On March 8, 2020, I was installed as senior pastor of Westminster Presbyterian Church in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Two weeks later, I preached my first sermon as senior pastor to an empty sanctuary.
Our church had no livestream technology. But just for fun, a couple of tech-interested members had experimented with using a security camera in the sanctuary to run a live feed of our service. In March 2020, I found myself preaching to a security camera.
Thankfully, it wasn’t long before people returned to the pews, COVID-19 faded into a bad memory, and worship returned to normal. With one exception: livestreaming stayed, enhanced by nicer cameras and a better streaming platform.
What began as a temporary necessity has become an expected staple of the church’s ministry. As people began returning to worship, committees and the session debated whether livestreaming should continue. If so, for how long, and for what purpose?
Those were difficult questions to weigh at the time, in an unprecedented situation. But now, with five years of experience, what evaluation can we offer about the place of livestreaming in the church’s ministry?
Two biblical principles should guide our evaluation of livestreaming.
First, does it further the mission of the church? The “Book of Church Order” reminds us that the mission of the church is the gathering and perfecting of the saints. The question we should consider, then, is whether livestreaming helps or hinders the church’s effectiveness in proclaiming the gospel and teaching the Word of God in ways that bring sinners to repentance and faith and sanctify the people of God.
Second, the church does not accomplish its mission by sending truth out into the virtual world, but by gathering the saints into fellowship with each other. The church, the ecclesia, is by definition the assembly of God’s people.
Hebrews charges us to “consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near” (Hebrews 10:24-25). The scores of “one another” exhortations in the New Testament assume connection, relationship, and fellowship among God’s people.
The question to ask is whether livestreaming aids the mission of the church in a way that enhances our fellowship with the saints.
Three Benefits of Livestreaming
Livestreaming has advanced the church’s mission consistent with these biblical principles in three ways.
First, livestreaming has enabled our homebound members to feel significantly more connected to the church. Prior to livestreaming, our office would mail weekly bulletins to homebound members so they could review the service for that week. Most sermons were also available on a local radio station, with about a six-week delay. But livestreaming has enabled our homebound members to feel part of the service and the congregation in a way they could not before.
Just last week, a woman who had a stroke two years ago told me that our livestream has been a significant blessing. It makes her feel connected to the church and enables her to receive the preaching of God’s word in a way that was not possible before.
Second, livestreaming provides continuity to those who miss a Sunday. When we have sick children at home, my wife can livestream the service with them, enabling us to still discuss the service as a family. Traveling families can also tune into our service and worship as a family while remaining connected to their church family.
Livestreaming provides a similar benefit to those moving into town. Many of us know the unsettled limbo of not having a church home when we move to a new town. Westminster has a number of families who watched our livestream in preparation for their move, arriving in town already knowing where they intended to go to church. By getting a sneak preview of the church through livestreaming, it helped them settle into church and build relationships in the body of Christ more quickly than they would without the livestream.
Third, the reality is that YouTube is a go-to source for many who are exploring what Christianity is or what the church teaches. Our church has several families who are now involved members after becoming Christians or returning to their faith in recent years. For most of them, online sermons and services were the instrument the Holy Spirit used to bring them to repentance and faith. Even if they first encountered an online service other than ours, we know that virtual opportunities to experience worship ultimately led them through our physical doors.
Clearly, the availability of services and sermons online has proven to gather saints, not only in bringing them to Christ, but in uniting them in spiritual and physical fellowship with the saints in the church as well.
These benefits have been significant blessings for the church. But before we consider the issue settled, we need to consider three liabilities we have also seen with livestreaming.
Three Liabilities of Livestreaming
First, the convenience of livestreaming has also made it easier for some who could be with us in person to worship from home. I vividly remember a member of our church telling me, “You can call me, but I’m not coming back anytime soon. Church is just way more comfortable with my coffee on my couch.” For every one willing to say that out loud, there are a dozen more thinking it.
At Westminster, we have tried to push back against this instinct in two ways. We have resisted making our livestream an overly professional, artistic, or immersive experience. We want it to be simple and effective so that the word of God is clear, but not easier or more attractive to view from home. More importantly, we have consistently communicated to our members that unless they have a clear restriction keeping them from worship, we do not consider livestreaming to be a substitute for gathering as God’s people in worship.
In fact, membership loses its meaning if there is not active fellowship, accountability, or shepherding that starts with gathering in person to worship the Lord and to care for one another as brothers and sisters in Christ.
Second, I suspect that most of our members livestream Westminster’s service when traveling. While this has benefits in some cases, in others, members are missing out on an opportunity to experience the wider body of Christ. Joining a body of believers from another city has consistently exposed my family to the diversity of the body of Christ as well as the bond we have in one faith, united by one Spirit, in one Lord Jesus Christ. Our view of the kingdom of God expands when we visit another church to worship with a different body of fellow believers instead of YouTube.
Third, a screen presents a mirage of connection. It makes you feel more connected than you are, and that is true in both directions. Members feel more connected to the body, and they may be less likely to reach out to the church or sense their disconnection from the body, because of livestreaming. But elders and pastors may also be lulled into thinking that livestreaming is keeping our members connected, and that very assumption may lead to less personal presence.
We may not feel the isolation of our members as acutely, or we may reach out less proactively in visitation and face-to-face ministry, because of livestreaming. Is it easier, less time consuming, more efficient? Yes. Faithful to the “one-anothering” Christ calls his church to? Not always.
These liabilities, then, need to be weighed against the positives. As I step back to survey the results, I’m compelled to ask myself: is livestreaming making us better at gathering and perfecting the saints, and is it doing so by increasing our relational connection, intimacy, and fellowship as the people of God? I believe the answer is yes.
The blessing that livestreaming is to our homebound, the sick, and those searching for truth outweighs the liabilities. But it does so only if we are consciously aware of those liabilities and do what we can as elders in the church to make sure it is just a piece of our ministry to God’s people. Livestreaming is helpful only when it is a small part of the way that we bring God’s sheep together to minister to each other and grow in the Lord.
Chris Walker serves as senior pastor of Westminister Presbyterian Church in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.