Church service

Introduction

This is already our fifth online service. It still feels strange and it's not easy to move the service online from one day to the next.

Some churches do the service as usual and just film it. Large congregations already have all the equipment and film with several cameras and have a video mixer to change the perspective from time to time.

We only have one camera now and have already gained a bit of experience, but we're far from finished and we don't know how long the normal, analogue face-to-face service will remain banned.

There is also the risk of bandwidth. If all the neighbours here start watching Netflix at 11:00 a.m., it can get a bit choppy. Of course, this also applies to you at home. You don't even know how many internet users have to share which lines. You might have to send the children out to play in the garden to watch the service.

I think the main problem is that an online church service is actually also subject to the attention economy. If you don't like it, you can switch to something else almost at the touch of a button. Or you have another end device at your desk, where you look at it with your second eye, and you also chat on WhatsApp.

Maybe a flourish after every good thought will help and then you'll have the audience's attention again.

When I watch a TV film that doesn't completely captivate me, I often pick up my tablet and read something about the actors at the same time, or if I don't know the film at all and it seems suspicious, I at least skim the beginning of the synopsis on Wikipedia to see if the film is worth watching at all.

So, you don't have to look up our community on Wikipedia, I don't think it has its own article yet.

What makes a worthwhile church service anyway?

Content is king

I have already mentioned this saying from web development, i.e. from the creation of homepages:

Content is king (meaning: content is the highest, the very highest).

On the Internet, it is important what appears first in a search. The third or fourth page is completely uninteresting. And in the early days of the Internet, many tricks were used to try and trick the search engine providers, Google being the most important one mentioned here, so that your own page would come up first.

Now the algorithms of search engine providers have become better and better and ultimately it's all about content. If you have content and it matches the search, then you will come to the top of the search results page.

The content is relevant. Does this also apply to church services? Now we are not accessible via a search engine, although that would be something: a search engine for church services. I would love to see a list of search terms, that would certainly be interesting. Basically, of course, church is more than the consumption of church services, but that's another topic.

However, unlike the search engine, people are also interested in the form and not just the content, and we try to find a form that does not obscure the content by selecting old and new songs in a non-ecclesiastical language.

I would now like to look with you at a few examples of church services as described in the Bible.

Nehemiah 8

Firstly, let's look at the first church service in the rebuilt Jerusalem 2500 years ago. The city was destroyed and rebuilt with great effort and then this first service was celebrated (Old Testament, Book of Nehemiah 8, 1-10; NL;):

All the inhabitants gathered in the town and wanted to listen, men, women and all the children who were old enough to do so.

A wooden platform (like a pulpit) had been erected for a scribe called Ezra and he read from the five books of Moses and he had some helpers who explained what was being said in small groups so that it could really be understood what it was about. There was also a communal prayer.

And the content hit those present so hard that they wept. The Bible often shows quite honestly what people are like and sometimes it really makes you cry.

But the Bible is first and foremost a message of joy and there was to be no time of mourning at this service. The people in charge expressed it that way:

"Go and celebrate a feast with delicious food and sweet drinks and share your food with those who have prepared nothing. For this is a holy day to our Lord. Do not be sad, for the joy of the Lord is your refuge!"

In this example, the form of the service was somehow secondary. It was just important that people could understand what was being said. It was probably explained in everyday language, without special ecclesiastical words and other foreign words.

And the people there wanted to hear something and they certainly understood this summary of everything:

Do not be sad, for the joy of the Lord is your refuge!

The exaggerated sermon

We find another example in an evening service in the New Testament in the then Greek city of Troas (Acts 20:7-12; NL):

7 On the first day of the week, we gathered to celebrate the Lord's Supper. Paul preached. As he was leaving the next day, he spoke until midnight. 8 The room on the upper floor where we had gathered was lit by many lamps. 9 Paul spoke at great length. A young man named Eutychus, who was sitting on the windowsill, grew more and more tired. Finally he fell fast asleep, lost his balance and fell three stories. When he was picked up, he was dead. 10 Paul ran down, bent over him and took him in his arms. "Don't be afraid," he said, "he's alive!" 11 Then they all went back up and took communion together. Paul continued to speak until dawn; then he left. 12 In the meantime the young man had been taken home. He was alive, and everyone was very comforted.

I hope you don't fall asleep during my sermon, but it only lasts 10 minutes. And hopefully nobody will be sitting on a windowsill on the third floor.

I think that was a special opportunity back then. Sometimes all limits on attention are cancelled out because it is so captivating and because Paul really had something to say. And the boy's tiredness was simply due to the late hour.

But regardless of special situations, I always want to find a form for church services that does justice to the interesting content. You are welcome to give me feedback on the form and content in the comments.

Incidentally, it was also very important to Paul that people did not accept everything he said uncritically, but that they questioned it. There is also an example of this (Acts 17:11; NL), when Paul and his friend Silas held church services in the city of Berea:

The inhabitants of Beroea ... listened to the message of God with interest. Day after day, they searched the Scriptures to see whether Paul and Silas were actually teaching the truth.

Here we are back to "content is king". They don't so much discuss whether their style of presentation and their dictation is good, but rather reflect on the content. What does this have to do with my life? Is it even true?

Sermon on the Mount

One last example is the Sermon on the Mount. It is not a real church service, but it is interesting how the Sermon on the Mount ends. The content is interesting anyway, you could preach a whole series of sermons about it, countless books have been written and you can probably never fully grasp what is said.

At the end it says (Matthew 7, 28.29; NL):

28 When Jesus had finished speaking, the people were overwhelmed by his teaching, 29 for he spoke with authority, unlike the scribes.

I don't think any preacher claims to speak with the same authority as Jesus. And he was probably also an interesting, captivating speaker.

As a church, we still have the task of carrying on this message from Jesus, despite all our imperfections, human, technical, whatever; in other words, modified from "content is king", "Jesus' message is supreme". Or to put it another way: The content of king jesus is king.

Let's get involved again and again, whether online or on site.

And no matter what else comes our way:

Do not be sad, for the joy of the Lord is your refuge!