During the current pandemic, many places of worship cannot bring people together for a worship service. In place of that, churches have begun to offer virtual worship services.
Not every church agrees. Some feel that virtualizing worship services is not appropriate even during our exceptional circumstances. Churches have the freedom to follow their consciouses, but I want to suggest one argument for why you should have virtual worship services in light of our exceptional circumstances.
In Christ, we become One New Human Being (ἕνα καινὸν ἄνθρωπον) out of the two: Jews and Gentiles (Eph 2:15). This new creation means that in Christ, we are his Spiritual body.
As this new Human Being, the Spirit indwells us as the body of Christ. God makes us into the temple. Christ is the temple. He is the head. We are the body. We are the temple because Christ is the temple, and the Spirit unites body to head.
This is why in odd situations like today, you should have virtual worship because we worship in Spirit and in Truth, not only as embodied persons in localities.
When we cannot be there in body, we are there in Spirit. We worship as the catholic church because the Spirit indwells us all.
Excellent, Wyatt — “…you should have virtual worship because we worship in Spirit and in Truth, not only as embodied persons in localities.”
Yes, catholicity is the point of the Commission which certainly goes far beyond the local church…with the expected slings and arrows of the enemy…Eph. 6:16. Often churches were as hostile to other genuine forms of worship even if temporary as much as the religious leaders were to Jesus, thus the conflict in our nature is routinely expressed to each other. So, I marvel when I see a local church protest vehemently the worship of God in ‘other places’. This can be about egocentricity and not God-centricity since the Holy Spirit is not confined to the structures of mankind. For many years my small groups didn’t conflict with my church duties, but I was amazed at some of the feedback of some pastors even if there were significant blessings meted out.