When a church livestreams its services or posts content online many viewers come and go anonymously. If this were happening in real life we might imagine it as two or three times the number of people who actually attend a service shuffling silently into the room and then just as silently leaving without ever being greeted, welcomed or embraced. No church should allow such a thing, but what to do?
Some people, for whatever reason, want to watch from the sidelines for a while. They have questions they are looking to answer. That's OK. At some point, however, Christian faith needs individual, personal contact through which to grow. The church is supposed to be a place where we practice learning to love other people, even sometimes those who might be difficult to love. Living Stones Online will help people take their first steps outside of the shadows to know and be known.
Some may already have a local church they call home but feel called to join Living Stones in its online ministry. Others might be experiencing difficulty finding a local church home and they need something to tide them over until that happens. Still others might not identify as a Christian but are curious about Christianity, about Jesus and about the Bible and this is a way they can learn. Living Stones Online hopes to address all this.
We don't know how much we can help others through this strange new electronic frontier but we'll see what we can do.