I’ve mentioned a few times, that just as there’s a public inquiry seeking to learn lessons from the COVID pandemic, so too, there would be benefit for something similar for churches to help learn lessons from that time too. So, I’m pleased that Affinity are going to attempt something, of course this will not be as extensive or expansive as the Government’s inquiry, for obvious reasons but I hope it will provoke further conversation.
One of the risks with inquiries is that they become blame games and I must admit there are things I’m nervous about when it comes to a conversation among Christians. There were aspects about the way different Christians and churches approached the crisis that were controversial and at times, this didn’t lead to healthy conversation. I hope that we won’t repeat the tone of some of those arguments as we look back and look forward.
I get a little twitchy when people talk about “theological lessons” to learn. It is my personal opinion that at times, we all tended to make arguments which we no doubt believed in good faith came from theological principles but were as much shaped by our philosophical and political views. What we saw, I believe, was a weaponising of theology. The problem was, that is often the case, we ended up talking past each other and misunderstanding one another.
One specific example we saw during the pandemic, which will no doubt come up in our discussions was to do with “embodied worship.” During lockdowns, many churches made use of Zoom, Facebook and YouTube to enable people to at least listen to a sermon and join in with sung worship. Zoom and the interactive, chat functions on YouTube and Facebook even allowed for a level of participation in prayer and discussion. Some churches included communion as part of this. Many Christians accepted this as being a form of church service or gathered, corporate worship.
Others disagreed strongly. Their view was that God’s Word commands us to draw near to together and that this means specifically “embodied” gathering. Therefore, those online Zoom and Facebook events did not count as gathered worship. For some, this meant that they could not include communion as part of those events. Some considered it acceptable to cease gathering for a period of time, this was a permitted exception to God’s commands. Others believed that it was so important to gather in person that if necessary, we should defy the civil authorities on this and open our buildings for worship.
Now, I’m not going to re-hearse all the arguments again except to say that I came down on the side which believed that we should comply fully with the letter and spirit of COVID rules, including closing our buildings. I also believed that it was possible, advisable even to share communion when we met together using Zoom.[1]
Now, the assumption from some seems to be that if you were okay with Zoom services and were happy to share communion during such online events that this was because you did not think that embodied worship mattered. That’s the misunderstanding that I want to clear up. I don’t think that the debate was over whether or embodied worship mattered.
Generally speaking, there was unity amongst conservative evangelicals on this matter. We all thought that it was important to get together to worship, to hear God’s Word proclaimed, to be taught and to use our gifts to edify one another. Now, many Christians and churches recognised that this wouldn’t be possible during COVID but this didn’t mean they thought it unimportant. They saw it as a loss, something to grieve.
Furthermore, I think there was general agreement that getting together, in person was preferable and we were keen to return to that as soon as possible. We didn’t consider our Zoom or Facebook provision as ideal. However, this does not mean that we believed that embodied worship didn’t matter. First, because I think the question was more about what you do when the ideal is not possible. Is it all or nothing.
Secondly and crucially because the dispute wasn’t really over what Jesus had or hadn’t commanded us to do. It’s about what counted towards that. My issue was not about whether or not our worship should be “embodied.” Of course we were meant to draw near, or course we were meant to be able to see and hear one another. However, it seemed to me that people had come up with some form of definition of what it meant to be “embodied” and started ruling things in or out of that based on their own arbitrary thinking rather than what Scripture says. I think they also badly misunderstood what we mean when we talk about virtual reality.
As far as I could tell, the experience of gathering on Zoom whilst less than ideal wasn’t disembodied. Certainly, I did not become disembodied and I didn’t hear disembodied voices. I was able to visually see and audibly hear my brothers and sisters. I ate real bread and really drank grape juice. Of course I wasn’t able to hug the others in the gathering, there was some loss of physicality, though ironically it seemed that those most concerned for “embodied worship” tended to be from the least physically expressive constituencies of evangelicalism!
So, it wasn’t that we didn’t care about embodied worship. We did care and so we wanted to do this to the best of our abilities, recognising our limitations. To this date, I’ve not heard a clear, reasoned, Biblical argument for why we weren’t doing so.* I suspect, it is because there isn’t one. That’s why we need to be careful about confusing our own preferences and feelings with theological principles.
[1] Though I was less happy with this happening via Facebook or YouTube.
* I was asked to clarify this. I’ve heard arguments for why we should gather in person as a church noting that coming together and drawing near themes. However when people began to make “embodied/ not embodied distinctions they were making philosophical distinctions rather than drawing in Scripture. And of course this is not unexpected. Scripture’s job isn’t to define our modern terms for us. It just means we should be careful about being dogmatic or implying something is sub- or unbiblical when the disagreement is really philosophical
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