All I can think about is the fallacy of equivocation when someone says an online church isn’t church. A great example of this argument is in a recent NY Times opinion piece where the headline was "Internet Church Isn’t Really Church.”

Mental health for me often feels like a rabbit hole of a topic. How mental health is medically classified confuses me, how people get diagnosed is not clear, and treatment can be messy. I believe online ministries can offer hope not only through Jesus, but through relational restoration by inviting them to join the community of a church’s online experience.

Have you heard about Virtual Reality Church yet? It’s caused quite a stir in Christian circles. Check out his multiple features on Wired, CNN, and Today Show. I’ve gotten the chance to get to know the founding pastor DJ Soto over the last year. DJ is one of the most outreach focused guys I know and the stories coming out of VR Church back it up, but often that isn’t enough to make “Christians” happy. I’m a bit sarcastic with my use of “Christians” because many have embraced VR Church’s endeavors while others have criticized.

Online church ministries are usually positionally and strategically murky. What I love about this foggy dispensation is the sandbox leaders create for their online leaders. Nothing makes sense when you start. Read any biography, and you’ll find out quickly most forerunners in fields had to experiment, fail, and repeat until success. Don’t ask for clarity positionally and strategically until you want the structure and the pros outweigh the cons.

Surprise! God is much bigger than America. I’ve observed great leaps in how the church in America has embraced #churchonline or online ministry over the last ten years, but some bigger jumps have happened overseas in places like the Middle East and specifically within Iran.

Does anyone watch online that lives in my city? I get asked this constantly from people part of our online community. I can’t connect everyone. There was some privacy issues with sharing geo data and scalability problems. I needed a strategy to release and not micromanage.