{"id":6201,"date":"2009-10-24T13:19:43","date_gmt":"2009-10-24T18:19:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/community\/jesuscreed\/2009\/10\/24\/is-virtual-church-real-church\/"},"modified":"2009-10-24T13:19:43","modified_gmt":"2009-10-24T18:19:43","slug":"is-virtual-church-real-church","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2009\/10\/24\/is-virtual-church-real-church\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Virtual Church “Real” Church?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>
Question: What makes a gathering \u201cchurch\u201d? What are the elements that turn a gathering into a church meeting? Is it \u201cchurch\u201d when I have coffee with two Christian students? Is a Bible study \u201cchurch\u201d?<\/b><\/div>\n

<\/b><\/div>\n

There was quite the dustup at Christianity Today\u2019s Out of Ur blog<\/a> this week over Douglas Estes\u2019 article on virtual churches, and this article emerges out of his new book: SimChurch: Being the Church in the Virtual World<\/a>\"\"
\n<\/strong><\/em>. I include his concluding paragraph, but I\u2019ve got these two questions first:<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n
Do you think \u201cvirtual\u201d church is \u201creal\u201d church? Or, what makes connections, gatherings, etc into \u201creal\u201d church?<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n

The good news for the world today is that virtual churches, Baptist churches, banana-tree churches, underground churches, Lutheran churches, communal churches, house churches, and yes, even tragically-hip Pacific Northwest alternative \u2018pub\u2019 churches are real churches. You may not want to meet in synthetic space\u2013and I would not want to meet in a bar\u2013but it doesn\u2019t change the fact that when the people of God meet together for the purpose of glorifying Him, it\u2019s a real church. Online churches are real churches with real people in real relationships with a real God simply meeting in synthetic spaces.<\/i><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Question: What makes a gathering \u201cchurch\u201d? What are the elements that turn a gathering into a church meeting? Is it \u201cchurch\u201d when I have coffee with two Christian students? Is a Bible study \u201cchurch\u201d? There was quite the dustup at Christianity Today\u2019s Out of Ur blog this week over Douglas Estes\u2019 article on virtual churches, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":197,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[484],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-church"],"yoast_head":"\nIs Virtual Church "Real" Church?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Question: What makes a gathering "church"? What are the elements that turn a gathering into a church meeting? 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