| Beloved, Addressing a similar theme from last week’s email, I thought I would share an excerpt from the final chapter of Sacred Streaming? that I wrote this past week. Be aware these words are a part of a much larger argument developed in the chapter (and in the entire book), but this more narrow point is worth our reflection on its own terms. If you think to, please pray for wisdom as I seek to wrap up the conclusion to the book and pursue publication. Here is the excerpt: Few texts call us to earnest and exclusive devotion like the Shema: “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might” (Deut. 6:4–5). Our singular God calls us to love him with everything that is within us by keeping His words in our hearts (v. 6). But this is no individualistic endeavor, for God desires such all-consuming devotion to be passed on from generation to generation: “You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise” (v. 7). The present generation of believers is responsible to do everything in their power to propagate the worship of God “to a thousand generations” (Deut. 7:9). This was the goal of God’s original commission to Adam (Gen. 1:28), and it continues to be so in the church today (Eph. 6:4). “The evangelization and nurture of the church’s children,” writes Joel Beeke, “is the greatest and most fruitful means of church growth there ever was.” One of my chief concerns regarding the proliferation of livestream in the church is how it will affect future generations. Wisdom would have us consider the ramifications of our present choices for those who will come after us. Thanks to an ever-growing body of secular research, it’s actually not hard to discern how the church’s adoption of livestreaming technology might affect its young people. Jonathan Haidt describes Gen Z (those born after 1995) as “drifting through multiple disembodied networks” thanks to the glowing rectangular boxes in their pockets. Jean Twenge chronicles how this has resulted in the rapid decline of in-person interaction among the generation she aptly labels iGen. Twenge summarizes the data, “Time spent with friends in person has been replaced by time spent with friends (and virtual friends) online.” The past 15 years has been an experiment to see what would happen to kids who grew up with unfettered access to the internet and the ability to connect with anyone at any time in any place through social media and online gaming. It has proven to be disastrous, leading to an unprecedented spike in anxiety, depression, self-harm, and suicide. All of this ought to be deeply troubling to us, but one conclusion drawn by Haidt about Gen Z is particularly haunting: “They are less able than any generation in history to put down roots in real-world communities populated by known individuals who will still be there a year later.” To the degree this is true, it equals the death of the church. For what is the church if it is not a deeply-rooted community of real people intimately known by God and one another? You don’t have to look hard to find manifestations of professing Christians among Gen Z exchanging real church for digital counterfeits. For example, Roblox, a popular gaming platform, has given rise to “The Robloxian Christians” who describe themselves as “a youth-led online church….that defies geographical and demographic borders faced by other physical churches.” Founded by an eleven-year-old boy, this “church” enables you to design an avatar through which you virtually attend services and fellowship with other avatars. What might seem bizarre to a Millennial like me is deemed normal by the average Gen Z-er shaped to view church as one of many “disembodied networks” they drift through in a given week in exchange for “real-world communities.” You might tune into your church’s YouTube channel only when sickness prevents your family from gathering in-person, seeing virtual church as a less-than-ideal but better-than-nothing alternative. But how might your use of livestream be shaping your kids who are a part of a generation that is on the verge of forsaking in-person everything? If in-person is optional, Gen Z-ers will almost certainly opt out. As a father, I sense the need to take extreme measures to communicate clearly to my sons that there is no replacement for the flesh-and-blood assembly of embodied saints. That means livestreaming a worship service is simply not an option in the Thompson house. Period. As for me and my house, we will get off our rears and assemble to serve the Lord! And in the rare instances when we are providentially unable to do so, we will sit on our rears and lament our absence. I fear that many Christian pastors and parents will look back in thirty years and grieve the fact that their children have grown up to have no real attachment to the church. For once the church is streamable it becomes lightweight and dispensable. Livestreamed worship may be novel for older generations, but it is normal for Gen Z, and only time will tell how they are affected by this widescale religious experiment of digitizing church. If we take seriously our calling to mold our children and grandchildren into God-exalting worshipers, we must take pains to not only teach them about the church and its worship but to give them every opportunity to experience the sweetness of the church and its worship in all of its embodied physicality and geographical proximity. For, as Al Mohler warns, “parents can hardly claim shock when their kids grow up and leave what they have never really known.” Perhaps the greatest threat of the current livestreaming phenomenon in the church is not how it is making us spiritually numb but how it is paving the way for an incurable epidemic of Godward apathy in the coming generations. Assuming for the sake of argument that livestream is permissible in God’s worship, is it really wise to use this technological medium given what we know about Gen Z? That is a rhetorical question. Yours in Christ, Pastor Nick |
