Holy Communion Online(?)

Here's a question: If you are sitting alone in your living room, with a cracker and a bottle of grape juice, listening to a recording of a pastor saying the Holy Communion liturgy over the Internet, and then you proceed to consume that cracker and grape juice, have you just received the sacrament?

Have you actually taken Holy Communion?

According to United Methodist doctrine, the answer is no. According to our church's sacramental teaching, as contained at various points in our Book of Discipline, Book of Resolutions (i.e., the "This Holy Mystery" statement), and the Book of Worship, that kind of exercise does not rise to the level of Eucharist.

I could sketch out the reasons why this is the case, but if you don't know them already, I would simply say to go to the relevant places in our doctrine and read them for yourselves. Our sacramental doctrine (like a lot of our church's doctrinal positions) could use some development. But what we've got is good, and it expresses a deep sense of the power of the grace of Jesus Christ active in the community of believers through the church's liturgy.

What we do not allow are interpretations of the sacrament of the Lord's Supper that are so far out of bounds that they do damage to the church's historic understanding of the sacramental meal and endanger the laity's reception of the gospel message of salvation.

Why am I stressing this so much? Well, a couple of weeks ago, my wife showed me this article in Newsweek, which highlights a new movement sometimes called "Virtual Communion." It involves pastors and churches inviting people to "celebrate" Holy Communion from the comfort of their couches, while viewing websites where Eucharistic worship services are shown or the liturgy is recited.

One of the Newsweek's articles featured websites is this one, which calls itself "A United Methodist Celebration of Holy Communion." In the name of inclusivity (the term always used to advocate for radical individualism in the church), the site provides web surfers the opportunity to receive the Lord's Supper with no other companion than a disembodied, previously recorded voice while they participate from their sofas.

I wrote a column in the United Methodist Reporter about this phenomenon last week, which you can read here. I hesitated to put my thoughts on paper, because the creator of the site (a retired UM local pastor) clearly believes he is doing the church a good service. But good intentions are simply not enough. This website represents something not just mistaken; it is dangerous. And in such a situation the Lord's Supper must be defended.

Not long ago, I posted a satire called "Winnie-the-Poohcharist" (in two installments, which you can read here and here) about the ridiculous attempts of some churches to make the sacrament more "relevant" by employing cheap gimmicks from pop culture. I now wonder if I should even have written that satire, because of the danger that it would be misunderstood (as, indeed, it was in some of the comments left on the blog posts).

So let me be clear: The sacrament of Holy Communion is the single most important act of worship in which we, as disciples of the Incarnate God, can engage. It should not be abused, maltreated, or deformed in its character. It requires sound teaching for it to be understood and celebrated with fidelity. The Eucharist is the very vehicle of God's salvation of us. It is difficult to over-exaggerate its importance. It is not to be changed to suit our consumerist tastes, but rather to be understood in the great mystery of grace that it offers us.

If you are interested in reading another interpretation of this same issue, check out Kevin Baker's blog here.

[Update: The website dealt with on this blog post and the linked UM Reporter column was also highlighted in the "Century Marks" section of the December 2, 2008, issue of The Christian Century. As of this update on January 11, 2009, the Holy Communion Online website was still deactivated.]

Too many screens

Long day, lots of e-mails. The upcoming issue of the proposed changes to the charter of my alma mater, Hendrix College, has consumed me somewhat over the past few days. Through blogging, e-mailing, and telephone conversations, I have spent a lot of time on this issue. I'm really happy that people are taking notice and taking the time to get in touch. That's a good sign. On the other hand, I haven't been doing much else!

I want to take a break from the Hendrix discussion to point to my new column in the United Methodist Reporter. I've missed a couple of issues because of the Reporter's heavy coverage of General Conference, but Gen-X Rising returns in the newest issue with my piece on 'Bucking the TV tendency'. In this article, I look at the role that our connection to electronic screens plays in our day-to-day lives.

This might seem like a non-issue at first glance, but I think it has a pretty profound effect on the way we think about human relationships. Whether it is your cell phone, iPod, laptop, or whatever, the screen that you communicate with throughout the day is designed to make your life more pleasurable/convenient/ easy. But the thing about your interaction with screens is that you are always the master, and the relationship is always one-way (in the sense that you can control the screen you are using or turn it off when you want).

Because we are so formed as human beings by our daily habits, the role that electronic screens plays in our lives has repercussions for how we understand relationships in general. And that, of course, has a lot to do with how we think about our lives as friends of Jesus and friends of each other.

Here today, gone tomorrow...

Memory, that is.

David Brooks has a humorous column in the New York Times that suggests digital media is robbing us of our memory. He says that the 21st century will become known as the "Bad Memory Century," as we realize that our reliance on technology is coming at the expense of reliance on the original computer - our brains.

"As it becomes clear that a constant stream of blog posts and e-mails decimates the capacity for recall," Brooks writes, "people will be confronted with the modern Sophie's choice - your Blackberry or your mind."

It's a funny take on a phenomenon common to a lot of us. Take cell phones as a good example. Before you got your first cell phone, how many friends' phone numbers did you have committed to memory? A dozen? Even 20 or 30?

And how about now? (I can hardly even remember my own phone number, let alone anyone else's. I fear that little digital address book in my pocket has stolen a part of my gray matter!)

It's the Wikipediazation of knowledge. Why commit something to memory, when everything you'd ever want to know is a couple of mouse clicks away?

Does this scare anyone else as much as it does me?

Perils of Gen X Life

So for everyone who is losing his life to Facebook, here's a song especially for you.

(And if anyone can tell me how to embed the Youtube screen into a blog post, I'd appreciate it. I spent more time than I'd like to admit trying to figure that one out this morning.)

Oh, and here's a UM Reporter column I wrote on Facebook friendships a few weeks ago.

Facebook Friends

I have a handful of people in my life (outside my own family) who I could properly call "friends." These are people I could call on at any time of the day or night. People who would jump in front of a bus for me. People who really know me, insofar as anybody can know somebody else.

On Facebook, I have scads and scads of "friends." About 60, at last count. Most of these folks really are friends of mine, in the general, easy sense that we use that word nowadays. Some are people from my past, and some are people that I've never actually met face-to-face.

But they're not friends in the true, deep sense of that word. Not friends the way Jesus calls his disciples friends in the Gospel of John. In that sense of friendship, most of my Facebook friends range from "relatively close acquaintances" to "people I know only by name."

The frustrating contradiction contained in our ever-increasing reliance on technology is that, while we can stay in touch with more people than ever before, we tend to have deep and meaningful relationships with fewer and fewer.

Don't get me wrong. I write this as one who loves technology: I am writing this blog post while logged on Blogger via wireless Internet connection and checking my cell phone for voicemails.

But I also think our technology addiction inhibits the formation of relationships and communities. Think about the amount of time we all spend plugged into our gadgets (and tuned out from the world). Think about the way contemporary worship services often base their "relevance" on their use and mastery of the latest technologies. These things are problems.

Anyway, I write about Facebook friends in my latest UM Reporter column. I'd welcome your throughts.

God outside of video screens

This week's issue of the United Methodist Reporter is focusing on camping and retreat ministries. I think any of us raised in the church can think back to those old Methodist camps and what an impact they had on us. My first experience with camping ministry was at the Wayland Springs Camp in Imboden, Arkansas. No air conditioning, leaky cabins, and 100 degree heat. It was awesome.

If anything, getting kids to engage in camping and retreat ministries is more important now than ever before. With their technological addicition to Playstations, XBox, the Internet, IM, iPods, etc., etc., it is hard to get them to look up and look around for the beauty on God's good earth. The last couple of years that I taught Confirmation Class, we had a rule that there were no cell phones or iPods on our weekend retreat at the end of the Confirmation experience. By their reaction, you would have thought we told them they were going to have to go without food for the weekend.

In my column this week, I talk about why I think getting out of the asphalt jungle is important in our relationship with God. Check it out.