For years, those of us leading churches used social media to tell people what we were doing. Now, during lockdown, social media is all we’re doing. Zoom prayer, Facebook Live sermons, YouTube organ pieces, we’re all very online.
Even clergy who prided themselves on their luddite status are learning how to minister in this purely digital world. Honestly, I hate it.
Even though I’m known—affectionately?—as the TikTok Priest, I love praying the Psalms IRL (in real life) and with people, preferably in an echoey stone building. Now, on Zoom, I mute everyone but the main reader so it doesn't sound like all the demons of hell are screeching their way from the depths.
As much as I hate it, though, I know that adapting to a changing world and adopting new technology is what Christian ministers have always done—all the way back to the apostles. After all, what are the New Testament epistles but remote pastoring with the technology at hand?
Several weeks before the stay-at-home orders began, our small gathering of Morning Prayer faithful started reading through 1 Corinthians. Every day’s readings took our little group through Paul’s directives about divisions in the church, sexual ethics, how to eat together, and how to handle church meetings that got a little rowdy. Even through the differences of time and language, his words spoke directly to our own struggles as a new church plant in the suburbs of Texas.
We were a few chapters in when we started meeting on Zoom instead of at our usual round of coffee shops. Once we moved entirely online, I started to feel an even deeper connection to Paul’s pleadings, commands, and tone, especially as my frustrations with our virtual situation grew.
We got “Zoombombed” by a stranger interrupting our meeting with nude pictures and cackling laughter. I started using passwords to protect the Zoom meeting, and some had trouble getting in. And it wasn’t just our elderly who had trouble with tech. It was hard for everyone, including me.
Because there was a great need for prayer, we prayed three times a day: Morning Prayer at 9 a.m., the Great Litany at noon, and Evening Prayer at 5 p.m. We were praying more than ever, but I felt the ground our fledgling community had gained in the past year was slowly slipping away. My neck hurt from craning it at my iPad screen and also from the stress of our situation.
By the time we got to 1 Corinthians 11, the instructions about the Lord’s Supper, I lost it. We are a liturgical, sacramental church. We receive Holy Communion every Sunday, and we put a lot of effort into making this a sacred and accessible experience for everyone. We talk about the Eucharist, a Greek word meaning “thanksgiving,” in most of our classes and incessantly on Twitter. In my tradition, we wear special vestments for the Eucharist, we say special prayers, and we read books about how to properly position our hands during the prayers.
We believe we are receiving the Real Presence of Jesus, his body and blood, into our bodies for our spiritual renewal and sanctification. So when we read Paul sharing how to eat this sacred meal, I thought about how removed we were from each other and from our communion with Jesus in Holy Communion. The only presence we had on Sunday was virtual—tiny faces on the Zoom screen and tinny voices crackling in and out.
I did not know how many more Sundays we would be doing this. And I did not know how many more Sundays I could do it.
My neck started hurting more. I struggled with being short-tempered during minor technological setbacks. I lost my sense of humor. Worse, I started showing that cynical snark I try to keep to myself. I think I may have started to feel a little like Paul in his epistles to his distant churches.
To those challenging his authority: “Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord?” (1 Cor. 9:1).
To those who were not sharing their food: If you are hungry, eat at home! (11:34).
To those who were bragging about which apostle baptized them: “Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?” (1:13).
And around a dozen other outrage-tinged rhetorical questions driving home the point that they better listen to him, even though he is very far away at the moment.
His repeated rhetorical questions matched my own inner monologue when the Zoom meeting was over. Was I just asking questions no one was hearing?
I forgot to send the meeting link out one day, and several folks immediately told me so. I had updated Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, but I hadn’t sent the link out on Flocknote, an app that sends text messages. I could feel a little steam hissing out of my ears. My neck spasmed. I got on the Zoom call and smiled. I knew deep down, my frustration at a few keystrokes was my frustration about my own powerlessness against our estrangement, my lack of trust in my fellow humans that they would do the smart thing to mitigate this disease, and my own fears that this church I helped plant would fall apart.
While we took prayer requests for intersessions and thanksgivings, I had to confess, “I have no idea what I’m doing. I forgot to send the link. I’m sorry.”
In the opening chapter of 1 Corinthians, Paul declares bluntly, “I thank God that I did not baptize any of you except Crispus and Gaius, so no one can say that you were baptized in my name.” And then he corrects himself: “(Yes, I also baptized the household of Stephanas; beyond that, I don’t remember if I baptized anyone else.)” (1:14–16). Sometimes when we are far away, our stress makes us forget.
In spite of all this distance, though, Paul so deeply loved this church that he took the technology he had and worked remotely. With pen, ink, and vellum, he poured his heart out to them in his own special style. Or, as @GrumpyTheology put it on Twitter:
“If you are sitting here thinking that since you can’t meet with your churches you HAVE to set up a livestream, remember that the Apostle Paul couldn’t meet with his churches so he just sent them 20-page rambling letters filled with his every emo thought.”
Paul’s letters, written in a language that could be understood by people from many ethnicities, were carried on the Roman road system, a marvel of ancient and modern engineering. And at the end of this letter, he asked them to do for each other what he could not himself do, to “Greet one another with a holy kiss” (16:20).
I’m glad Paul and his fellow apostles worked with the latest technology of their day, and I know the people who are watching today’s pastors’ Zooms, livestreams, and Instagram stories are thankful we are doing the same.
David W. Peters is the vicar of St. Joan of Arc Episcopal Church in Pflugerville, Texas. He served as an Army chaplain in Iraq from 2005-2006, and is affectionately known as the TikTok priest.
