torn away. And as the above quote suggests, many times a deeper community is potentially opened to us through the connection to another who may well be sitting next to us in Church, a fellow “receiver” of the push of content down from above, without the common experience of how that same message is received or rejected by ourselves. Herein lies the sin of omission of the Church; a vast potential that lies untapped.