Pastors.com posted an interview between two well-known pastors a little while back, and I read a blog on the article. I wanted to add my thoughts.

The interview was between David Yonggi Cho, the pastor of the world’s largest protestant church (a whopping 750,000 members!) and Rick Warren, author of “The Purpose-Driven Life.” Their conversation seemingly benign, with Cho pressing the importance of prayer. But then it starts to get a little bit more interesting.

You can’t believe that Cho fits 750,000 people into a service (or even seven) on Sunday mornings. How does he do it then? The Internet. Ah yes, the internet. It seems that the need for real interpersonal communication, brother-to-brother encouragement and accountability, and corporate prayer and worship have gone the way of the buffalo. Now you can wake up on Sunday morning, watch the service broadcast online, email Mr. Cho some money, and pat yourself on the back for being a good Christian, all without having to change out of your pajamas!

I see the benefit in some areas he mentions: in areas hostile to Christianity, and parts of the world where there are few or no churches/missionaries present, etc. But to condemn the building of churches, the regular meeting together of believers for worship?

Without a local church, who do you go to when you have problems or questions? If your pastor lives on the other side of the world, how do you come to him for advice? When can you ask him to clarify statements that you might have misunderstood? How does a congregation hold him accountable? And where does all that money go when you give online–back to your community, or to somewhere else?

Doctrinally speaking, Mr. Cho and I might also disagree on a few (or many) things, but that’s not my point. The scary underlying thought here is that our wonderful internet may have found yet another way of serving satan’s puposes–the dissolution of fellowship.