Beloved,
Technology is not neutral.
Carl Trueman writes in his The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, “Technology affects in profound ways how we think about the world and imagine our place in it” (41). Trueman is, of course, speaking of the role of modern technology in paving the way for the sexual revolution as humans became unwittingly persuaded of their power to manipulate reality to conform to their own subjective desires. But for our purposes, I want to turn his insight in a slightly different direction.
Technology affects in profound ways how we think about the church and imagine our place in it.
This statement was true prior to the pandemic, though I presume most Christians would have scratched their heads at it. But in our post-Covid-19 world, its truth is all too obvious. Why? Because of the widespread embrace of live-streaming technologies to transmit the happenings of public worship into the privacy and safety of individual homes. There is no precedent in the history of God’s people for the shift that took place overnight as public worship became something you could experience (at least, in theory) without actually assembling in public.
As Reformed Christians, we prize the regulative principle of worship. Simply put, the regulative principle asserts that the Lord whom we worship is the Lord of His worship. He is the one who prescribes the elements by which we are to affectionately exalt Him, and we dare not add to or subtract from them (unless we want to end up like Nadab and Abihu, Lev. 10:1-3). The regulative principle is summarized in Deuteronomy 12:32: “Everything that I command you, you shall be careful to do. You shall not add to it or take from it.” But actually the entire chapter is about God’s will for His worship as Moses expounds and applies the second commandment. We tend to focus more narrowly on the elements of worship when we talk about the regulative principle (i.e., preaching, praying, singing, etc.), but one of the striking things about Moses’s exposition is the emphasis he gives to the place of worship.
- V. 5: “But you shall seek the place that the LORD your God will choose out of all your tribes to put his name and make his habitation there. There you shall go…”
- Vv. 10-11: “But when you go over the Jordan and live int the land that the LORD your God is giving you to inherit, and when he gives you rest from all your enemies around, so that you live in. safety, then to the place that the LORD your God will choose, to make his name dwell there, there you shall bring all that I command you…”
- Vv. 13-14: “Take care that you do not offer your burnt offerings at any place that you see, but at the place that the LORD will choose in one of your tribes…”
God is not merely concerned about how He is worshiped; He is equally concerned about where He is worshiped. While the entire land of Canaan was a garden-temple wherein God communed with His people, there was a particular place among the tribes that God’s theophonic presence dwelt and where the formal worship of God was to be carried out. It was the place of God’s choosing. At this point it was the tabernacle, and it would later become the temple. God is warning Israel not to bring their sacrifices to any old altar. Why? Because His worship is to be carried out solely on His chosen altar in His chosen place. The temptation post-conquest would be to erect a family altar so as not to have to make the long trek to Jerusalem (God addresses this in vv. 20-27). The temptation would be to neglect God’s place of worship out of convenience (sound familiar?). But to fail to assemble at the appointed times with the appointed sacrifices at the appointed place was to fundamentally disobey God.
While it is wonderfully true that God’s worship is no longer confined to one geographical place under the new covenant (Jn. 4:20-24), that does not mean God has ceased to have a special habitation in which He has chosen to put His name and in which He has willed for His worship to be carried out. The church, locally and universally, is God’s tabernacle-temple (Eph. 2:19-22). As the Puritan pastor, Richard Sibbes wrote, “Particular visible churches under visible pastors now are God’s tabernacle.” According to 1 Peter 2:4-5, Christians are both the living stones that comprise the temple and the living priests worshiping within the temple. While there is a sense in which all of life is to be worship, it is particularly when we assemble together as a temple priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices that God’s will for His worship is realized.
No less under the new covenant than under the old, public worship necessitates embodied assembling. Assembling is actually at the heart of what it means to be the church under both administrations of the covenant of grace. Under the old covenant, the Hebrew qahal was used to refer to God’s gathered people, often translated assembly. Do you know what the new covenant equivalent is? The Greek ekklesia. Though typically translated church, it could also be translated assembly or congregation. It refers to a body of people called out from the word and assembled to serve God. Assembling is essential to the life of the church in every era of covenant history! We must physically go to the place where God has ordained for His public ordinances to be carried out and where He is especially pleased to manifest His glory.
While there are certainly benefits to live-streaming worship (i.e., enabling shut-ins and the sick to be ministered to and reaching the un-churched and lost with the gospel), your session is not convinced that those benefits outweigh the negative way this technology affects how we think about the church, her worship, and our place in it. Simply put, public worship cannot be live-streamed. You cannot participate in public worship from the privacy of your home. That is an allusion. At best, when someone livestreams a service, they are engaging in private or family worship. Private and family worship are certainly good things, and modern technology can be used to support such which is why we intend to continue posting Sunday’s sermons to our website after the fact. But our chief concern in continuing to live-stream public worship services is that it unwittingly shapes people to think that public worship can be experienced without the embodied assembling of God’s people in local churches. We believe given the biblical data that such a concept is impossible. For this reason, your session has chosen to discontinue live-streaming our Sunday services.
In taking such a stance, we are not imputing guilt to sister churches who continue to use this technology. This is a wisdom issue, and one in which faithful churches can genuinely differ. But we would encourage all to consider these matters carefully and prayerfully before God’s word. For whether we like it or not, technology affects in profound ways how we think about the church and imagine our place in it.
Yours in Christ,
Pastor Nick