Embodied worship
Monday, January 31, 2022 at 09:22AM 
A few days ago I posted In-person and on-line attenders. It seems to have struck a chord. Lots of people have read it.
Today I’d like us to look at a different take on the situation. Tish Harrison Warren wrote an opinion piece for the New York Times: Why Churches Should Drop Online Services. You’ll only be able to access it if you have a subscription. So, I’ll summarize her case here.
“For all of us -- even those who aren’t churchgoers -- bodies, with all the risk, danger, limits, mortality and vulnerability that they bring, are part of our deepest humanity, not obstacles to be transcended through digitalization. They are humble and humbling gifts to be embraced. Online church, while it was necessary for a season, diminishes worship and us as people. We seek to worship wholly -- with heart, soul mind and strength -- and embodiment is an irreducible part of that wholeness”
It’s important to note that Warren isn’t some far out resister. When the pandemic hit, her church was one of the first in their city to forgo meeting in person and switch to online. She makes the case for dropping online worship in part because the conditions of 2022 are not the same as 2020. We are in much better shape to manage the virus. I know that the parish I attend, and many others are considering whether to return to in person worship soon. Warren want’s people fully vaccinated and for churches to obey the state’s norms.
But Warren is also suggesting dropping the possibility of online worship.
“Whether or not one attends religious services, people need embodied community. We find it in book clubs or having friends over for dinner. But embodiment is a particularly important part of Christian spirituality and theology. We believe God became flesh, lived in a human body and remains mysteriously in a human body. Our worship is centered not on simply thinking about certain ideas, but on eating and drinking bread and wine during communion. Christians need to hear the babies crying in church. … They need to chat with the recovering drug addict who shows up early but still sits in the back row. … They need to taste the bread and wine.” She makes the case that these things are essential to real worship, the “shape who we are and what we believe.”
She’s making a case that the church needs to press forward with embodied worship because “a chief thing that the church has to offer the world now is to remind us all how to be human creatures, with all the embodiment and physical limits that implies. We need to embrace that countercultural call.”
rag+
Reader Comments (2)
Yes, I saw that, too, Bob. On the one hand, I agree that there is something deeply important about showing up, in person. Zoom worship is just not the same. But remembering the model of concentric circles with the apostolic core, I am thinking that Zoom attenders might be one of those circles. Our hope would be to draw them toward the core, for them to want to come in person. It is also one way of including people who for some reason cannot be physically present. We should still visit them in person, of course. Perhaps our goal is for virtual presence to augment, not replace, physical presence. If that were true, it seems it would only add to community, not detract from it. I can't say that I personally grasp specifically how we can use availability of online worship (and other formation) experiences for evangelism, and COVID exhaustion saps my imagination and energy for such things right now, but I believe it can be done. Start with people where they are and draw them in, no? To that extent I disagree with Tish on this occasion.
Blessings - Eliot
I like Warren's article, and it speaks to a worry I have about whether or not we'll really ever have that full, embodied worship again post-COVID. Will we need weekly gimmicks to entice people to attend in person when they've grown so comfortable with switching on the computer? My hope is that the community pulls people in who really do long for an embodied worship experience and a group of people with whom they can grow in the spiritual life. On the technology side, I am discovering that we're reaching people who never would have darkened our door. For example, I understand from a local counselor that several youth, battered by bad ultra-conservative experiences, are checking us out and can't believe that there is talk of God's love for people from the pulpit. We do have a view of the Gospel that is startlingly refreshing to some people and the technology (Facebook in our case) allows us to be seen and heard by some who wouldn't otherwise be present. It seems that we are in for a hybrid form of worship and that we can't and perhaps shouldn't go back to the way things were. As Eliot says, though, how to do that is the question.