Attending Fellowship from VA
I’m on vacation. Carie and I travelled to Virginia for a week, and we’re having a great time embarking on adventure, Chick Fil-A, and lots of book reading.
Yesterday was Sunday. Always an awkward day in the life of a vacationing “non-denominational” pastor. Typically I do my research, find a place I’d really like to attend, and go there. I did that this time too, the only problem: the only church I really wanted to go was one hour and ten minutes away. So instead of attending a church in person, I decided to take advantage of a ministry we have at the FC called the Web Campus, and go to church online. We started it last winter as a means to get through the horrific Sunday weather we had (ice storms, Nor’easters, etc…) and have been improving it over the last year. This was my first opportunity to see it live on a Sunday. (Typically I’m busy)
I arrived at church at 10:29 am on Sunday morning armed with my Macbook pro (13″), a pair of headphones, and a bottle of water. The 5 minute countdown was playing and “FCHoldenBilly” was there to warmly greet me to the chat forum/internet video service. 7 others joined me for the occasion, said a small box in the video section. In about a minute and a half, the countdown turned to the FC band going all soft on me with the worship song “All who are thirsty.” I happened to be in a room full of people walking all over the place as I watched, and I didn’t think they wanted to hear me sing anyway (I left my hat back at the room). I started chatting with the others in the cyber room. At this point 11 were attending church.
We talked about the band, the internet, where each of us were. In truth, it wasn’t a lot different than my live conversations before a service in Holden. The people were nice, and they were certainly expectant. Eventually, the executive pastor of Fellowship, Steve Blumer came on stage and welcomed the audience. I’m not sure if he welcomed the internet audience, though I can always look back at the video and see, but he told of the things that are to come at the FC. I took this opportunity to venture into another website I am privy to, to see what the order of service would be, while I listened to Steve wax eloquently about all things ladies retreat and future sermon series. This was one of the two times the video froze on my laptop. Both times I was viewing other pages, much like reading your bulletin while the minister is preaching, right?
The band came back on, still sounding great with some worship tunes, then closing up the setlist with one of my favorites, “We shine”. I almost stood up at this song and sang along, but security being called on me didn’t sound so great, so I just hummed and mentioned to my fellow viewers (13 by this time) that this was indeed one of my favorites. None of them agreed. Huh.
Currently we’re going through a series in our church called “Why we love this place” and we’re focusing on our 7 core values. After the last song, Steve came back up and introduced both the next video we had, and the speaker for the day. The core value was relational evangelism, so it was appropriate to have with us two missionaries filling in the gaps for me this morning. One I won’t mention because of the nature of his ministry, and the speaker was Walt Mutti, former missionary to Venezuela and current missionary to new England – to which I mentioned to the people in the chat room – we need it.
Both missionaries did a fabulous job, and Walt provided a lot of conversation in the chat room regarding sin, the need for Christ, and how to deal with stuff going on in our lives. To be honest, it was one of the most wonderful services I’ve been to (that I didn’t have a heavy participation in) in a long time. The spirit was amazing, and I told my wife afterwards, it really felt like I had been to church. I mean, I started it. I advertise for it all the time, but who knew.
Two shout outs I need to give up: Billy, who is our Web Campus director. He has worked hard to develop this ministry, and from what I’ve been told, it hasn’t always been this smooth, but his hard work has paid off. And Al, who led the music during the service. It was fabulous!
What about you? Would you attend an internet service?
