Why would anyone choose to worship at a church online?
An online church provides a no-holds barred way for unchurched people to dig deep, anonymously, into issues of faith.
Back in the 80s, churches began a "seeker-sensitive" movement, designed to meet people where they were and reduce the obstacles to involvement in church. At that time, finding a good local church usually involved the yellow pages. Now, it means a few keystrokes into Google. Has the "seeker-sensitive" movement kept up?
Admittedly, some churches took the concept too far and abandoned teaching the truth to make people comfortable and happy. Sadly, there were, and are, still many of those around today. However, for the sake of this discussion, I ask you to think of the ones who effectively reached out to their community and biblically challenged non-christians and the formerly churched back into faith and commitment to discipleship. The point was to attract the seeker where they were at, and ease them into a place where they could be receptive to the gospel message, and many churches did this well without compromising that message.
If the goal is to reduce the barriers of church attendance, and to share the gospel through the experience, how better to accomplish this goal than to facilitate worship, bible studies, and christian community directly on the internet? Users can't possibly be more "comfortable" anywhere than they would be in their own homes. Besides, they can anonymously participate and enjoy the knowledge that they're a click away from escaping if the environment gets too testy for them.
It also creates a place that's safe from the judgment that many of them expect, since no one on the internet knows if you're an average joe, or if you're sporting a purple mohawk or a hundred extra pounds. Disabled people who cannot get to a real-life church can have an opportunity to worship and fellowship with other believers. The scheduling issues of night shift workers become a thing of the past in an environment that's open 24 hours a day.
Imagine for a moment a city of a few thousand people. Most communities this size will sport a church or two within their midst. A city of 50,000 may host a few dozen churches. As the numbers of people grow, the numbers of places to worship rises with them.
Now imagine a city of one billion people - roughly one-seventh of the entire world's population. Also imagine, if you can, that within this city there are fewer than 10 evangelical places of worship within their midst. How is it possible for so few to reach so many?
The internet has become such a city. According to internetworldstats.com, 1.2 billion people worldwide use the internet, and yet, a quick search of Google shows a mere handful of places to worship together with others online and participate in real-time bible studies in community. This is a mission field that desperately needs workers.
Fortunately, online churches have begun to make the transformation from simple webpages with archived sermons to fully-functional communities. Some create community through chatrooms and blogs (see www.e-church.com), while others such as Infinite Church, the ALM Cyberchurch, and the experimental Church of Fools involve game-like graphical environments for interactivity with other users during worship. Some small churches have supported these and other similar efforts. Other churches have designated a significant portion of resources to developing flash environments to actively engage the internet users on their site. (see Lifechurch.tv and Seacoast church for examples. Suddenly, the idea of full service online church has crossed the line from novelty concept to legitimate outreach trend.
God has made the case clear - we must step up our involvement on the internet to reach out to people who would not meet Jesus any other way. We must encourage our memberships to actively engage in outreach through blogs, community forums, chat rooms, and by simply being the church online. More importantly, we should be willing ourselves to be available for internet searchers in need.