For the foreseeable future, we are providing chapel services to the people of Grace Fellowship Church. They are simple and, in their own way, rather unsatisfying. Yet they seem to be what the Lord has for us at this time and in this circumstance. At least, they are the solution we have arrived at for the time being. Even as we enjoy them for what they are, we are longing for the day when we can once again gather together in true fellowship to once again enjoy a true worship service.

Like so many other churches across the world, mine had to make a sudden and unexpected decision in the face of a pending lockdown: Do we broadcast our services or do we not? Under normal circumstances we would never even entertain the notion, but with a looming period of isolation that would last no less than weeks and that could well stretch into months, we were suddenly presented with the dilemma. We decided to “sort of” broadcast our services. Let me tell you what we settled on and why.

A Matter of Ecclesiology

Grace Fellowship Church has always attempted to give a lot of attention to ecclesiology—the theology of church—and to carefully put that theology into practice. It is for ecclesiological reasons that we would not typically broadcast a service since we believe that assembling as a church requires physically assembling. Under normal circumstances, our concern with broadcasting a service is that it would allow people to think they are genuinely participating in church when they are actually only observing it. Those who only watch church from afar simply cannot be full participants. (We best see the physical necessity of assembling in the sacraments—while you may be able to listen to a sermon and sing along to hymns through the magic of cameras and screens, you cannot be baptized and cannot participate in the Lord’s Supper. There’s a physical component to Christian worship!) So we have displayed our convictions about ecclesiology by offering only “real” services rather than virtual ones.

But then came lockdown and now we had to face the question of broadcasting services in the new and unique context in which we could not physically assemble. Previously, those who advocated streaming our services typically did so for reasons of preference—they had the ability to physically assemble but preferred to watch at home instead. But now it was a matter of necessity—it was broadcast or nothing. The elders met and determined we would go online with a basic but still genuine worship service.

Going Online

For the first two weeks, at least two of our elders and a few other church members were able to meet at the church offices on Saturday afternoon to record a service. Keeping it basic and using a one-take format, they had a short worship service together and recorded it. In this way they were essentially a miniature of our church. They were representatives of the whole. When we watched it in our homes on Sunday morning, we were watching something that felt familiar and that had a ring of authenticity to it. These were our people worshipping together and it wasn’t too great of a stretch for the rest of us to join in.

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