This is my cd drive broken for you?
Print ViewI can’t tell you why I stopped writing in the blog. I just did. Oh well. An article in the IowaUnited Methodist Reporter got me going again.
I ran across this article about on line communion. Andrew Thompson writes that “ Lisa Millerdescribed a number of different churchesand pastors who are providing Web-based Eucharistic services in a Nov. 3Newsweek article.“ I had been aware of one online location where a United Methodist pastorprinted the Great Thanksgiving, provided pictures and video of himself prayingit and encouraged people to get bread and grape juice and join him.
Thompson does an excellent job arguing why web basedcommunion is a bad idea.
“The “celebrant” is just a disembodied voice playing through your computer. And all the rubrics of the Word and Table service are ignored: There is no actual elder laying hands on the bread and cup, no congregation present and no liturgy enacted in the context of the church’s worship of God.”
“such radical individualism, it destroys the community that God intends for it to be.”
“The church should have little sympathy for people who aren’t willing to make the time to physically attend and participate in the Holy Communion service.”
This whole idea is a symptom of an over-individualized faith.
· Several times lately I have had the “I can be a Christian without ever stepping into a church” discussion.
· I recently was asked, “If I have a relationship with Jesus, why should I read the Bible?”
· Pastoral ministry is sometimes aptly described as “herding cats.”
These are all manifestations of a faith that places the individual before the community.
Though we live in a nation that places great value on individualism, pulling yourself up by you bootstraps; we can’t pull ourselves up out of sin.
Though we go into our closet to pray, we come into the presence in community.
Jesus never dreamed that there would be lone ranger Christians. He never dreamed that we would try to live our faith on a desert island. He could never imagine that grace could be reduced to bytes and megahertz.
