By Jay Y. Kim, Lead Pastor • WestGate Church
(via Lifeway Research) Neil Postman drove a Honda Accord. He was fond of telling an anecdotal story about the day he purchased the car. The salesman pitched him on the necessity of cruise control. Postman asked, “What is the problem to which cruise control is the answer?” The salesman replied, “It is the problem of keeping your foot on the gas.” Postman responded that in several decades of driving, keeping his foot on the gas had never been a problem. He purchased the Honda Accord anyway because, “as it turns out, you cannot get a Honda Accord without cruise control.”
In a lecture given several years after the publication of his Amusing Ourselves to Death, Postman proposed a list of questions we must ask of any technology. The question he asked the car salesman and a follow-up question both stand out as particularly important for church leaders seeking a more faithful ecclesiology in the digital age.
• What is the problem that this new technology solves?
• What new problems do we create by solving this problem?
Cruise control on a car is fairly benign. Postman’s anecdotal story is, on the one hand, funny because cruise control on a car isn’t of any serious consequence. But when the same questions are applied to ecclesiological conversations about “digital ministry,” “online church” or other disembodied substitutes for the gathered people of God, the implications become significantly weightier.
• What is the problem that digital ministry and online church solve?
• What new problems do we create by solving this problem?
Entertainment vs. Transformation
“When news is packaged as entertainment,” Postman wrote, we lose “our sense of what it means to be well informed.” In much the same way, when “church” is packaged as “content,” which it invariably is online, we lose our sense of what it means to be transformed.
To be a Christian is to be on a lifelong journey of transformation into Christlikeness alongside a community of others pursuing the same. It’s not so much that digital ministry and online church are bad; it’s that they are inadequate and incomplete. Watching can inform us about and sometimes inspire us toward God’s people. But only embodied participation can transform us into God’s people.
When pastors and church leaders give inordinate energy toward online engagement, unintentionally conceding our ecclesiology to the comfort and convenience of digital platforms, we reshape congregations into audiences. Teaching gives way to entertainment. Communion gives way to commercialization.
The way forward, then, may be to look for guidance in the earliest days of the Jesus movement. Without romanticizing the early church, as many are prone to do today, what we see there is nothing less than an inconveniently high commitment to one another: “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers” (Acts 2:42 ESV).
At the start, the congregating people of God devoted themselves to teaching and collective communion, the breaking of bread. This is what constituted the church. In the digital age, our devotions still run deep, but in vastly different directions. Pastors are now tasked with the difficult but vital work of inviting those we serve to reorient their understanding about and rehabituate their desires for the local church.
Day by Day
Left unchecked, digital ministry and online church are forming us into audiences yearning to be entertained by consumer-friendly content. Our pastoral task is to invite people to once again be formed into congregations yearning for teaching and communion with God and His people.
This is when the truly spectacular is most possible: “Awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. And all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need” (Acts 2:43-45).
The first Christians experienced awe and encountered wonders and signs, but it all took place within the context of a people who “were together and had all things in common,” sacrificing to provide for one another’s needs. It was the miraculous in the middle of the mundane.
The rest of Acts makes clear that the early church had its fair share of issues, tensions and complexities. And yet, the movement took hold.
Maybe one of the reasons why is that despite the challenges, they pushed through the inconvenience and gave themselves to the high-commitment calling of showing up, over and over again: “And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved” (Acts 2:46-47).
The Gift of Presence
Day by day. I wonder sometimes if these men and women kept showing up every day to be together because their implausible origin story as a community began that way — all of them gathered in one place: “When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place. And suddenly there came from heaven a sound…” (Acts 2:1-2). We know how the rest of the story goes. The church is born, and history is changed.
Proponents of digital ministry and online church are fond of arguing that if Jesus or Paul had had the internet, they would’ve been all in and maximized the technology to take the gospel far and wide. Maybe they’re right. But I’m certain the Pentecost story could not and would not have transpired quite like this over Zoom.
Everyone is together in one place. God shows up. And an unlikely group of people are knit together as one. Amid linguistic diversity, the people hear the same gospel words. This is the reversal of Babel. Where once division reigned, Pentecost unites disparate individuals into a family.
This story echoes through all generations, even one as digital and divided as ours. This is why it matters so much, especially now, that we continue gathering together, offering one another the gift of our presence.
— This article was originally published at research.lifeway.com/2025/07/22/why-is-the-physical-gathering-of-the-church-important-in-a-digital-age.
