I agree that while it& #39;s advantageous for the church to be missionaries into the digital world, we need to call people out of their consumer-driven digital hideouts into real flesh-and-blood communities. At least we need to call people into real community once we can gather again.

People certainly do live in a digital world, their faces illuminated by a screen, but my concern is that too much screen time is damaging to our souls.

Like a parent, we should limit people& #39;s screen-time access to the church and create real life space for people to gather.

Yes there are those who are homebound due to health or job reasons, but many more simply choose the digital encounters over physical encounters with people because it is easy and it allows the individual to be in control, and while they live that way, the church should not.

The church Jesus has been building is a biblical, sacramental, and embodied gathering. The digital can supplement the local, but it cannot replace it.

Right now online is all we have, but this rightly feels weird.

I explore this theme in this article: https://www.missioalliance.org/watching-church-online-is-weird-ecclesiology-in-the-time-of-social-distancing/">https://www.missioalliance.org/watching-...