Most work days, I sit in my cubicle, crunching numbers of some sort. I do venture out, but only for short stints. Today was like most days: not much person to person interaction. This does not mean community did not happen, however, for wherever the web is, there can be some sort of community.
Email was the venue: desperate prayer request, great praise for a hardcase trusting Christ for the first time, and an inside joke with a friend. The relations are real, even if the geography is virtual. Still, it is not enough. On days like this, I miss the deeper face to face.
My name is Laura and I am on a journey, pondering the implications of God's glorious design of humanity and integrating four aspects of this design—spiritual, intellectual, affective, and physical health—into a description of whole life health. 
Such a huge pondering!
I too enjoy the face-to-face interaction of people more than the electronic, but how amazing is it that we can connect electronically within seconds?
Some facts/thoughts first:
Have you ever wondered how long it took Paul’s letter to the Phillippians to reach the addressee’s from Rome in 50 or 60 AD?
The Pony Express took weeks to deliver a message across territories.
How long it did it take for a telegraph to reach someone in San Francisco from someone in New York in 1890, hand to hand? Days or hours.
Did you know that in the 1920′s, prior to the telephone, the US Postal Service used to deliver mail 7 or 8 times each day in New York City and that people used to send postcards back and forth to each other (that were sent and arrived in the same day) to set up a dinner date?
The time God created remains the same, but the methods (and time of) communication have sped up…and I love that!
I know Christians that are so fearful of the Internet because it is a “gateway to evil things”; but they don’t realize how great a gateway it is to reaching out to others in Christ and that it can be an insturment of the Lord.
You mentioned urgent prayer requests; I get those too and I can respond by praying as soon as it takes for me to get it (seconds)…not months (Paul) or weeks (Pony Express) or days (telegraph) or hours (NYC postcards) later! We can get prayers from a hundred people without writing 100 postcards or making 100 calls.
We can be in community with other in an instant these days and that is so awesome! Christian’s can turn Instant Gratification into Instant God-ification!
The downside is that one can come to replace eye-to-eye interaction with others and rely upon electronic communication to interact. So in this day and age, one thing we, “the church”, should really be focusing on is the importance of fellowship in the flesh. We can not isolate ourselves in our home bunkers and expect to grow, regardless of the amount of information available.
I imagine that Paul would have wanted speak his message to the Phillippians rather than write it, but he used the best possible solution, a letter!
Paul would have used his AOL “Phillipi Group List” if he had it back then!
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Mark,
I have often thought that we are a bit arrogant thinking we’re the first to have virtual relationships. Your list of evidence adds support to the notion that we’ve always had virtual relationships of some sort. (I especially like the info about post cards–nifty.)
“Paul would have used his AOL “Phillipi Group List” if he had it back then!”
I wholeheartedly agree, though I think he may have use Twitter and Facebook
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