The Very Rev Albert Bogle urges churches to look outside their walls and engage with those who have found the Church through technology.

MOVING into the third decade of the 21st century I believe it’s time to look forward in faith.

Despite all the trials of last year (and they were many) and the challenges just up ahead of us, we can still take heart - all is not lost. There is more for us than we might ever imagine. The words of Jesus in John’s Gospel are surely a call to action and expectation.

“Lift up your eyes and look on the fields they’re white ready to harvest”. (John 4:35)

It has been my experience during the past few months to witness the growing interest in Christianity. Recent research by different agencies has highlighted that over 25% of the UK population looked into an online church service at some point during 2020. Our challenge will be keeping this audience interested. I’ve come to believe that the internet is God’s harvest field for our generation.

Could it be the Holy Spirit is using technology to connect with thousands of people who no longer feel comfortable being part of the inherited methodology of church attendance and membership? By this I mean the programming and organisational structuring of church as we know it today. It seems to me God is working through this technology engaging with new people who he is opening up to himself as they move around the world wide web engaging with hybrid offshoots of church. This engagement goes far beyond what we might understand as acceptable traditional worship formats.

Here’s a question to reflect upon. Could worship be being explored by those who are on a worship journey they don’t even know they have taken? Through art, poetry and music, science, maths, philosophy, politics, ecology and many more disciplines, the Holy Spirit is deepening the spiritual lives of the many who have voluntarily left the inherited models of church but who still are in pursuit of justice, mercy, compassion and love. God has always been at work in his world. Jesus reminds us: “God so loved the world.” The risen Christ speaking to the church at Philadelphia says: “Behold I set before you an open door which no one can close.” The internet is surely a modern day open door into the world. It is surely into this world that the Holy Spirit is now drawing the church into in order to reap the harvest. It is a place where we will meet very different people. Remember Jesus speaks in John’s gospel of “the other sheep who are not of this fold.”

Congregations who take seriously the importance of a hybrid ecclesiology and missiology engaging with technology will find themselves exploring a new understanding of what it means to be fully connected with a growing body of people outwith their in-person services; people who are in search of a new reality - many of whom are unaware that it is Christ for whom they are searching.

I mean such congregations will understand the significance of engaging with and resourcing in-person and online worship but they will also at some point come to realise that the internet is helping them reconnect with an ecclesiology that goes beyond the local church, taking them into a conversation with the whole church past, present and future, exploring the significance of what it means to be part of the church triumphant - the church universal. The church of today and tomorrow growing outside our walls.

“The discovery of technology integrating with theology to enhance our spiritual understanding of presence needs to be celebrated.

The discovery of technology integrating with theology to enhance our spiritual understanding of presence needs to be celebrated, rather than dismissed. It is an exciting prospect to continue to reflect upon the ways which God reveals more of his being to humanity in Christ. Surely the reason why we still live and move and have our being in him, is that he has more to reveal to us about who we are in him.

The internet during this strange time has for many rekindled the understanding that the church is not local but the Church is universal catholic and apostolic. We are the people of God, the communion of the saints throughout time and what has still to be and into eternity. Its time to go out into the internet and reap the harvest.