The study also revealed that the participants of the cyber Church consider it as a Church since they have

the possibility of worshipping, fellowshipping, and studying the word of God being in any part of the
world with the other fellow believer from any part of the world feeling as being together under one roof
which avoided the need to travel long distances in search of a church or a fellow believer. In similar
circumstances the study found out the holistic service of the church has been transformed beyond the
wall of the church and beyond one city, has united believers from all corners of the earth allowing
participants to contribute to a physical need of a believer or to support the mission of the Church.

Pictures
Intro for CyberChurh (Positive)

www.impactministries.com/cyberchurch/

uch has changed in the world since 2000, and few can deny that many of those changes have been
facilitated by technology. The Internet, in particular—both how much we use it and what we use it for—
has dramatically altered the way people live their lives, do their work and engage in their relationships.
Pastors are no exception: In the past 15 years, church leaders have significantly increased their use of
the Internet and have, by and large, come to accept it as an essential tool for ministry in the 21st
century.

For many years the number one question we got from all across America was, “Is there a church in my
area where I can hear this message of grace, peace, faith righteousness and unconditional love?” Too
often the answer was, “No!” But now, thanks to modern technology, people around the world are able
to receive meaningful ministry every week! Welcome to CyberChurch!
For you to give up an hour of your time, we know that we have to offer something of value. We also
know that it has to fit into your hectic schedule. Our weekly broadcast does just that! You’ve got
options!
Benefits:
1. People needed more options for church.
2. If church services were only on Sunday, there was no day of rest
3. We could reach and help more people by creating our CyberChurch.
4. We would never actually do what Jesus called us to do if we did church the traditional way.

FEATURES

IGROUPS
Because the need for fellowship and interaction with people of like faith is so important, we
encourage you to start an iGroup. If you desire to follow the Impact Model for small groups check out
the iGroups page. Or, you may simply have people meet during the broadcast and then have
fellowship and sharing. Small groups have been an essential part of church life from the beginning.
The key is, you do it the way that best serve your family’s needs!

MEETINGS
Several times each year we have special meetings in Huntsville, across the nation and other parts of
the world. We encourage you to watch the Itinerary and join us anytime you can. It is always great to
join with others of like-faith in a live service!

CYBER SEMINARS
Several times each year you will have the opportunity to participate in a CyberSeminar. Thanks to
the latest update in our website you will be able to participate in interactive CyberSeminars.
It is our call as a church to change the way the WORLD sees God and CyberChurch is one more
step towards fulfilling that goal! With CyberChurch, everything we do is reaching beyond these walls
and around the world. Instead of speaking to a few hundred people here in this room, we can speak
to people all around the world.

When you log on via the internet, you are attending church with people from England, Spain,
Australia, Austria, Germany, France, Indonesia, Pakistan, Canada, South Africa and dozens of other
countries. And of course, there are families all across America who are part of the CyberChurch
family.

There are many groups around the world who use this service as an Impact Group where they
gather family and friends for personal ministry and fellowship. Many of our CyberChurch family enjoy
the fact that they can listen to a service several times each week.

Because we have not had to build a building large enough to house all those who attend, our CC
family has the confidence of knowing that their giving is going to outreach projects that are changing
the nation and the world.

When you join us from home, I encourage you to have your Bible, pen, and paper ready. This will be
a growth experience. If you have prayer requests or a testimony you can send them during a service
and we will pray for you and when possible share your testimony live.

NEGATIVE
The internet is volatilizing and reconfiguring political life in late-modern highly-developed societies. If
Christian theology gives us any critical purchase on the cultural developments that surround and
shape us, it will thus need to make its insights felt here. We tend to assume that the internet and the
various communication gadgets that go along with it are just tools, something we pick up or put
down at will. While behavioral psychologists and neuroscientists have only recently begun to
question this assumption in earnest, philosophers have been doing so for some time. George Grant,
to take one example, has remarked that, “Seventy five years ago somebody might have said ‘The
automobile does not impose on us the ways it should be used’, and who would have quarreled with
that? Yet this would have been a deluded representation of the automobile” (1986, p. 24-35). Our
habitual ways of thinking of technology as a neutral tool reveals a problem at the heart of the modern
way of thinking. Grant concludes,

“The computer does not impose on us the ways it should be used” asserts the essence of the
modern view, which is that human ability freely determines what happens. It then puts that freedom
in the service of the very ‘should’ which that same modern novelty has made provisional. The
resolute mastery to which we are summoned in ‘does not impose’… therefore cushions us from the
full impact of the novelties it asks us to consider” (p. 31-33).

HJHJIn this essay I want to consider the world of the internet as one forum in which the church
suffers the techniques of the age and so begins to bring them into its powers of description. Because
it lives in an age of transition from the book to the screen, as it wrestles with the implications of this
shift for its own life it gains critical purchase on the cultural shifts that unsettle it.

My aim is to query the ways these new communication technologies are reshaping the church’s
patterns of communion. My discussion will orbit around two questions: what would it mean for the
church to pursue worship in cyberspace? And, how might the church assess the role of internet
communication in training future pastors and theological educators? Anything the church might have
to say in general about the technologies that make up the internet will be learned as it asks particular
questions of this kind. It will not have the resources to assess the worth of the internet as a whole
without many more detailed engagements with, and immersion in, its many cultural effects. Only as
the church gains this hard-won knowledge can it witness to the gospel in an internet culture. My
interest is in allowing the semantics of ecclesial life and the imperatives to reconciliation, mutual
representation and ecclesial discernment as found in the political theology of Bernd Wannenwetsch
to orient theological judgments about trajectories in our late-modern cultural context. As I do so, it
will be important to watch how our understanding of both the church’s current configuration and the
internet are judged and deepened in the process. My treatment will point out several pitfalls of
theological blogging, but conclude by suggesting how communication via cyberspace might be
understood to serve the church in limited ways.

Sung, Read and Screened Theology

I draw on Wannenwetsch’s work because his emphasis on worship as a form of communion

mediated via the canon is an attempt to recover for contemporary theology the precedence of
hearing and speaking to God from within the living throng of saints. This position is a corrective to
modern theology at the end of the print age. That theology is heir to a theologically problematic shift
from monastic, or “sung” theology to scholastic or “bookish” theology. The patristic era’s rule for
theology, lex orandi, lex credendi, “the law of praying is the law of thinking” marks what was lost in
this transition. Wannenwetsch is recovering theology conceived as expressing in a different idiom
the grammar of praise and prayer, in so doing granting the given language of liturgy, its songs,
prayers and lectionary, conceptual precedence.

This move directs attention to the patristic church’s emphasis on worship as a calling on and singing
praise to Christ. The theology of liturgical performance was devoted essentially to proclaiming the
Lord. This had a wide range of practical implications. For instance, in the western monastic tradition,
the term “Psalter” did not primarily refer to a book of 150 psalms, but to a textually formed
performance of collective worship. In this form of collective worship human affections were
energized and aligned by taking up the words of past saints, not primarily by theoretical reason or
contemplation. In worship Christians understood themselves to be joining in the worship of the whole
eschatological City of God, comprised of all the saints (and angels) past and present. The rule lex
orandi, lex credendi thus encapsulates the impulse of the earliest Christian theologians to ensure
that silly or heretical claims about the Trinitarian God were submitted to testing in the “echo
chamber” of the universal church and the heavenly choir of angels as they praised God
(Wannenwetsch, 2004, p. 330-336).

The church fathers felt liberated to dispense with the complicated technologies of memorization
popular in late antiquity because they understood liturgy as their pedagogue; in it they were
impregnated in a very bodily way in the shaping of their affect, will and rationality by the Word of
Christ. Within these presuppositions reading, and especially reading scripture, is understood as an
act expressing a desire to be possessed by this Word, to have one’s affections reoriented, not to
possess or manipulate what has been handed down. Likewise, the purpose for which the
congregation assembles is to be re-membered, to become conscious of the faith of the communion
sanctorum (Illich, 1993, p. 43-44).

The rise of theology as a bookish discipline coincided with the dispersal of this self-understanding of
the church. Just before, but paving the way for scholastic theology (around 1120), Hugh of St. Victor
was an early advocate for moving away from this liturgical form of memory toward memory as a
carefully constructed archive of wisdom contained in the individual’s mind. He offered instead a
recovery of Greek technologies of memory and espoused new techniques of reading that displaced
the liturgical time of synchronic and diachronic simultaneity for a primary understanding of time as a
historical sequence. In so doing individual reading was rendered the paradigmatic form of worship
(Illich, 1993, p. 45-50). A new ecclesial self is born that reads to “discover himself in the mirror of the
parchment” (p. 23).
For the first time the communality of theology and so its social engagement is rendered a problem.
Because

…lectio divina is always a liturgical act coram, in the face of someone,—God, angels or anyone
within earshot… there was no need, in the time between Benedict and Bernard, to insist on the
social responsibility of the reader… Fifty years after Hugh, typically, this is no longer true. The
technical activity of deciphering no longer creates an auditory and therefore social space (p. 82).

I will suggest that it is the loss of this experience of eschatological union in time and space that fuels
inchoate contemporary attempts to recover some of the simultaneity of theology as liturgy. If so,
these are secular attempts to reconstruct a substitute for liturgical memory, an alienated yearning for
the kairos in which all the saints are gathered. To make such a bold claim raises important questions
about modern theology. To what extent can it any longer even comprehend the rule of lex oradi, lex
credendi? Do modern theologians see themselves as expressing the whole church’s desire to praise
God in the present as a way of joining the praise of the saints of all ages? Were this the case, they
would be beyond the distinction between theory and practice, and would not be trapped by the
problem of finding a relationship between the two (Hütter, 2000, p. 34-37).

The theologies of Wannenwetsch and the fathers have suggested theological development with a
very different contour. In their view theology does not aspire to be creative in thinking “new”
thoughts, nor in its achievement of a supposed balance between form and creativity. Its true
creativity is to serve the transference of canonical images and metaphors from past generations into
the present, their “creative elaboration in particular circumstances,” suggests Wannenwetsch (2002,
p. 52). To return to patiently rediscover the wisdom of patristic theology is thus not an act of
nostalgia, but an attempt to regain sight of the essential components of theological activity amidst a
church seeking renewal from the depredations of routines of management and managed
communion.
These considerations compel us to revisit a question to which western culture has recently returned
for very different reasons: “What exactly is reading?” (Rosen, 2008, p. 25). This must finally be a
theological question. The developments in the culture of western theology I have just sketched
suggest the following answer. Reading is a forum in which we submit ourselves to others. We read
them in order to hear their living voices. Such an account seems inescapably anachronistic to the
mind trained to interact with a screen where one trolls, comments, surfs, or buys; one does not
submit to being captured by another voice as they choose to present themselves. I recently talked to
a professor of medicine who said that he encouraged students to have their computers open on the
desk in lectures as it allowed them to “tune in to what they were interested in” and to “look up
unfamiliar terms” or “check the accuracy of what they were hearing. Whether or not this is what
students were doing online during lectures (and my observations suggest that they would much
rather keep up with their friends on Facebook), I suggested that theology seeks to train students in a
different sort of listening, one that is not content to sift, pick and choose from the outset, but to listen,
understand, assimilate, and then, ideally, critically tease apart. The teacher of theology is not herself
demanding this undivided attention, but scripture and the communion of saints who have handed it
on to us.

Reading the fathers, medievals and reformers takes time, as does worship and listening to other
congregants. To observe this is to set the concept of reading within the concept of entering a
theological tradition, a worshipping community. Every time we do so we are forced to accommodate
ourselves to the communicative forms in which we encounter each of these people, long and
unwieldy treatises full of unfamiliar cultural assumptions in the one case, and the (often)
inconvenient and time consuming interruption of our plans on the other or our difficulties in
comprehending others’ unfamiliar ways of articulating themselves. If we want to be with other
Christians, to be formed by them, we have to listen to them as they have presented themselves.
The theology that asks how God is claiming and confronting the present worshipping community
amidst all its foibles must be a patient and attentive discipline. The forms, restrictions, and slowness
of communities of scholarship that teach us to read and so hear the saints are not a hindrance to
that attentiveness to God and neighbor that takes the form of thought, but rather they make it fruitful.
God’s Word strikes home in a moment, but the work of attentive learning to hear the Cappadocians,
to take one example, and the description and living out of what God reveals in this forum, is an
extended labor of patient and faithful attentiveness. Christian faith lives and changes, or better,
changes its hearers, as its tradition and scriptures become a living rule in the flow of life. This is a
slow process of repentant rethinking in the context of a communal self-presentation to God, a
repentance that dampens the value of unreflective opinion. Such theological sensibilities stand in
stark contrast to current web culture in which thought is more valuable when more simultaneous, or
when an unlimited number of voices participate.

Is the Theological Blogger the Beginning of a New Church?

In order to develop wider analytical purchase on the cultural shift that is the internet, I will
concentrate my discussion on the web log, popularly known as the “blog”. In this electronic forum
users post comments or commentary on current events, often on a daily basis, in a style reminiscent
of a diary. Among those with uninterrupted access to the highly developed technology and
infrastructure that sustains it, this is, by all accounts, a cultural form that is here to stay, with many
millions of bloggers writing each day. Very little theological work has been done on if or how to live
as a Christian in this new but influential and rapidly expanding subculture.In this case church
practice has run well ahead of its theological thought, and having already drawn in and shaped
Christian self-understanding, I suggest that the time is right to attempt to make the underlying
grammars of these practices more apparent.
Internet communication is a development in extant patterns of communion and communication that
emphasizes the rapidity of written speech and deemphasizes physical presence, although with
results that may surpass our expectations. Some Christians have enthusiastically greeted this
change as a harbinger of new modes of communion, and proponents of cyber-church have
suggested that in blogging and other online activities “two or three” in fact gather in more meaningful
and transformational ways than is possible in traditional forms of ecclesial gathering (Bednar, 2004).
Even mainstream ecclesial movements are being attracted to the claim that the simultaneity of
communion developed by constant texting and e-mailing is a better index of the quality of the
church’s communion than simple physical gathering (Ward, 2002, p. 88-89). Some churches
encourage texting and other electronic communications between pastor and congregation within
services of worship to make them “more interactive.” As the apostle Paul at least had no qualms
projecting his presence through letters, the most advanced communication technology of his day
(Col 2:1, 5), perhaps Christians ought to prepare themselves for a reorganization of the ecclesia as it
embraces these new modes of communication?

Read sympathetically, blogging can be seen as a cultural form in which society, and increasingly the
church, seeks a space in which the word can be trusted under the often accurate perception that
neither churchly or secular authorities are listening (Bailey, p. 182). Evidence suggests that
relationships of trust and respect can develop in these extended and diffuse conversations. In a
world increasingly characterized by manipulated communication, Justin Bailey astutely observes that
blogging represents a quest for genuine communication, and in it a healthy critical awareness of
manipulative communicative techniques sometimes develops (p. 177).

Any accurate judgment of the wisdom of immersing the church more deeply in internet culture
depends not only on a theology and ethos of communion, but also on an awareness of the dominant
grammars of cyberspace. This community, for instance, is often strongly marked by antipathy to all
political authority (Saxenian, 1994. The internet community often understands itself to be achieving
truth through decentralization and the undermining of the old forms of authority represented by the
disciplinary society described my Michel Foucault. The “hacker” or the internet startup profiteer
reincarnates the American pioneer spirit so characteristic of cultures of innovation (Wannenwetsch,
1996, p. 186-188). Protestant Christians are often especially attracted to this spirit of innovation, and
this pioneering spirit often attracts Christian bloggers (Jacobs, 2006). Those in the vanguard of this
movement have gone as far as to suggest the replacement of the church council with a rolling
conversation among the priesthood of all believers, on the grounds that egalitarianism and
simultaneity are the prime marks of true discourse (Bailey, p 182). Are we right then to affirm that the
technology of the internet undermines the old conception of churchly authority structures? Might it
break down and enliven old stale habits of the church, especially of its theologians?

Blogging: Publicity, Display and Speed

Two initial theological queries of the blog culture as it currently exists will give us better access to the
appropriate questions here. The first regards the will to display that characterizes blogging culture,
and which is tied to its architectural features. Blogging is a form of writing that promises to generate
instantaneous reader responses and as such it invites obsession with the number of readers: a
temptation to all writers in a post-printing press age, but one accelerated in a forum that is
technically geared to provide instantaneous feedback on numbers of readers and relative ranking
and assessment. One may, for instance, read the runaway success of blog platforms like
“MySpace,” with their emphasis on virtual self-description, to be driven, in no small part, by a
widespread internalized desire for individual meaning or presence interpreted within the dominant
understanding of publicity as reality. Blogging, with its invariable interest in displaying the author’s
tastes and opinions, therefore appears as a relatively unsurprising forum for the extension of the
well-developed culture of individualist expressivism in which identity is established by the display of
a carefully chosen constellation of tastes and affinities for consumer products or types of
entertainment (Taylor, 2002, p. 80-88). This is expressivism that can only be accelerated as it
merges with a modern media society in which publicity has been integrated into the techniques of
governance in which presidents and governments can be elected or overthrown by movements
fomented on-line.
The problem here is a political one. Any hypertrophy of display in communication is inimical to
hearing and so to consensus building (Wannenwetsch, 2004, p. 242-246). For instance, one of the
originators of blog software (Andrew Smales, developer of Pitas) worries that increasing penetration
of the publicity culture by the blog is tied to its ability to tap into our voyeuristic impulses (Bailey, p.
187). The blog turns the Victorian diarist’s interest in the inwardness and secrecy of daily quotidian
life outward as an expression of the technological rationale of visibility and publicity, hastening the
disappearance of voyeurism as an immoral activity. When the consumption of people’s everyday
lives has become entertainment, and surveillance an everyday fact of life, a new humanity is born
that no longer aspires even after the ideal of a private or hidden life. The public and publicity become
all encompassing. Theology done within blog culture all too readily exhibits the lapse into display,
preening and pontification one would expect in a medium where publicity makes one “real,” self-
exposure promises to up one’s visitor count and one’s immediate reactions are assumed to be
commentary not only worth reading, but fundamental to the accruing of truth.

A theological assessment of this will to self-publicize needs to ask how, why and before whom does
one wish to appear? In opposition to the politics of publicity, Jesus’ criticism and counter-example
seem to suggest a rather healthy disregard for what is today called marketing or public relations (Mt.
6:1-6, 27:14, Jn. 5:31, Wannenwetsch, 2004, p. 322). To suggest that what Christians’ ought desire
is to appear in Christian community or as community before the world is to raise sharp questions of
the individualist self-understanding characterising the bulk of current blogging culture. This culture of
publicity and display of what we already think we possess too often subverts the proper self-
forgetfulness of Christian good works, and the technologies of the internet, with their speed and
visual bias, accelerate this subversion.

The problem of display in blogging culture is intertwined with a high valuation of the pace of
communication to which the medium lends itself. Whereas one may return countless times to revise
a book with the hope that it might be taken hold of by future generations prepared to attend to its
unnoticed richness, the blogger has no such aspirations. Pace is paramount and a conversation left
untended is “dead” and soon disappears, never to be revisited. Though this is not intrinsically
demanded by the medium, the evident emphasis on the living nature of communication and the
architectural features of that communication (such as comment boxes) tends strongly toward
communication as the rapid exchange of information or opinion. As Alan Jacobs (2006) observes,
“as vehicles for the development of ideas [blogs] are woefully deficient and will necessarily remain
so unless they develop an architecture that is less bound by the demands of urgency—or unless
more smart people refuse the dominant architecture.” One of George Grant’s (2005) central themes
was the tendency of the computer to privilege information over wisdom, and the pace and content of
the blogging culture as a whole corroborates this perception (p. 263). This is not a forum that lends
itself to sustained, in-depth reflection, but is explicitly one for signaling presence through the offering
of opinions. When penetrating writing appears, and it does, it shows clear marks of being from pens
trained in slower forums than the blog or chat room. But, as Jacobs (2006) also notes, “what
happens more often than not…is the conversion of really good scholars into really lousy journalists.
With few exceptions, posts at the “academic” or “intellectual” blogs I used to frequent have become
the brief and cursory announcement of opinions, not the free explorations of new and dynamic
thinking.”

Instantaneous communication pushes communion in the direction of shorter and less substantive
interactions, which in turn increases our consumption of necessarily more formulaic forms of
information. In a previous generation Thomas Merton (1968, p. 151) attempted to preserve the
sensitivities lost to this frantic spirit by reading only old newspapers, out of an awareness that the
pace of communication is its most deadening feature, and in this generation many Christian bloggers
have also had to develop forms of fasting as a bulwark against the transformation of time by the
urgency of blogging (Barkat, 2007). Merton anticipated the reorientation of temporal sensibility of the
wired generation who are constantly affectively engaged in maintaining the flow of messages in real
time, developing a vastly different notion of reading and attention (Rosen, p. 23-26, Richtel, 2010).
The arrangement of hardware and software that sustain the otherwise diverse activities of text
messaging, Facebook, Twitter, and so on, are geared to maintaining continual but brief messaging.
These technologies increase the number of contacts possible with a greater number of people, and
increase abilities to “information forage,” but only by decreasing the content that is communicated or
absorbed. A message now communicates more by its form and timing (HelloJ) than its content.
What one says is deemphasized in relation to the continual maintenance of a sense of collective
simultaneity, and more formulaic messages are sufficient for this task. Communication as formulaic
stimulus can only be yet another faint echo of the true simultaneity of presence before God in the
communion of saints.

Church vs. Lifestyle Enclaves

These questions prepare us to ask: is blogging the forum in which congregants properly discover the
gifts God through them brings into the service of the body? The answer to this question is to be
found via another: How does this form of communion help or hinder genuine listening to one
another? How often do we encounter those here who do not conform to our expectations or stock
narratives, and how often do those encounters grow into enriching relationships? More importantly,
where are our expectations for such a surprising encounter generated and conformed to the work of
Christ? Wannenwetsch’s theology suggests that the communication of Christ in the ecclesia and
through word and sacrament, with its emphasis on the verbum externum and the genuine giving and
receiving of one’s self in communion, allows us to recognize and name as deficient instances of
communication as the mere transfer of information (2000, p. 93-106). The forms of speaking,
reading and hearing required in worship, oriented by the desire to listen, reread, digest, sit under
authority and in which we are changed as hearers, are corroded by the expectation that we will hear
no more from the other than information. Without a thick theology of listening, and without a place in
which listening is practiced and valued, we will have no way to recognize, and therefore to name as
temptations trajectories that are within internet culture. That culture will have become the shaper of
sensibilities that technological humanity will bring to reshape the church’s liturgy.
This emphasis on listening, discernment and sensible presence suggests that despite the ubiquity of
the blogosphere, in which a “church” can form of those anywhere in the world and currently online, it
remains a “lifestyle enclave” and not a real church. In a lifestyle enclave one leaves when the group
activity is no longer interesting, or when interpersonal conflict undermines one’s enjoyment of it. But
what is often not left behind is the presupposition that all human society is made up of such
voluntaristic and utilitarian gatherings. The church universal exists in a fundamentally different
register, as that community in which real conflicts are being overcome in real space and time. The
church is that real body gathered with the aim of being conformed to a trans-temporal and spatial
community of praise. In this real space we cannot filter our persona by electronic self-presentation
and our choices of congregation are limited by physical geography. A church that emphasizes the
believer’s decision to join or convert will be, for good reason, the church most attracted to and least
able to resist the promise of the blogosphere to displace traditional physically gathering church.

Churchly Authority vs. Information and Opinion

If the internet is not the appropriate forum for the church’s worship, might not it be the place where
the church’s theology is properly undertaken? It has lately become a commonplace dogma that
internet discussions are more free, egalitarian, dynamic and therefore interesting than the old forms
of communication through traditional media or academic publishing. On this view, the “traditional
academic form does not breed conversation, but promotes monologue; it does not foster cross-
fertilization of ideas, but reinforces one particular perspective on an issue; it is not open to other
voices, but is designed precisely to close them off; and, finally, any such discourse is not welcoming
to all voices, but privileges a select group who have been properly vetted by the Western academy”
(Penner and Barnes, 2006, p. 1). On this basis some Christians have lately called for a movement of
theology out of or at least beyond the academy, primarily into the forum of the internet. Such
sentiments express aims quite close to that of Wannenwetsch: conversation, not monologue, cross-
fertilization of ideas rather than single perspectives, structural openness to other voices, and no
privileging of expertise. As such, these voices have the merit of reminding western theologians how
infrequently they conceive themselves of doing their work within the acoustic realm of the
worshipping community, and so become the closed community the bloggers rightly protest. In this
blog theology offers, then, an important corrective to the contemporary construal of academic
theology. What we must ask is whether internet theology can in fact generate the community of
discernment these authors seek.

In a community of discernment, Wannenwetsch has suggested, authority and judgment are crucial
roles sustaining the health of the body. To suggest that theologians have their own appropriate (if
circumscribed) authority as church teachers in the body of Christ is by no means to render theology
the preserve of experts. To think of theology as an expertise in a technical knowledge is to displace
theology as a vocation with theology as a professional qualification tied to conceptions of
management, market orientation and standards of performance rather than a role within the ecclesia
that is bound to be responsive to it. A vocation finds its form in devotion to the health of the whole
community in the concrete form that they appear. Vocational success is judged not according to
criterion technical efficiency, but by its actual effect in the life of the community, bringing it rather
closer to an amateur performance (Wannenwestch, 2001, p. 45-55). Though it may generate its own
type of authorities, blog culture allows neither for local context nor appreciates the value of being
“trapped” by a voice that cannot be switched off and so controlled. As a result it fundamentally
narrows the forms of authority that can emerge within it.

Here I confess that as a theologian, I find these issues crucial because I have regularly seen
theological students who blog daily and at a relatively superficial level to the detriment of the much
deeper learning available to them in libraries and seminars. I would never suggest that Christians
ought, on principle, to stay aloof from the online community. Central to the account of the church
developed here is my affirmation that what it means to be church is to be involved with the world,
suffering its missteps precisely in order to be able to name them as missteps. At the same time, it
would be a dereliction of my vocation to introduce students to the riches of the communion of saints
if I withheld my judgment that, on balance, the effort, habits and consciousness necessary to be a
good citizen of the blog universe competes with the development of habits and forms of attention
required to be deeply immersed in a theological tradition. The reading and writing of paragraphs in a
blog, however well done, remains a strikingly different activity than reading, digesting and being
changed by a text like Augustine’s City of God, or Barth’s Church Dogmatics. The sheer difficulty
and difference such texts present is theologically important in inviting us to consider whether in fact
we and our forms of communication may be anomalous or even inferior, and in raising theological
questions about why one form might have advantages over another. We cannot prejudge whether or
not this is the case, but we will have no grounds from which to make a judgment if we do not learn to
listen to the saints as they have presented themselves to us.

The Promise of Theological Blogging

It is not yet clear how genuine transformative and reconciling encounter might fruitfully emerge in the
blogosphere. An impulse to be more theologically constructive might, however, push us to imagine
theological blogging finding an orienting purpose explicitly ancillary to the physical gathering of the
worshipping community and disavowing any desire to displace it. It thus far has not surmounted the
cultural and technical undertows to become a forum for the sustained and patient attention that is
evident in academic writing, reading and reviewing books, nor the growth in affection that transcends
(but not erases) cultural difference in the midst of theological disputes taking place in person. When
it has done so, it submits to forms of stage managing that intensify communicative potential that
have developed over time in other forums: the symposium, journal, or book format, to name a few.

To blog as a way of writing a book, to take one example, substantially changes blog conversations.
The form and gravitas of the culture of print publishing immediately influences the content of the
blog, generating, for instance, much more substantive and careful interactions between a group that
is necessarily limited to hand-picked conversational partners aware their writing will be edited to
freeze the best moments of the discussion for publication. The internet is a public forum, and one
primarily suited to the thoughtful handing on of knowledge, which differs from publicity in being a gift
to others, rather than a mode of self-aggrandizement. In it the goings on of the world can be
observed and brought to the church’s attention and the things of the church can be disseminated
and digested. But for the reasons discussed, it ought not be expected it to become the primary locus
of the church’s theological thinking, nor to displace the church’s gathering for worship or its ordained
authorities.

Theological blog sites at their best show evidence of awareness of these pitfalls and their primary
location within the physical and local church. Such sites fill an intermediate niche in the church’s
pedagogical and dialogical tasks. If pursued seriously and prayerfully they may produce writing both
more intellectual and responsible than much Christian populist publishing while being more
accessible, both physically and in terms of presentation, than the extended ecclesial discussion
taking place in academic journals. They also invite academic theologians too often guilty of hoarding
their insights under the influence of ideologies of individual academic reputation, intellectual
property, profit, or career advancement to consider a new liberality in sharing their theological
insights and writing. Theirs is thus a freeing word to academic theologians in witnessing that
whatever is of value in their work is a gift of the Spirit that it is dangerous to hoard. As such they can
provide salutary counterbalance to the undertows of “bookish” theology whose medium and
institutional location allow it all too easily to drift free of its allegiance to the church and to theology
as in essence another form of praising the name of the Lord.

Bloggers may participate in their own way in the church finding its mind through the discussions that
introduce, disseminate, fact check and hold theologians to their vocation of patient and serious
thought. In this way they might call for the highest standard of communication even as they validate
the indispensability and centrality of more permanent and accountable mediums and authorities. In
this action they too may serve the gentle unifying power of the Spirit. As we see in secular spheres,
blogging cannot displace the mainstream media outlets who sign, date and stand behind the
accuracy of their every word, not as opinion but as truth with a concrete address. But bloggers,
insofar as they are attentive to texts and real-world details, can call these official actors to a higher
standard, while simultaneously validating the greater responsibility and authority to which they, and
not bloggers, are held (Bailey, p. 180). Even those media corporations who are increasingly shifting
their emphasis to online publishing in order to absorb some of the immediacy and ease of access of
online culture are developing protocols for ensuring the quality and accuracy of their material. In so
doing they ensure that some form of elite gatekeeper role will remain (Alterman, 2008). Discernment
and moral ownership cannot be eradicated from trustworthy communication.

It is exceedingly difficult to simultaneously inhabit the cultures of instantaneous opinion and official
and laboriously fact-checked writing. I am suggesting both that the cultural undertow among
bloggers is very strong toward communication as opinion-statement or display, and that any hope of
combating this undertow will be derived from a transformation of this culture by submerging it in the
praise discourse that necessarily orients the truth discourse of the worshipping community
(Wannenwetsch, 2004, p. 331). When this transfer of allegiance takes place, the internet may no
longer appear as the most suitable forum for many ecclesial activities, its worship, education,
pastoral care and so on. That the task of pastoral care is already migrating into the blogosphere as
the blog becomes an ersatz confessional or pastoral forum is a stark reminder to the local church of
the critical nature of its responsibility for discernment, and a standing indictment of its not having
been perceived as peopled with interested enough listeners who invite all into the body. The power
of the new communication technologies to create an idolatrous sense of simultaneous collectivity will
only gain momentum amidst a western church that has lost any sense of the true simultaneity of the
communion of saints.

REFERENCES

References

Alterman, E. (2008). Out of print: The death and life of the American newspaper. The New Yorker,
31 March 2008.
Bailey, J. (2007). Welcome to the blogosphere. In K. Vanhoozer, C. Anderson, and M. Sleasman
(Eds.) Everyday theology: How to read cultural texts and interpret trends (ch. 8). Grand Rapids:
Baker Academic.

Barkat, L. L. (2007). A new kind of body: How the blogosphere is transforming the way Christians
connect. Today’s Christian.

Borsook, P. (2000). Cyberselfish: A critical romp through the terribly libertarian culture of high tech.
London: Little, Brown, and Company.

Grant, G. (1986). Thinking about technology. In Technology and justice. (Notre Dame: University of
Notre Dame Press.

Grant, G. (2005). Man-made Man. In Davis and Roper (Eds.) Collected Works, Vol. 3. Toronto:
University of Toronto Press.

Hütter, R. (2000). Suffering divine things: Theology as church practice. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.

Jacobs, A. (2006). Goodbye, blog: The friend of information but the enemy of thought. Books and
Culture.

Merton, T. (1986). Faith and Violence. Notre Dame: University of Nature Dame Press.
Penner, M.B. and H. Barnes. (2006). A new kind of conversation: Blogging toward a postmodern
faith. Milton Keynes: Paternoster.

Rosen, C. (2008). People of the screen. The New Atlantis, 22.

Saxenian, A.L. (1994). Regional advantage: Culture and competition in silicon valley and route 128.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Taylor, C. (2002). Varieties of religion today: William James revisited. Cambridge: Harvard University
Press.

Wannenwetsch, B. (1996). Cyberwirklichkeit—glaubensfeindlich? Nachrichten der Evang.-Luth.

Kirche in Bayern 51.

Wannenwetsch, B. (2000). Communication as Transformation. Studies in Christian Ethics 13(1): 93-

106.

Wannenwetsch, B. (2001). Der profi: Mensch ohne eigenschaften: Warum die kirche amageure
braucht. Alles ist nichts: Evangelium Horen II, 45-55. Nuremberg.
Wannenwetsch, B. (2002). Die Ökonomie des Gottesdienstes—eine alternative zum
gestaltungsparadigma im liturgischen handeln. In Jörg Neijenhuis (Ed.), Evangelishes
Gottesdienstbuch und Kirchenrecht: Beiträge zur Liturgie und Spiritualitat. Leipzig: Evangelishe
Verlaganstalt.

Wannenwetsch, B. (2004). Political worship: Ethics for Christian Citizens. Oxford:Oxford University
Press.

Ward, P. (2002). Liquid church. Carlisle: Paternoster.

METHOD

Considering the research questions of this study a comparative research design method, which entails
studying two contrasting cases using more or less identical method, was used.

This research design helps to understand the social phenomena in a better way when they are
compared in in relation to two or more meaningfully contrasting situations (Bryman 2012:72). To collect
data for this study an interview data collection method was used and structured and semi structured
interviews were employed. Among the interviews both group and individual interview will be used. To
explore the views, experiences, beliefs and/or motivations of individuals on the research questions
individual interview were used. The researcher made the group interview to save time and money by
carrying out interviews with a number of individuals simultaneously. To compare and contrast the
historical context of the research as well as how this research is different or original from what others
have been done and to realize the rationale behind this research, a literature review has been done.
Additionally, to use literatures as a secondary source of data a review of literatures were done.
Materials like textbooks, articles, journals, magazines and the Bible was used. These materials helped
me to lay a foundation for my thesis by understanding the researches and the knowledge available in
this field and the cyber church in which I was conducting my research. To select the respondents of this
research a purposive sampling method was employed with the goal to sample respondents in a strategic
way so that those sampled are relevant to the research questions that are being presented (Bryman,
2012:418). This implies that the respondents had to be relevant to the research and there had to be a
correlation with the main research questions. Accordingly, church pastors, church elders and
participants of the Ethiopian Christian Plus All Paltalk room (both those who have administrative role in
the room and those who don‘t have any role in the room) were included as respondents of the research.
This means the people had to be relevant to the study and in my case this group included: youth
members, youth leaders, church ministers, youth patrons and the church council.
CHAPS 4

Of the 15 selected respondents said that there are many similarities between the Cyber Church and the
local church, the points mentioned by them in a similar manner are, the Bible study, the prayer and
fasting time, annual and seasonal conferences, teaching the Word of God, and preaching to the
unsaved, and most of the worship songs in the local churches are the same as the songs being sung in
the cyber Church In addition to the above, three of the respondents believe that the similarities among
both the cyber and local churches are real, the similarity they identified and mentioned by the
respondents includes: - getting together and discussing on mutual issues sharing mutual concerns
spiritual, social and material, missionary work, addressing issues related to the needs of believers,
prayers together and learning & sharing the Gospel.

Advantages of participating in the cyber service compared with the local Church Even Though this
question was addressed to all respondents, almost all of them who are active participants answered
very positively expounding its advantages where in some cases 49 until it looks like it was very much
exaggerated. For example, one of the respondents said ―the benefit I am getting from the ECPA cannot
be described in words‖ and she continued again ―in time of my desperate need when it was not
possible for me to meet up with anyone from my local church, God has used this ministry to comfort,
heal and bring me to repentance and guided me through different stages of my life.‖ She said that she
considers herself to have grown in the knowledge of God through this ministry and she was also able to
minister to others going out of her former situation which she used to have a life restricted in her own
four walls. Two respondents expressed their benefit of joining the cyber Church that they were able to
get many friends that they now consider themselves as family members through this fellowship on the
cyber Church, they said that they were encouraged, and that they felt as if they would know each other
for years and years. Three respondents pointed out that the people who are not able to attend the
regular Sunday or regular Bible study programs on the weekdays can get those services online with the
cyber church which is accessible without any time and place limitation which is not possible in the local
church set up. One respondent from Europe emphasized as ―especially in the European context people
do not have time to attend regular church services due to a work load compared to what they used to
do it back home in Ethiopia and Eritrea where a Christian has the possibility to participate at church
services at least 2 times per week even more. In his specific situation people in Europe are coming to
church mostly once in a week. He continued in explaining that at his church people come travelling from
areas as far as a 40 KM radius by public transports to attend the regular Sunday services. Due to these
and other reasons they won't be able to come to church every week. That is where this online
community would compensate the time they are not able to attend at the local churches and would be
help for individual Christian because it is not limited by time and space. People can get the spiritual
support that they need for their life. One respondent underlined that the advantage of the cyber Church
is that people are given the opportunity to comment on what is preached or shared in text while the
teaching and preaching session is in progress, He said ―It is an advantage by itself which is not available
at 50 the local Churches where the formal way is to listen to the sermons and go home without getting
the platform to discuss or ask question about the issue preached or taught.‖ Two of the respondents
also accentuated as the main advantage of the Cyber Church is that it made the outreach ministry very
friendly and easy. Since the cost of travelling and time consumption for someone to travel for reaching
out to people from one continent to another and from one country to another is very expensive and
time consuming. One of the respondents, a lady from the central Europe said that she can name lots of
benefits such as how Jesus found her through this ministry and was urging her to draw closer to Him. It
was also in this service that for the first time she accepted the Lord Jesus as her personal saviour and
started to understand the word of God. Besides that the opportunity to find different people who
encourage her many share their opinions and advise which is also a great benefit while she also gets the
opportunity to be served by these God‘s people who bring different topics every day for discussion and
make her understand many spiritual truths without leaving her home at the tip of her fingers.
Weakness of the Cyber Church in comparison with the local church In this study respondents were
allowed to identify the weakness of the cyber church in comparison with the local church. Based on the
response of the participants of the study the following weakness of the cyber churches were identified.
Almost all of these respondents emphasized that although this cyber Church contributed to the last
day‘s harvest they saw the following few things which needed to need to be added to Cyber Church
services in order to make it more effective and productive. One problem mentioned by two respondents
is that some cyber church members are very active on the online services while they are not attending
the programs at the local churches in the cities they are living in. Since the cyber Church cannot replace
the local church they should also need to be encouraged or be told to join the regular church services at
the areas where they live. For this the reason mentioned these members think whatever they get from
cyber ministry is good enough for them to the extent that they don‘t need anything from the local
churches which created a mistrust among the local church leaders thinking the cyber church members
or participants are not respecting the local churches. 51 If a Cyber Church needs to be more effective,
the leadership should create a kind of network with the local churches‘ leadership which are found in
every city so that there can be a mutual understanding and harmonious relationship towards the cyber
and the local church body. Three of the respondents also mentioned that the Cyber Church misses out
many important qualities of a church mentioning, that the number one quality is having individual
human interaction on a personal level. One of them said, ―At least for now, cyber Church definitely
lacks a physical/human interaction.‖ One of the respondent has a concern as the weak point of the
Cyber Church seems to him that he is just dealing with people in nicknames and he doesn‘t know who
they are and what their background is in their real life is. Two of the respondents feel like some of the
people who regularly attend the cyber church might tend to view the physical meeting of the church as
not necessary or irrelevant. That is the tendency of the participants of the Cyber Church reflected as far
as they understand. One respondent has a concern that people could easily be deceived by listening and
accepting any idea from any person behind the microphone, since there is no way to verify the
background of the person behind the microphone.

Two of the respondents from the pastors and elders group expressed that as Protestants they believe
that they, the universal Church as well as the local are beneficiaries of the advancement of technology
since it speeds up and simplifies the work in the field of the harvest of the Gospel. Therefore they
believe that the cyber Church should not be seen as a threat for a local Church.

Cyber church as a threat to the local Church Two of the respondents from the pastors and elders group
expressed that as Protestants they believe that they, the universal Church as well as the local are
beneficiaries of the advancement of technology since it speeds up and simplifies the work in the field of
the harvest of the Gospel. Therefore they believe that the cyber Church should not be seen as a threat
for a local Church.
Problems related to cyber Church For all of the respondents from Africa and the Middle East the main
problem mentioned is lack of proper networking facilities. Besides the network problem that means a
good Internet connection the power cut is also a significant problem in using and participating in the
cyber Church. A power cut and network interruption in the middle of interesting discussion topic,
teaching, worship and prayer etc., is addressed as ―very much annoying and disappointing‖ by most
respondents.

Why are people attracted to the cyber church? There are lots of popular social media groups on line,
these includes, Facebook, tweeter, Instagram, Google, Yahoo, Paltalk etc. These popular social media
groups have millions of followers (in the case of Face books and some others, billions) depending on the
need and accessibility and availability of the services depending where the person lives. I personally
encountered problems in china and Turkey where Face book was not available during my short stay
there as a tourist. When I have started the ECPA in 2002, I found it convenient to use the social media
which is called paltalk, which was very much convenient in terms of compatibility with windows which
most of our people in the Diaspora are using. Until now the paltalk messenger who is the easiest
application for using the paltalk services is not as compatible with the Mac and I phones and I pad as it is
with PCs, lap tops and androids. The paltalk program for Mac products is which the cyber world
nowadays as the real world has been categorized in different categories. The Paltalk, which the
Ethiopian Christians Plus all room is operating under it, is dividing its users in different categories In
order to use the cyber Church on paltalk there are lots of factors, which are important such as 1)
Hardware (laptop, desk top iPhone, I Pad or smart phones, 2) software, windows or other programs
compatible to the paltalk programs 3) Internet access 4) Suitable atmosphere in order to concentrate
and be part of the services. 63 There were lots of recorded incidents, which has been encountered by
our members in different parts of the world where participants were provoked threatened and even
physically and verbally abused while they were participating on line. When I summarized the reasons
why the cyber Church participants are attracted to join and most of them remained loyal attendants of
this online service this study revealed that the following reasons were the major stimulating factors for
individuals to join or attracted by cyber church. First and for most is its availability at any time of the
day, secondly the chance that they can access it from anywhere as long as they have their devices which
has internet connection and thirdly, the affordability (low cost) which at the moment can be obtained
with small amount of money depending on the size of the internet line. Ever since its introduction to the
public, the internet is widely used in the daily life of the society in a rapid advancement more than any
other technology has been appealed to the overall need of the society in all areas. At the moment, the
most known traditional ways of daily business and social communications such as education, all kinds of
business transactions and productions, including Banking, the media such as radio and Television
services, air transport, shipping lines and ticketing has been almost either replaced or partially taken
over by internet based services. To give a simple example that I was amazed when I contacted the
airlines agent in Ottawa Canada for my lost luggage, the person who was answering the phone was a
local Indian man working from and residing in Mumbai India who successfully led me through all the
process until my bag was located and home delivered. This gentleman may have or have not been be in
Canada at all but he is working for a company in Canada just living in his own country. Likewise it is in
the same manner people living somewhere else in the world are engaged and actively participate in one
cyber Church together as if they live in the same country or city. They no more worry about the absence
of a local Church except in few points when they require a physical fellowship. In Norway, almost the
traditional Banking, postal services are declining where Bank and post office branches offices shrinking
from time to time. In the same manner as the all the social services the Church also has been challenged
by the advent of the Internet that people start to 64 see the Internet fellowships and cyber churches
either as the only means due to the nonavailability of local Churches in the areas they are living or even
at the presence of local Churches they give many reasons why they are more attracted and prefer to be
part of the cyber Church on the internet either as their main Church or as an alternative to the local
Church they are already attending . The second main reason why the cyber church attracted many
people is that a physical presence is not mandatory. According to the study many of the active
participants the reason many of the members were attracted to the cyber church was that its difference
from the traditional way of the local Church in a way of its performing the does not require a physical
presence but instead it can be done from anywhere the participant finds himself, Besides that the cyber
church program allows a direct involvement of the congregation unlike the local church programs which
is done by few people/the clergy and the congregations which has a direct involvement of people is very
limited. If we take local churches like Lutheran and Anglicans for example, their services are conducted
based on the liturgy already written in the book or memorized by the members which they should
follow when led by the priest or the pastor accordingly, while it comes to the Cyber Church the program
is dynamic and open to all where it provides a platform for direct involvement of all participants which
most of the ECPA members appreciate and are very fond of it. Though it is an advantage to have a long
hour service on line and at the same time even though it is well appreciated by the members on the
cyber Church, It should be considered that there is a problem in this area where families are hurting,
children are neglected and people suffering from inability to control themselves to lead their life in
discipline by limiting their presence on line. In practical terms not only due to the different time zones
but also in the same time zones I observed that some participants may not get enough sleep by being
present in the room all the time which might affect the health, family, education or their social life.
When a member or just a participant stays excessive hours on line the participants and their family
members especially their children when they stay excessive hours of time on line. I 65 personally
intervened in many occasions as a responsible person for the safety of the members to remind those
who stay too long in the room reminding them about the proper usage of this service and to caution and
warn those who deliberately ignore my gentle reminder with strong conversation with them in order to
help them to use this service properly. For example those who are from the Eastern time zone of USA to
go to bed when I see them at 9:00 Am (CET) in the room which is their 3:00 AM or for those from Pacific
time zone which is a midnight there. There were also official complaints from spouses directly addressed
to me as a visionary/ owner of ECPA to take action to rescue the marriage which is in danger of
collapsing unless the member/participant stop being for long hours in paltalk than they want them to
be. The long hours of availability of the service on line, or that is the local churches have few hours of
services per week which in some churches even the clergy other than those who are assigned for the
day are not able to get a chance to take part due to the time limit allocated for the whole service. In
most west European cases the church service is no longer than 2 hours to the maximum including the
fellowship time. While we come to the cyber church the service is twenty four hours a day seven days a
week with much opportunity to get a chance to serve and be engaged in different activities such as
singing, giving testimonies, praying of just greeting people who comes to the room and inviting and
encouraging them to come to the mic as the opportunity enables. At local churches current hot issue are
either taboo or considered as politics. By the way it is worth to mention that Politics is one of the issue
Ethiopian Pentes /born again Christians / are not comfortable to discuss due to the bad experience most
passed at home in the communist /Derg era 1974-1991 and even now they are fearful of any political
involvement since ethnicity is more central to the present day politics of the country which is not
compatible with the Biblical principle of ―There is neither Jew nor Greek.‖ (Gal 3:28) The main reason
the cyber church members are attracted towards the cyber Church is that the way the programs are
implemented. In the cyber Church the teaching of the word of God on special topics that appeal to the
daily need of the participants. As one of the respondents said ―I found that pal talk is a perfect tool to
transfer the Gospel without any restriction, such as, the fear of people opinion‖ he said he means that
on the true nature of Christ his Biblical role and his Deity without fear of prejudices from the tradition
and background he came from. The 66 local Churches function on the services of their minsters who are
limited in number while at the cyber Church minsters from all over the world, from different
denominational background and educational level serve with variety of program which makes the cyber
Church attractive. In the local church, time is an issue for continuous teaching on a topic or one book of
the Bible if the minster starts a continues teaching on ordinary weekly or in some cases bi weekly
services the minster may need to have many months to cover his topic while in the cyber Church with
the opening time of 24 hours a day, it is ideal to get an extended teaching without any interruption. On
the other hand people feel safe and secured to get something any time they join the cyber church while
in the local Church it is open for a fixed period of the week. Apart from the services of the assigned
minsters selected audio and video teaching can be played and people will get something any time of the
day where ever they are in the world. In local Church one can see the other fellow and may feel inferior
in terms of dress codes and appearance in the middle of Church members. This is not uncommon even
in the first century Church the issue was visible which the writer of the book of James ― For if there
come unto your assembly a man with a gold ring, in goodly apparel, and there come in also a poor man
in vile raiment‖ James 2:2 we can understand that the writer has to mentioned this since it has been an
issue of the time while this is not an issue at all in the cyber Church since people are not meeting in
person and they are not required to use video cameras to present themselves. In the same manner in
the Cyber Church people are not required to mention their age, which makes no one to feel inferior or
superior in terms of age differences. There are many families of 2 generations who actively participate
and exceptionally 2 families of three generations each actively worshipping and serving in ECPA. The
teaching the word of God at a local church is again done in a traditional manner where the assigned
preacher speaks for 45-60 minutes in Diaspora and 60-120 minutes at home, the part of the people is to
listen up to the end and be part of the sermon in just listening. When it comes to the cyber Church I
found pal talk is a perfect tool to transfer the Gospel without any restriction, such as, the fear of people
opinion on the true teaching of Jesus Christ. 67 The local church teaching could be restricted, but it
depends on the situation. In the local church, time is an issue for continuous teaching. Since time is on
pal talk‘s side stretched for the 24 hours of the day people can be connected any time from home or
work. I believe all concerned parties; the local and the cyber Churches have a golden opportunity on
their hand to using all methods the old and the new from broadcasting recorded massages to live
transmissions and online services to meet their purpose using the cyber Church. As Churches in Europe
have the attendance of older generation, the young feel that the church is not for them but at the cyber
Church this difference is not visible at all the reason being the absence of physical fellowship. There was
also one point underlined by many which is an autocratic leadership style blamed as a reason some
members of local churches to pushing members from the church, especially the youngsters, to leave the
local Church and to join cyber churches. The cyber Church as it is found on the web looks like a
disorganized and misguided body that hangs on the air. That is very true in most cases since spirituality
and preaching and worship is done freely without much controlling mechanisms. Many prophesy, pray
and worship openly on line and participants join and leave the room flowing like a river all the time, this
flow of people opens a way for false teachers, for people who swindle and take advantage of innocent
people who seek help for their daily problems. In other situations the fact is that most Cyber Churches
lack organizational structures to control and guide the activities of the rooms and take the necessary
administrational and disciplinary actions as required. At the Ethiopian and Eritreans local Churches, the
question of disciplining members is very visible when unchristian behaviour is reported against a
member. When issues which require disciplinary measures happen, the pastor/church leader will call
the member and council them. It is also a normal procedure at ECPA that a reported case against a
member is taken seriously until it is settled in the right way. Most participants and members of ECPA are
scattered all over the world and they speak the second language the languages of the countries they live
in. have problem since all of the participants do not have the knowledge of the English language in equal
level. In order to cope up with the problem and to fill the gap in language most use the Amharic
language in Latin alphabet that sometimes has a double meaning or lack of the proper sound when it is
68 written in Latin alphabet. For example the Latin alphabet cannot write the Amharic words like, moon,
hair, colour etc. which creates confusion when someone try to write some words in Latin in his own way,
since there is no an existing system as such for that. One very interesting thing to mention when we talk
about language is that since the cyber Church members are people who live in different continents and
countries those who live in the gulf and the middle eastern countries will insert Arabic while they are
talking, those in Germany, they insert Dutch and most of the participants think that the others
understand them. To give a few examples, someone who lives in Scandinavia says, ―this morning I
missed the tog and.‖ And immediately the participants from other regions say, ―What is tog? Still,
another person will say ―oh! Sorry I mean the train.‖ Someone from Germany will say ―I was at
Hauptbahnhof this morning, and the people from non-Dutch speaking areas say ―what??‖ ―What did u
say?‖ And the person immediately says, ―Oh, I am sorry I meant the main train station.‖ In such ways it
is very normal to hear all the languages of the world mixed with Amharic when people are speaking and
live in different countries which shows the diversity of the members of the cyber Churches. Personally, I
wish the local Church would also be the same in comprising of people from languages and nations as the
day of Pentecost.
Negative Perception towards the cyber Church It is found that there are negative perceptions towards
the cyber Church. There are many church leaders who complain against the cyber Church blaming its
members and participants for the misuse of the cyber Church for the wrong purpose. Different reasons
have been given to justify this accusation. The first negative perception about cyber Church is that
church leaders are based on my first-hand experience of 15 years in the ECPA. Roughly 40% of the cyber
Church participants complain about not knowing who the real are the participants of the cyber Churches
are and what is their real identity the real world, whether there is a means or mechanism to identify
their real personality and a way to verify these whole issues of identity. The reason the complainers
gave is that a person can claim who he is on line which may be a fake identity without any proof for
what he claims in the real world. Because Christianity is a life style and the person‘s real identity matters
in order to accept him as a Church leader or the 69 servant of God who can be a trusted as the servant
of God and his people especially, if he/she is involved in the teaching ministry. Primarily, one of the main
threats or negative perception considered by outsiders and even by some cyber Church members is the
issue of controversial topics presented for discussion that have theological roots and cultural reaction.
Just to give one practical example, the Apostolic Church of Ethiopia that we call the ―Jesus only
Church,‖ have also a cyber-fellowship on line. The members of this group also are active in other
orthodox10 Christian rooms, since their theological differences with the orthodox Pentecostals is a bit
difficult to identify them easily. As Lang (2002) 11 , indicated that ―Unfortunately, it's likely that most
Christian laypeople, if they were presented with the orthodox view and the Oneness churches' view,
would either shrug off the differences as extremely minor or would not even be able to grasp them.‖
This issue is very relevant in ECPA where these kind of denominations, the Jehovah witnesses, the Jesus
only Church members who are accused of intentionally joining the cyber Churches and try to allure new
believers to make them proselytize to their faith. There are registered cases where those members of
have left the room and joined these denominations. The other point is that the cyber Church members
are blamed of having its members having communication difficulty with a local church but very active in
the cyber Church. This is a real threat for good communication between the cyber Church and the local
churches. From theological issues there have been reported incidents that people who do not have a
good testimony, for example morally, in the cities they live, have been found as active preachers and
members of the cyber Church on line. In some cases, married people, in all reported cases the offenders
are men, approached single ladies by promising that they will marry them just to deceive those innocent
women who are desperate to get married. The other point considered and mentioned as a negative
perception towards the cyber Church is that some members collecting money from online believers for
unjustified and none 10 It does not mean the Ethiopian Orthodox Church but the Christian Trinitarian
denominations 11 http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2002/april1/22.60.html?start=2 70 existing
projects which could not be verified in Ethiopia and Eritrea to gain dishonest financial benefit. 7.6
Positive perceptions towards cyber Church According to this research, members of the cyber Church,
the local church leaders and members who participated in this study, have different views depending on
the group who sees the role of the cyber Church. One of the positive attributes given to the cyber
church is the location independent of geographical and time zone since the cyber Church is online from
one location available to anyone from any parts of the world. Though time zones create division, they
are also its own qualities. Though the ECPA is online 24 hours a day, seven days a week, the programs
are conducted and allocated in advance and posted on the web site and privately distributed for those
who are assigned every Sunday starting from 09:00 Am (CET) that program will be missed by a
participant from Oakland, California, USA since it is mid night there and a participant from Melbourne
Australia which is 6:00 PM in the evening. Here different time and geographical zones can log in one
room at one time The positive issue worth mentioning here is that the cyber Church avoided the time
constraint and allowed one-time zone to serve the other defiling the limitation or the restriction of time
with a considerable sacrifice paid by the participant of the other time zone in terms of adjusting the
program to fit in to the services he /she would like to join. For example, if they work at a night shift and
their working condition allows to log in Paltalk they can be actively engaged by the time which was
supposed to be used for sleep or other purposes. The other positive issue of the cyber Church is that it
avoids the status in age difference which dominates the in Ethiopian and Eritrean societies where
children are not allowed to participate much with adults. Even until recently in some Ethiopian Eritrean
cultures children were not allowed to eat with adults. 71 The age difference between participants also
plays a special role which we cannot avoid it. A family of three generations, a lady at her 70s with her
son and granddaughter who are administrators in the cyber church, the challenge for me as a leader of
the cyber church how to communicate with this three generation of participants in the same language.
The understanding of the term Church by these three generations, of people is not the same, and when
it comes to cyber Church, it is much different than we can imagine. In a similar manner the older
generations of Ethiopians and Eritreans as it mentioned in Chapter three have a very unique cultural
understanding which sees the churches‘ building, as a holy sacred place, a place of social gathering, the
baptism place, the burial place which has a meaning of the final home. With this understanding of the
local Church in mind we can imagine how this culture will have a difficulty to accept a cyber-Church as a
Church. At the traditional local Churches there is not much interaction in the order of worship liturgy
except to follow up the Priest from the beginning to the end of the service, while in the cyber Church
these three generations interact with one another in worship, discussions, prayers etc., defiling the
generation gap. For example, we can imagine when the granddaughter listens the song selected by her
grandmother which is mostly from the early or late 70s and by the granddaughter which is probably
from the contemporary ones which have a different language, style and tune for the lady in her mid-70s.
The cyber Church having mixed generations in one room is helpful to communicate easily. In the similar
circumstances the gender difference doesn‘t have any influence as it does in the local Churches where in
the Ethiopian orthodox Church the entrance gate and the worship space in the church is segregated to
avoid a mix of gender in the Church which still is in the minds of the born-again Christians attending the
protestant Churches. The other positive factor, which is to be commended, is that there is no gender
discrimination issue at all. As most of the participants in ECPA are women due to various reasons such as
most of the immigrant workers in the gulf and many Middle Eastern and Mediterranean countries are
women who are engaged in house hold job as house maids, janitor and care takers who have access to
internet. Apart from that there are also women in the west who will be in maternal permission who
stays home with children and those who are working in shifts, 72 and many who have possibilities to log
in from their working places log in to the cyber church and actively participate. In fact, most of the
participants and active program leaders are women. Traditionally the Church has been a male
dominated society and still that it is more visible among the Ethiopian and Eritrean contexts. The Cyber
Church eliminates these and the freedom and comfortable atmosphere for women in leading worship,
prayer and sharing testimonies is more visible at the cyber Church than the local Church. One of the
areas the cyber Church makes feel people comfortable by avoiding the status of educational standards.
It does not mean that educated people are not respected or not heard but it means that uneducated
people do not feel inferior because of their lower education level since the ECPA has people from
different walk of life. The level of education is varying from PhD from a famous seminary in USA to
elementary school that gathered in one common goal just to worship God and share their faith one
another. Sometimes when the educated ones mix English while they talk, pray or discuss those who
don‘t understand it ask in the lobby and even they whisper or come to private window of someone they
may think help them to ask the meaning of that English word they don‘t understand, or appeal to the
administrators and the owner so that people will clarify and if possible not to use difficult English words.
In the local Churches people might be grouped based on their status but in the Cyber Church there is no
status of any kind just a member or a participant. The very important issue is also the possibility of
remaining anonymous as long as the person keeps his privacy for himself, to emphasise this issue a bit,
some Ethiopians and Eritreans Shared their frustrations of feeling attracted for the same sex. When they
need prayer and counselling for this issue they are very much afraid of how to say it and very much
suspicious for whom to say it fearing a backlash if these issue licks out to the community, in this
instance, many people are very thankful for the availability of the cyber church where no one can
recognize who and from where they are

RECOMMENDATION
there are studies on globalization and church that are done in the USA and in Europe. These studies did
not specify the impression of church members in cyber and local churches.
At Last my strongest recommendation is that the cyber Church is becoming popular and attractive for
the new generation, Therefore, local churches, besides their traditional way of performing church
services, they need to be prepared to go to the cyber world to reach out those on the internet.

George, Susan (2006) Religion and Technology in the 21st Century: Faith in the E-world London,
Information science publishing
Bailey, Brian (2007) The blogging Church, London John Willey & Sons
Bosch David J (2012) Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission, New York Orbis
Books
Groothuis, Douglas (1999) the Soul in the Cyber Space, Oregon, Wipf & Stock Publishers