Our Lord Jesus Christ commands us in the great commission in Matthew 28 to go out and make disciples of ALL nations. He does not say we get to pick and choose who gets to be saved and who does not. One nation that goes highly unnoticed but extremely un-reached is the digital nation. Matthew 9:37-38 tells us that the harvest is plentiful but the workers are few and tells us that the workers need to go into his harvest field. The digital nation is a field overflowing and we need to be getting in there and sharing Jesus with them. There are people who literally spend all of their time on the internet. There was a time when I was in a state of severe depression and rather than spend time with family or friends I went online and through a video chat group only spent time with people I met online. Some days I would only get out of bed to get something to eat. Through this experience I saw how people can use the internet as an escape, but also saw many people who were just as lost as I was. If I was spending that time that I was recovering from my depression in a virtual church rather than in a virtual hangout and not doing anything really productive I would have found my way back to Christ so much faster. Through this experience I know that there is a massive group of lost people who essentially live on the internet. Virtual Churches are an amazing evangelistic opportunity and a chance to reach people all around the world. I will concede that churches may not provide the Acts definition of a church for believers because they do not offer the complete "church" experience. However, if a virtual church "pastoral staff" operated in the manner of using the church to draw people in share Christ with them and help them grow to a saving faith and then helped them find a local body to attend that would give them a better view on church life. Virtual churches can be a great supplemental church experience in the sense that you can get additional growth and teaching in addition to what you are learning in your churches. Rather than listen to a podcast of a church service or a sermon, why not attend a virtual church so you can not only get that lesson but also get it while in fellowship with others who are listening to the same thing you are? In short I believe that Virtual churches have many redeeming qualities, including reaching the extremely lost digital nation as well as providing a supplemental experience to the standard church setting.

[Sorry about the username. I'm Nanda.]

While modern churches are most assuredly, "good" churches, that do "good" things, including evangelism and the reaching of lost souls to Christ, one questions still remains. Are modern churches the BEST way to evangelize the world? Is there a more effective way to reach souls and fulfill the great commission? The answer is a hearty, "yes!" And the means of which we can now do so is through the advanced technology of our modern age. Virtual churches can reach more people with the Gospel, and reach them faster and easier than any other way prior to and including the 21st century. Also, virtual churches give an experience of community to both those who could not, and those who will not participate in a local community of Christians. We can truly reflect God by creating experiences that until now were unfathomable!

Matthew 28:19-20 gives to us a commission to spread the good news of our Lord Jesus Christ throughout the nations. Unfortunately, common sense tells us that to do this exclusively offline would severely limit the church's power of expansion. As Christians, we must seek to obey the Word of the Lord quickly, and from our heart instead of from what the people around us think. (Ephesians 6:6) We have all heard the Word, but will we do it? (James 1:22)

The issue of Christian community is one of the primary arguments both for and against the biblical rational of a virtual church. While the virtual church may not meet the requirements of a Christian community according to the Bible IN A WAY THE AVERAGE CHRISTIAN IS COMFORTABLE WITH, it can still definitely be fulfilled by other means. The Bible lists for us the requirements of any Christian community in Acts 2:42. The four requirements are; teaching, fellowship, breaking of bread, and prayer. Teaching is stressed so much in virtual churches that no sane person will argue that teaching doesn't happen there! Fellowship is done through the technology of today. Attendees can talk, share ideas, and be social and real online instead of hiding behind the mask of perfection that so many in a literal church do. As for prayer, the prayer walls of many online churches have far, far more requests than do most any literal churches bulletin. While breaking of bread can only be sometimes done face to face, it can always be done emotinoal and spiritually in unison. Proponents often point out that traditional churches are far from perfect. Rather than being bastions of intimacy and community, traditional churches often allow people to hide behind shallow masks of perfection. Online communities, on the other hand, provide a safe environment for many people to share their struggles, develop greater intimacy, and form better expressions of Christian community. Christians and unsaved people HAVE to be met where they are at. The great commission is in NO way passive!!

http://marccortez.com/2011/11/22/is-an-online-church-really-a-church-why- we-need-better-arguments-ets-papers/

Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you Matthew 28:19-20. This passage calls us as believers to witness to all the nations. Since many nations (and more all the time) have access to the internet; what better way is there for us Christians to minister to these people then through a virtual church online. A disciple is someone who follows the teachings of their leader. (Tyndale 384) Is it impossible to teach someone without talking to them face to face? Of course it isn’t, Paul taught Timothy from a Roman prison (see 1+2 Timothy). How much easier do we have it, to teach or disciple someone through the technology of the virtual church? We, as Christians, should count it a blessing that we have virtual churches so that we no longer have to travel half-way around the world to minister a person in South Korea, instead we can simply interact with them through a virtual church setting. Many people will disagree with me saying that there is more to the Great Commission than just discipleship. I agree, but it is just as easy, if not easier to teach someone through the virtual church than it is to disciple them, and as far as baptism is concerned is it necessary to be baptized with water? According to Acts 1:5 Christ promised His apostles a baptism of the Holy Spirit, is Matthew 28:19 speaking of baptism by water or baptism by the Spirit? It does not specify. Spiritual baptism is very possible in the virtual church; even water baptism is not impossible through the virtual church. Scriptures do not state that one has to be baptized by someone else.

The virtual church is new and different, so people are skeptical of it; just as the early church was opposed by the Jewish leaders. Yet look what the early church has grown into. Those skeptical of the virtual church should rather be awestruck by what the Lord has allowed us to create and use for the betterment of the Gospel.

It may seem odd to think that in some parts of the world there is not even one church around for hundreds of miles or even there might not be any place to have fellowship with other believing in the entire country. Since we are Americans we have no idea what it’s like to not even have some kind of church meeting. Here in the US we have Catholics, Baptist, Lutheran, nondenominational, and hundreds of other differences and variations in all of those denominations. If we don’t like the church we are going to we just get up and go to the next chapel across the street. For me it is hard to imagine a world that doesn’t have any kind of body of believers at all. And that is where the Virtual Church comes into play.

Virtual Churches have everything that a physical church has except, virtual church have the convenience of having the local like body of believer’s right in the comfort of their own home. People that go to Virtual churches have the convenience of being able to go to a meeting at a time that works best for the persons schedule, because some people are not about to get out of going to work on Sundays which is a typical day that people go to church.

Also there are people across the world that can’t get out of bed because of some kind of illness that prevents them from getting to a physical church. And so when we have a virtual church they are about to get to a church that will help them grow to be closer to Christ.

Some people live in a country where they don’t know the language very well. So until they are about to understand the language that the people in that country are speaking they can go to a virtual church with people that speak the same language as their own self. This will help them keep up with their own spiritual walk with the Lord Jesus Christ. And that is why I think that virtual churches are good for the growth of the church.

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