A Plea For Gathering Together In Time, or, Disconnected

The rumbles have already begun, between churches and states, churches and churches, church members and other church members. There has been no Olly, Olly oxen free opening all churches of all sizes in all jurisdictions. There has been increasing impatience driven by genuine skepticism over the dangers involved in the pandemic on the one hand and genuine health fears on the other and genuine concern over governmental overreach on the one hand and a genuine commitment to submit to the governing authorities on the other. Those who insist on meeting are deemed selfish and uncaring by those who think we should not. Those who think we should not are deemed to have bowed the knee to Caesar and to have denied the Lordship of Christ by those who think we should be meeting. I may be a fool but I am not fool enough to think I can settle those disputes. I’m not going to try.

I am, however, making a plea that those churches that are not meeting face to face would not take a slight and subtle further step away from community by not meeting at the same time. I get the low cost convenience of the thing. We’re already putting the service online. Click one more button and now it’s there for those who missed it, or want to watch it later. Who wouldn’t want to make that available? And, if that decision has already been made, and we can better ensure against technical hiccups by recording in advance what we’ll put online, why wouldn’t we?

Because this radically increases the disunity of the body we’re already suffering through by not meeting together in space. It moves us from doing something together, to merely watching the same show. It is not time travel, but it is time shifting. It turns our gathering together to worship, even from our own homes, into deciding what time we will “watch” worship this week. How am I to join into the earnest prayers of my pastor if I know he prayed them hours, or days ago? How will I hear a sermon speaking to me when I not only wasn’t at the place it was given, but wasn’t at the time it was given? When my local body cannot meet together in space, they are still my local body. I can feel their sorrow, for they are just around the corner. We are together going through this hardship. If, however, my local body doesn’t meet together in time, I’ve lost a second point of connection. I’m alone.

Is it less convenient to make sure you get to the church on time? Of course it is. Would it be nice to get some extra sleep and log on in the afternoon or evening? Of course it would be. Is something lost, something intangible but still real, something amorphous but nevertheless powerful? Yes. Just like something is lost when we add services, creating temporal church splits. Please don’t hear me saying you are in sin if you watch the service later, or film the service earlier. Please do hear me saying that it might be better to do neither, but to hold on to whatever unity and togetherness we can.