A Church Online: An Interview with Bruce Reyes-Chow

 

So I'm assuming that since this is a church plant of sorts, you've gotten the blessing of the denomination?

(Laughter) No! We've gotten the blessing of no one! I did check in with all the people I thought it was important to check in with, but not to get permission. If we wanted to have affiliation and a call implication right off, we'd go to a local body and say we're starting a fellowship and we want you to recognize the call of Bruce and others on the leadership team. We're not doing that. We're not going to seek denominational blessing until we're really sure this is going to go. We still have to look at funding models. This will be tent-making for everyone at this point.

 

Who is your target congregant? Who is this church for?

We're targeting folks who are probably pretty progressive theologically or politically, have some kind of yearning for faith in their life, could be isolated by geography or circumstance, and folks who are dabbling in church and Christianity. We want to be an expression that expands what's out there, not just a liberal or progressive voice, but one that's founded in our understanding of who Jesus Christ is.

We're creating a space where people can really just be church together. A place where people can pray together, serve together, give of their time and resources together, and make change in the world. Just like any church wants to be. We're trying to reach the kind of folks that everybody's trying to reach, and I feel like we have a unique time and space right now to do this.

 

Will there be any physical, non-virtual gatherings of this community?

We're toying with a meet-up model, so that as people become members, we have a map where you can begin to see clusters of where people are. I think that's going to be our answer to some of the sacraments; we'll do some creative stuff around people actually getting together. I'd also love to, once a year, find a seminary or retreat center that hosts us [so we can] have our congregational meeting face to face. We'd webcast it of course, too, but a meeting face to face where a good number of us get together in one space.

 

So practically, where do you "go" for this church, and what will weekly worship look like?

We'll have one online hub. So we'll both be somewhere where people can come to, but also have a presence where people are, such as on Facebook and Twitter.

Regarding weekly worship, there is a whole worship team that will be thinking about all of these things. One idea is for everyone to get in front of the computer screen on Sunday at the same time and participate all together—a physical place where something is happening and we're webcasting. I'm not sure we're going to go with that model. We're probably going to go with something along the lines of something gets posted on Sunday, like a video sermon, and that flavors the week's interactions and reflection. We will have those set times of gatherings online, but worship probably not.

 

Is there a model for this, or do you feel like you are breaking new ground?

I'm under no delusions that I'm breaking new ground. A lot of people have been doing this a long time and thinking about this for a long time. I think there is some benefit of just jumping in, though, and not trying to replicate what else is out there. We will be talking with other groups that have been doing this eventually, but I wanted to get a sense of who we wanted to be before we began talking with other groups who have a clear understanding of who they are.

What's really new about this manifestation is that we're taking seriously a denominational presence that is taking seriously online community. I think that's new for Presbyterians. Most of the other online expressions are fairly independent, and we're saying, no, a denomination can actually do this.

 

What are your biggest hopes and fears?

I hope that we're right? (Laughter) I do hope that we don't get to the end of the day and see that significant or real online community is a bankrupt concept or a hollow way of being community.

My greatest hopes would be that more churches figure out a way to do this, that we discover this is real, and just as there are many manifestations of geographically bounded churches, there are many manifestations of churches that meet online.

And if we could help church plant in a few years, that would be great. I could certainly see, for instance, a meet-up that is in some medium-sized town in the Midwest that found all these progressive Presbyterians that they didn't know existed, get together and hang out and say, you know what? We think we want to actually form a congregation here! How awesome would it be for an online church to birth a geographic congregation?