When Live-Streaming Can Work

In reading through responses to the question of whether we should live-stream Orthodox services, I was challenged by several of the questions posed to me in response. I am going to divert my attention briefly to Protestant reactions, not at all in a demeaning way, but rather to challenge Orthodox Christians to think through our decisions of how we "do church" in these days of self-quarantine and isolation, before we unwittingly miss the benefit from the struggle we have been handed.

If I asked myself, when I was a Protestant what I do when I go to church, the first answer out of my mouth would probably be "worship". If I pressed myself further and asked what else I did at church, what else is important in the service, I would have to say the sermon, so...learning or finding encouragement. And if I posed the trick question to myself, "Do you pray at church?", I would probably be taken aback and say, "Of course."

This is probably where I would go in one of two directions, either explaining that almost everything we do at church is prayer, the worship, the...well, not the sermon...I am probably not praying during the sermon; or I would go in the direction of saying, there are specific times for prayers, and respond again, that yes, there is prayer, too.

As I have dwelt on it, though, looking back, there is this interesting thing most Protestants grew up doing, "Please bow your heads and close your eyes." There is this physical indicator that we are praying now. I am not going to ask where that came from or when it started, though I would love to know; I always wondered about this as a kid. The interesting aspect is that it seems that praying is very specifically "marked", which makes me want to ask my old Protestant self, "Then are you praying the whole time or just in those specific prayer times?"

All that to say, I do not think most Protestants would say they go to church to pray. And no, I am not saying Protestants do not pray at church. I am just saying that is not how Protestants would frame the answer to that question. If pressed, I think most Protestants would classify worship as prayer.

I probably do not have enough of your reading attention left to launch into Orthodox perceptions of going to church; I will have to save that for another article. However, all I have written above is why I can understand Protestants being able to live-stream services without any problems.

If I only need to hear the singing and maybe even sing along, that can be accomplished in a live-stream church service. I do not mean to demean worship at all by speaking of it that way, but just to speak of what is fundamentally going on: there are people somewhere singing, and the worshipper is doing the same thing whether in the same building or in front of a screen somewhere, and that is watching people sing and singing with them.

And as for the sermon, that fits nicely into a live-stream. There is not some deep theological aspect of listening to a sermon that I can think of. It is a spiritually beneficial talk, which can be live-streamed, podcasted, or communicated through whatever other medium.

So, I was too wordy to make it to the Orthodox version of this same article, but the Orthodox Christians out there may already see some of the issues starting to arise just in reading what is going on in church from a different perspective. And please, if you are Protestant and feel I have misstated any of the above or maybe missed some aspect of this issue, I welcome you to challenge me in the comments below.