distance education — Blog

Online classes. They’re everywhere. They cover everything—from doing aerobics to playing the zither. For the past five years, I’ve taught an online course for the Bakke Graduate University. The class aims to help Christians connect their faith with their daily work. Unexpectedly, teaching this course has sharpened my insight into shared church.

Church and Online Class: Two Modes

Like the church, my online course operates in two modes—synchronous and asynchronous. In synchronous mode, the whole class “meets” online in a Zoom Room. Computer microphones and cameras let us see and hear each other. So we can present ideas, ask questions, clarify, explain, challenge, illustrate, or whatever. In asynchronous mode, students work separately. They complete assignments such as reading books and articles, watching videos, or posting their written responses to assignments.

In a similar way, the church acts in two modes—gathered (synchronous) and scattered (asynchronous). In gathered mode, we assemble. For most churches this happens on Sundays. When we gather, we should encourage and spur each other on (Heb. 10:24, 25). In scattered mode, we live out our faith at a distance from each other—in our homes, workplaces, and neighborhoods. When we scatter, our paths intersect with those in the world who need grace and light and salt.

How to Disable Synchronous Mode

Suppose, in a synchronous class session, I switch off all the students’ microphones (as professor, I have the power to do that). In that case, I now hold the only live microphone. If, during my presentation, I say something confusing, students have no way to ask me to restate my point. Or if a student recalls a perfect illustration from her own history, she cannot share it for the benefit of the others.

Why do we meet in synchronous sessions? Doing so allows a far richer, fuller learning experience. All of us—including me, as the professor—may profit from the gifts, understandings, and perspectives of everyone else. So if I were to shut down all the other voices except my own, I would deprive students of that fullness.

Traditional Sunday formats have brought us to a place where too many churches are platform-driven. Almost all the actions and words that matter come from the stage. As a result, in these synchronous sessions, very few have microphone privileges. This arrangement blocks the use of the God-given gifts in the congregation. As Paul puts it, “A spiritual gift is given to each of us as a means of helping the entire church” (I Cor. 12:7, NLT). Or as The Message paraphrases it, “Everyone gets in on it, everyone benefits.”

The Loss in Asynchronous Mode

Losing the benefits of the synchronous mode takes its toll on what happens in asynchronous mode. Let’s say I ask a guest to facilitate a Zoom Room session on how our God-given spiritual and natural gifts relate to our daily work. A main purpose? To equip students when working by themselves in asynchronous mode. What they gain from the insights of our guest and his or her dialogue with the class should make them better able to handle their individual assignments. By turning off their microphones, I greatly reduce what they will take away.

What happens when we hush Christians in our church meetings? This leaves them unable to strengthen, build up, and encourage one another with their unique gifts. The loss will show up when they disperse into the roles God has placed them in during the other six days. In other words, the absence of mutual body-building when we gather will weaken our ability to carry out God’s mission in the world when we scatter.

Carrying Out Our Scattered-Mode Assignments

In Curing Sunday Spectatoritis, I say: “Scattered translates a Greek word rooted in diaspora. It means to sow, as in scattering seed throughout a field. In one of his parables, Jesus speaks of sowing the ‘sons of the kingdom’ throughout the world-field like seed (Matt. 13:37, 38). In the Old Testament diaspora (dispersion), Daniel was one of those seeds God scattered into a workplace, right into the idolatrous core of the government in Babylon. In that pagan context, Daniel took root, grew, and bore fruit for God. Today . . . Christians need to see themselves as seeds—life-carrying cells flung into the world to carry out God’s agenda where they live, work, and play.”

In that world-field, the challenges to faith and fruit-bearing can overwhelm us as individual seeds. Bosses harass. Neighbors annoy. Family members let us down. Promising sprouts from the seed can wither. Our love and service can easily chill. World, flesh, and devil all conspire to bring us down. For that reason, we need to structure our times together so that the body “builds itself in love as each part does its work” (Eph. 4:16). Yes, the Lord as our Good Shepherd restores our souls. But one of the main ways he does so is through the mutual ministry of the gathered church. We, together, serve as the Shepherd’s Body.

In a Washington Post article for children that explains how the human body works, Howard J. Bennett writes: “Your body works thanks to cells — trillions of them — doing their jobs. Some make chemicals to fight infection. Others make tears to protect your eyes. Still others make proteins to help you grow.”

All members of the body need the freedom to go about “doing their jobs,” to offer the body during synchronous sessions what God’s Spirit has gifted them with.

Teaching, so they say, is the best way to learn. They are right. Over the past four years, I have learned much from teaching online for the Bakke Graduate University. For example, leading these classes has expanded my understanding of shared church. In what follows, I’ll explain how.

My courses cover the “theology of work,” focusing on what God’s Word says about our everyday work. Because nearly all the students are Christ-followers, each class is full of those to whom the Holy Spirit has given various gifts. So, class members have received resources God gave them for the benefit of others.

Creating a Learning Environment

Because I earned a graduate degree in the theology of work, I bring to each class a wider grasp of the subject than almost all who enroll. But my background does not mean I am the only one with something useful to say about how God views our work. Instead, my challenge is to create a learning environment. This means putting together an agenda made up of a series of experiences that will change how the students think, believe, act, and pass along to others what they have learned.

Woven into those experiences are resources I have written. For example, I ask them to read my articles, “How to Weave Theology of Work into Church Life” and “Regaining a Biblical Worldview.” They also view and listen to my narrated PowerPoint presentation, “Stewardship.” Assigned reading also includes a variety of books by many others—for some of which they must write book reviews. Learning requires instruction by gifted, knowledgeable, and authorized teachers.

Yet another critical element in this carefully shaped discovery environment is what they learn from each other. An instructor who knows a subject well can easily lose a sense of what those still trying to comprehend it for the first time are going through. Fellow students, those also struggling to grow in their understanding, are often in the best positions to say it in ways others in the class can “get it.”

Interaction: the Benefits

To help that kind of learning take place, I have devised assignments that ask students to interact with each other. For instance, in one lesson I task them with reading a case study, answering three questions about it in writing, and posting their paragraphs in the online classroom for other students to read. But there’s more. Before the end of the week, each student must respond in writing to what at least two other students have posted on the case study. This interrelating results in several benefits as students:

Encourage and affirm each other. Supportive statements like these are often posted: “I concur with your comment here.” Or, “You have well articulated the idea that ‘all work matters to God as God matters to all our work.’” And, “I am compelled to borrow your idea of ‘working as a family.’”
State truth in words that help fellow students understand. One student had posted a comment about “Church members who have been taught to glorify their leaders. . ..” To which another responded, “That is an interesting perspective I hadn't thought about before, about those who idolize the leader.”
Raise questions about unclear points. One student had written, “all positively positioned work (i.e. not illegal or immoral) is sacred work as it aids in the establishment and flourishing of human communities on God’s planet Earth.” In her response, a fellow student wrote: “I am seeking clarification on two things when you spoke of work that is not illegal.” This resulted in a fruitful dialogue that benefited not only these two but the rest of the class as well.
Tactfully disagree and offer a contrasting viewpoint. For example, one student had written that, “We have to become vigilantes on the war on adverse waste disposal.” When another objected about that language as too strong, the first writer responded, “In retrospect the word 'vigilante' may be too harsh and inappropriate. I would like for us to be in 'advocates of change' instead.”

Making Disciples in Shared Church

How does all this relate to shared church? When Jesus told his first disciples to “make disciples” (Matt. 28:19), the word he used could be translated, “enroll people as learners.” Making learner-disciples should be a vital part of gathering as a church. My experience with online classes has demonstrated that learning takes not only through one-way communication from a teacher but also requires interaction among the learners themselves.

Shared church, like an online classroom, must include instruction by qualified pastors and teachers. But enrolling learners also calls for structuring a church-meeting learning environment in which they may interact with and teach each other. Even though he had not yet met them, Paul was convinced that the believers in Rome were “competent to instruct one another” (Rom. 15:14). And he urged believers in Corinth to meet in a shared-church format in which everyone had opportunity to participate (I Cor. 14:26).

Churches are not just preaching stations where one or two exercise their teaching gifts. Rightly structured, the congregational meeting itself offers opportunities for disciples to learn how to articulate their growing faith in front of each other.

Shared Church and Online Classes