Is Online Church Real Church?

Short answer: A livestream by itself is not church. It is a crowd watching a service. But online can be a real expression of the church when it does what Acts 2 describes, teaching, fellowship, breaking bread, prayer, and generosity, with a pathway toward face-to-face community. I wrote Online Church Is Not the Answer and have pastored an online community for fifteen years. Both are true at once.

We love the extremes, but reality happens in the middle. One side says the church is a physical thing, best expressed in person, end of conversation. The other side gets excited about avatars being baptized in virtual reality. Most churches live in neither place. So let me try to have the real conversation.

What does the Bible actually call church?

The Greek word is ecclesia, and it just means gathering. It was a common secular word. The Bible uses it for the people of God gathering, for Greek city assemblies, and the Septuagint used it for Israel. The church hijacked the word. Over years, followers of Jesus gathered so regularly, with such different kinds of people, that ecclesia stopped meaning a normal gathering and started meaning this one.

You can watch the word evolve through Acts: one gathering in Jerusalem, then plural gatherings in Antioch, Galatia, Ephesus, Corinth, Philippi, Colossae, Thessalonica, and Rome. And Acts 2, 4, and 5 tell you what those gatherings were like:

They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. And awe came upon every soul. All who believed were together and had all things in common. Day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.

So the marks of a biblical ecclesia are teaching, fellowship, breaking bread and prayer, awe and God moving, having things in common, generosity so that no one is needy, gathering together, meeting house to house, praising God with favor from outsiders, and people being saved. Plus the two ordinances the early church facilitated: communion and baptism.

Read that list again and ask an uncomfortable question. Is your church's Sunday gathering actually a biblical ecclesia? Because biblical church is a lot more than "apostle teaching," which surprises most people.

So can that happen online?

Parts of it can, and the pattern in Acts is more helpful here than you would expect. The early church had two rhythms: the "temple courts" gathering, which became Sunday, and "house to house," the weekday life in homes. Most churches still do this with a weekend service and a midweek or small group expression.

With online ministry, there are two kinds of temple-courts gatherings: a digital one, which happens on your stream, YouTube, or Facebook weekly in real time, and an in-person one, which happens in homes hosted by members in cities anywhere, which is really a house church. Both are supported by house-to-house life in groups, where the Acts 2 list actually gets lived out locally.

That is the model. Not "online instead of in person." Online as one temple-courts expression that feeds house-to-house community, with a pathway to the in-person expression. If you are an online church leader, make sure you have a pathway to both.

Isn't face-to-face community the biblical standard?

Yes. I still believe face-to-face community is not going anywhere for the church. Hebrews 10:25, "not neglecting to meet together," should be ringing in the back of your mind. The purpose of fellowship is best expressed in person.

But "best expressed" is not the same as "only expressed." Here is how I think about it. The Tower of Babel was man's attempt to become God. Picture a Digital Tower of Babel for fellowship: at the top is face-to-face community, and at the bottom is something as simple as a text message. Texting a friend, a phone call, a video meeting, each expresses some percentage of fellowship. I know this because group texts have encouraged me and Zoom meetings have grown me closer to my brothers in Christ. Some platforms sit higher on the tower than others. Instead of saying nothing can be done online, ask where it sits on the tower, and build a pathway upward.

The thief on the cross is the other guardrail. He never attended a gathering, never took communion, never got baptized, and Jesus said, "Today you will be with me in paradise." Do not lessen what is possible while trying to protect what God wants to do. And in the same breath: do not take your foot off the pedal of in-person community. What matters is that your church has a strategy to move watchers toward face-to-face community.

Does watching church online count as attending?

It depends on what you mean by count. If you have a worship service online and nothing else, you have a crowd, not a congregation. Watching is not belonging. A person becomes part of a church when they are known, when they are in a group, when they serve, when they give, when they take a next step. That is true for the person in the back row of your building too.

So count online watchers honestly, using the same method every week, and then measure the thing that matters: how many of them moved from watching to being known. Pastors are genuinely split on this. In Lifeway's research, roughly half of pastors said online participation should count as attendance and half said it should not, which tells you the question is really about definitions.

Can you take communion online?

Yes, and it is simpler than churches make it. Communion is not a means of salvation. It is a testament of a believer's faith in the atoning work of the cross, so it is for believers. Ask people to have juice and bread or crackers with them, open with prayer, let the pastor introduce communion, then read Luke 22:19 and eat, read Luke 22:20 and drink, and leave space to remember. We have done this on Zoom with an online community, and every church does communion differently, so offer it online the same way that aligns with how your church already practices it.

Can you be baptized through an online church?

Yes, because the Bible does not put many limits on who can baptize. Have you put your faith in Jesus? Do you have the Holy Spirit? You can baptize. "No experts needed" was Jesus's mantra. Since 2013 Saddleback has offered four paths for people in our online community: travel to a campus, go to the nearest church that does water baptism, train a friend or family member to perform it, or wait until one of our pastors is in the area. I have trained a small group host to baptize a woman from Japan during her work trip to San Francisco, found a church an hour's bus ride away for a man in Rwanda, and baptized three group members in a bathtub in Northern California. Lift the limitations. Let God work through your online community.

Isn't online community shallow?

Church online is a partial expression of what the Bible calls community, but that does not mean it cannot serve a purpose. Your online service is geared for people who would never attend a local church. Think of it as the conversation in a coffee shop that leads someone to attend your church. You would never call that connection shallow. For many people it is the first step and, honestly, the safest kind of community for a new person to experience.

And be careful about going the other direction. An 81-year-old man in my area was a Dodgers season-ticket holder for fifty years until the team stopped printing tickets and he had no smartphone. Churches span generations. Introduce digital, but do not build a digital-only church that leaves your oldest members outside the door. Multi-generational connection is what biblical community is.

Where do I go deeper?

• Biblical Ecclesia, 2 Temple Court Gatherings, and Online Church
• The Digital Tower of Babel
• Thief on the Cross Is Saved Too
• Extremes of Online Church Define Debate. No More!
• Is Online Church REAL Church? NT Wright Answers
• Doing Communion Online Right and Zoom Communion Gathering Example
• Baptizing Without Limits
• Finding Strengths in the Fears of Church Online
• The Danger of a Digital-Only Church