Science Fiction Communion: How Bad Ecclesiology Distorts Both Time and Space

Separating time and space is the stuff of science fiction. Marty McFly can stay in the same place, Hill Valley, California, but travel backward and forward in time. The Star Trek transporter can move people from one location to another in an instant. I am not a physicist but as I understand it, one of the implications of the Theory of Relativity is that space and time are inter-connected. As well as  knowing where different objects are, you need to know when they were there. So the Captain’s Log doesn’t just begin with the ‘stardate’ it also records the location or intended destination of the USS Enterprise.

Many churches that are holding online communion services have opted to approach it using password-restricted ‘Zoom’ meetings. They see this as necessary for at least two reasons. Firstly, it recognises the need to maintain some level of eldership oversight. Those taking part need an ‘invitation’, and are typically members or at least regular adherents of the local church. Secondly it ensures that all participants are taking part at the same time, with no more than a few seconds delay if the internet connection is slow. Whilst claiming that ‘electronic proximity’ is sufficient for gathering, both of these reasons seem to involve an implicit acknowledgement that some degree of physical, spatial proximity is in fact necessary to the  validity of a Communion service.

Let’s explore the first point. It is possible to watch a recorded sermon from anywhere in the world. We might not all call this ‘preaching’ (some of us believe that real preaching involves a specific, dynamic interaction between the Holy Spirit, a preacher, and a gathered congregation) but we would all acknowledge that the ‘Bible teaching’ box is big enough to incorporate online communication of Scripture. As a public act, churches do not exclude anyone from listening to Bible preaching (or teaching). However, some people are always excluded from Communion. Those who are not committed Christians are asked to voluntarily refrain from taking part. Where professing Christians are living in unrepentant sin, the church leadership might exclude them from Communion as an act of spiritual discipline. Some might self-exclude due to a strong, personal restraint on their conscience (hopefully this would only ever be a short term situation).

In normal times, admittance or exclusion from Communion is a function of the local church. The discipline of a local church will be respected by other churches in fellowship, but in practice it can only ever be enforced by local, gathered congregations. Unconverted people can only voluntarily refrain if they are present within a gathering of Christians. Christians are only admitted to church membership if they have a settled commitment to the congregation who meet in a specific location. So while modern transport allows us to travel to meetings from a much greater distance than would have been possible in the past, there is still a geographical limit.

The internet has opened up new possibilities. If we can now ‘gather’ online, based on some idea of  electronic proximity, in theory there is no longer a limit on how far we ‘travel’ to take part in church. The church is located at an IP address, that can be accessed from anywhere in the world, almost instantly. A missionary on the other side of the planet could join us for communion. In theory, anyone, anywhere could join. In practice pastors and elders are still restricting participation to people who have a membership, or long-term adherent relationship with the local church. You can only take part in a password-restricted Communion service if you have, at some time, lived, worshipped, and formed relationship with the Christians in that specific location. Spatial proximity still matters; but temporal proximity does not. In using ‘Zoom’ passwords to restrict who takes part in Communion we are in effect saying that you have to have been physically present in the past, but you do not have to be present now. In this case the ‘where’ does matter, but the ‘when’ does not.

At the same time, by deliberately using a live ‘Zoom meeting’ as opposed to a pre-recorded ‘Youtube’ communion, we are saying that all participants have to be present at the same time, but they can be in any location. In this case the ‘when’ matters but the ‘where’ does not.

I would like to try and show how this inconsistency reflects an underlying confusion of the theological distinction between the ‘invisible church’ and the ‘visible church’. There is a sense in which the church includes every Christian everywhere and in every age; this is the invisible church. In another sense the church finds local expression in distinct congregations made of up of Christians who live in a given locality; this is the visible church. Both are biblical concepts. A good example of this is found in Christ’s letters in Revelation 2 & 3. Christ is head of the Universal Church and the letters say things which are relevant to all Christians in every age. Nevertheless they are addressed to specific congregations in specific places - the churches at Ephesus, at Smyrna, at Pergamum, at Thyatira, at Sardis, at Philadelphia, and at Laodicea. In His letters, Jesus does not conflate the two. He respects and maintains the distinction between the local church and the universal church, between the invisible church and the visible church, between the big-picture spiritual reality and the local physical expression. It is inevitable that blurring the distinctions between invisible church - which has universal and timeless qualities - and the local church - which is necessarily bound in both time and space - is going to warp your understanding of time and space. 

Given that our Lord recognises this distinction, as Christians we ought to too. In normal times, most evangelical churches do this by keeping an “open table”. That is, we invite any Christian “who is a member in good-standing at a Bible-believing church” to take part. We are recognising that Christians who are members of other local churches, are members of the universal church who are temporarily present in our locality. The practice of password-restricted online Communion turns this age-old approach on its head. The argument now being offered is that we can take part in online Communion from our own homes without gathering physically as a local church because we are all members of the universal church. In doing this we are prioritising our membership of the universal church over our membership of the local gathered church. However, because members of congregations in other locations do not have the ‘Zoom’ password they cannot take part. So we are also functionally excluding members of the universal church who are not members of our local church. So as it works out, members of ‘my’ church can take part even though they are not present whilst members of the wider church cannot take part because they are not present.

Are these the unintended and unforeseen theological consequences of the pragmatic decision to hold online communion in the manor described above? Or does the practice of online Communion reflect the fact that we already hold a different theology of the church to our fore-fathers in the faith? I don’t know if I can answer that but it seems clear to me that like time and space, our theology and our practice are inter-connected. They always operate relative to each other. You cannot change one without distorting the other.