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church online: Does God value physical presence like we do?

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I’ve been exploring Nick Charalambous’ blog “Ipiphanist“.  He describes it as “Worship, discipleship and community in the network.”  I’ve enjoyed reading his posts as he talks about the church expressing itself through online community.  In the post I ran across today he asks the question, “Does God value physical presence like we do“?  It’s an interesting question as more people entertain the idea of cyberchurch and community without physical contact.  Here’s my response to the question: 

“Hi Nick, I appreciate you leaving the older posts open.  I’m still bouncing around your site and enjoying checking everything out.  In answer to your question “Does God value physical presence like we do?”, I think my answer would have to be yes.  He’s the one that gave us physical bodies and if it wasn’t important to Him He could have just left that part out!  If you think about Jesus He was the Word, but the Word became flesh.  Sure, that was all about the atonement, but nevertheless it’s important that 1 John mentions that they had heard, seen, and touched Him; in the flesh and tangible.  Not that true faith needs that, but it was important enough to note.  It’s interesting that today we who have come to believe upon Him can still get that tangible dimension since we are able to encounter Christ living in others!  So, I think both the physical and spiritual are important to God, and he created us in a way that doesn’t really allow us to divorce one from another.  Having said that, I fail to see how anyone could question the value of online connection.  Just because someone’s not sitting right in front of me doesn’t make them virtual!  If it does, we’ve all been doing the virtual thing for years every time we pick up a phone.”

Tags: community, cyberchurch, Nick Charalambous, online church, the Word became flesh