October (Web-only) 2000

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Does cyber attendance constitute the body of Christ?
There has been a boom in church presence online, and according to this article from Newsfactor people who have never darkened the door of the local church are willing to visit prayer forums, listen to sermons, worship with a recorded choir, and read devotionals from the comfort of their own home computer. These folks "give more time to religious life online than they would ever consider giving to a traditional congregation," says Charles Henderson, who spent 25 years as a Presbyterian church pastor and is now publisher of the interfaith magazine, Cross Currents. Henderson also established the First Church of Cyberspace in order to promote worship over the Internet. Walt Wilson, a Silicon Valley exec whose Los Gatos Baptist church site gets more than 1,000 hits a day says the Internet is no replacement for Sunday services. "Scripture commands us to gather together before the Lord. I view that as a real-life experience," Wilson explains. Monsignor Peter O'Reilly of St. Maximilian Kolbe Catholic Church agrees: "The nature of the human person is relational. To think we can sit behind a screen and communicate with reality is very false."

Teens like what they know of Christianity And they think they know more than they actually do, according to the latest survey by Barna Research Group. Lots of the results aren't that surprising: teens feel that "most adult Christians are hypocrites," and they affirm that faith helps achieve a greater sense of peace in life. However, while three in five teens said that the Bible was totally accurate in all that it teaches, most of those teens embraced views inconsistent with the Bible. Nearly two thirds of the teens questioned said that Satan ...