Can a Relational Faith be Online?

For the first time in the almost four years that I have been actively preaching in Unitarian Universalist Churches, I presented a sermon at a church that podcasts its services… so there is now an audio of that sermon online. I have listened to the podcasted and streamed sermons of others for years, and I have kept the texts of my own sermons online for much of that time as well. (With the exception of a few that really did not need to be preached in the first place… we live and we learn).

I have a curious resistance to putting audio and video of worship and sermons on the web. It is curious, because I am, in most other ways, very technology focused. I was a church webmaster for many years. I ran an online discussion forum on Deism for many more years. I maintain Celestial Lands as a repository for my own writings and an online outreach for Unitarian Universalism and Liberal Faith. I sponsor the UU’s in the Military and UU Military Ministries websites. I think I own a total of 5 different domains, unless there are one or two I have forgotten about. I have been giving thought to how to build community between military UU’s using the internet for several years.

And yet, I have a curious resistance to putting audio or video of sermons on the web. Not just mine… anyone’s.

I realize that this resistance makes no rational sense, and so when the webmaster of Unity Temple asked if he could podcast my sermon, my response was “yes, of course”. But, I have learned that when I find such resistance to something in myself, it usually points to something valuable that I need to dig out.

Unitarian Universalism has been, and continues to be at the forefront of religions that use the internet to bring people to our churches. The number one response when churches ask visitors how they found their church is “the internet”. Almost every UU congregation has a website of some kind, and many of those websites are quite sophisticated. Many UU ministers maintain websites or blogs separate from their churches, and so do many lay Unitarian Universalists. There are even websites out there that specifically protest Unitarian Universalism! Depending upon their seriousness, they do a great favor for our liberal faith movement. “Ya ain’t nobody till somebody protests against ya!”

So, with my continuing love-affair with web design and technology, with my certainly being of the “internet generation” (even if I am one of its elders), and with my evangelical drive to share our saving faith… why do I continue to have a resistance to putting audio and video of worship on the web?

There is the obvious answer for someone who works for a church… I worry that if we put the worship service on the web then people will have less reason to get out of bed on Sunday morning and come to church. But I have found the obvious answer is rarely the real one for me, and that one seems to smack, just a little bit, of my old conservativism…

I think the key to this lies in the different experience I have had participating in the Sunday Morning Worship of General Assembly, the annual conference of the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations. In 2005 I attended that service in Ft. Worth, along with over 3000 of my fellow Unitarian Universalists. I was deeply moved by Rev. Robert Hardies’ sermon, which called us to catch fire for our faith. The music was uplifting, the readings were wonderful, and most importantly, I was in religious community with those around me. Together, we turned a concert hall and auditorium into a sacred space. I was not a consumer of the service, but an active participant in worship.

Move that one year ahead, to 2006. I was unable to attend General Assembly as I was deeply involved in my hospital chaplain internship (CPE) at the University of Tennessee Medical Center in Knoxville, TN. I had just completed an all night shift in the trauma bays, but not a busy one. I got breakfast, went to the office, turned on my computer, and watched the service online, while eating my breakfast.

Now, admittedly, I should have entered into the service in a more sacred way that having my breakfast. I should have made some sacred space for myself before turning on the computer… but how likely is that? If I, a seminary student and chaplain did not think about that, how likely is anyone else too? I remember little to nothing about the service in 2006… but the service the year before profoundly affected me. That is not a critique of the service, but of my level of personal participation in it.

What is important in our worship is not the words spoken, or the music sung. What is important is that it happens in sacred community, touching each other both physically and spiritually in sacred ways. What is important is that it is time, taken out of our busy lives, that we are together to experience our shared humanity. What is important is that we are willing to risk relationship to find relationship.

What is important is that we are together… and I don’t see how we are ever really together through computer screens and keyboards. Used in this way, the internet does not facilitate real relationship, but is a crutch that keeps us from having to find real relationship.

Others will disagree with me… and I am not advocating taking sermons and worship off the web. I have been following the progress of the First UU Church of Second Life with some fascination, as, even more than the Church of the Larger Fellowship, they are attempting to create real relationship in a virtual environment. I am doubtful of their success, but willing to admit I could be wrong… we will see.

No, what I am advocating is that, when we place such worship and sermons on the web and online, that we do so in ways that encourage people to get out of bed on Sunday morning and come to church, to enter into real, personal relationship with their faith and with those who share it. I think this must be done intentionally, and that we should place such online sermons and worship materials in our “newcomer’s” section… not in a form of “online chapel”. Perhaps we should wait a week before a sermon is posted…or a month. Perhaps the sermons should also be rotated on a regular basis.

If we are providing full services for those who physically can not attend our services, then let’s put them in password controlled sections of our websites, so that those who can not attend can still have at least some connection to the service, and then let us find ways to bring the relational aspects of our faith to them outside of Sunday morning.

Perhaps the newcomer’s section of a church website could have one podcast of a whole worship service, so they can experience a little of what one is like… but each week only put up the sermon (a week later). Information on attending a service should be in each podcast.

These are just some ideas of what a faithful and responsible online worship outreach might look like for a church… because the true power of worship in our free faith cannot be digitized and sent over the web… the feeling of sacred community, of loving relationship, of care and trust, of compassion, of commitment, of purpose. All of that you can only feel when you enter the worship space with your physical, not your virtual self.

Yours in Faith,

David