Faith Works 2-12-22

Faith Works 2-12-22
Jeff Gill

Birthing classes and funeral rehearsals
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As if on schedule, a social media furor broke out, as they're always doing, about on-line worship.

A person whom I have read somewhat from, and think generally well of, surprised me and from what I could tell on social media quite a few others by saying she believed churches should stop offering online or "virtual" worship, in pretty much any form. Her answer in advance to the question of "what about the home bound" was that congregations should go back to what many had been doing before, and sending trained leaders, lay or ordained, to bring communion or some form of personal presence into those places, but not use video worship as a way to provide that.

Perhaps it was a cheerful sort of well meant trolling. Sometimes folks see the word "trolling" and assume it's a personal affront, an insult that should cut to the bone, but . . . some of the nicest people I know are trolls! By which I mean that folks can adopt an online persona that's garish and drastic and much more emphatic than they actually are. Even fairly mild-mannered people can post something for effect, put an opinion out there on the very fringe of what they actually believe, in aid of getting attention, discussion, clicks to engage with their actually much less controversial stance.

And on the "all churches should drop online worship entirely" front, I detect a bit of walking back. This is written far enough ahead I'm not sure what the next chapter for that particular blogger will be, but I'm going to follow up her point, which is where I think the positive spin on trolling can be accepted, as long as it's okay for me to disagree. Starting with the point that came to my mind immediately and was posted by myriad others: how ironic is it that we're reading this polemic about online worship . . . online?

I just got done rushing over in advance of our recent winter storm to stay with an elderly relative, fearing power outages and such. One challenge: the newspaper did not come as usual. Now, the local paper there, as here, is going through some changes, and obviously the trends are towards the digital platforms. People want their news on their phones, or their devices, et cetera . . . except for the ones who want it in their hands, on newsprint, leaving ink on their fingers.

Poignantly for me, one of my last conversations with my father was about the shifts in print publication frequency and the growth of online news outlets. He said, I kid you not, "I don't know that I want to live in a world where I don't get a newspaper every morning." Well, that resolved itself not perhaps how I'd wish. Meanwhile, in 2022, my aged relation wanted the morning's newspaper, and me showing it to him on my laptop was no satisfaction at all. He wanted his paper! And blessedly it came, albeit later in the day.

But we all know that in March, changes that have come elsewhere in the country arrive for us, with Saturday news online and digital, but not in print form. And I'm sure changes will continue, some of which I may not like all that much.

That's newspapers. For worship, we not only want, I'm with the pseudo-trollish minister who says we need face-to-face and in-person worship. We do. There's much about the life of faith, like my metaphor last week of "birthing classes and funeral rehearsals" that only go so far on video lessons and recorded experiences. We need to get back to together, I do not dispute it.

Yet to bar even the option, for fear people will use it . . . I think of how Christians went a millennium and a half without personal Bibles. No one had personal, private copies of Scripture. They were hand made, cost the moon, and if you had one in church it was chained to the preaching desk. You learned God's Word in preaching, art, through the liturgy.

Then that meddler Gutenberg came along, and next thing you know paperback copies of the Bible are handed out for free by the Gideons, and now we all have access, but do we have better knowledge?

Allow me to troll a bit. I think all Bibles should be turned in, and we can only hear and learn from Scripture by going to church, then we'll get back the community and commitment of the medieval period. What do you think?

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's been called a troll once or twice. Tell him how you've learned not to feed the trolls at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.