CyberChurch

DATELINE: Christmas 2020 AD

First Bapticostal Church opens it’s Premium Service, the Sunday Before Christmas in Geneva IL.

Many in attendance

Pastor Jimmy O’Donnell (who is actually located in Virginia Beach Va) preaches a sermon delivered holographically to the sanctuary. He is entertaining, clever, moving and the best high quality preaching you could ever hope to find.

First of Geneva is one of 177 holographic pulpits to see and hear Brother Jimmy “live”. Oh there had been some complaining when the Holographic Service was initiated, but PR Jimmy was so good and people said, “We need to have first class preaching when we have church”. So now First and 176 other churches have first class preaching.

What was even more amazing everyone heard the message in their own tounge. By a unique targeting method and recognition the image generator also generated the voice in a language you would understand. This eliminated the need for translators and made spreading the Gospel around the world much better without the need for human intervention.

One of the essentials in becoming part of First was having a chip implanted under your scalp. That’s how much of the ministry took place. The equipment knew who you were by the chip.

The giving system long ago moved to automated giving. Behind every seat in the sanctuary was a smart chip sweep reader and a keypad. When Br Jimmy took the offering people made a sweep by the chip reader. Some signed up to have a tithe directly drawn from their Amero Dollar accounts. Since the unification of North America the Amero Dollar was the universal currency.

It was communion Sunday. People filed past the Communimatic Machine. It was able to use the chip reader and in a clear and reassuring voice give individual communion to every person by name. This was much better than pastor Don who was the last human pastor of the church. By walking up to the beautiful spiritual-looking altar encasing the comminimatic, a wafer and a small cup of wine or grape juice was dispensed. It knew by a prior questionnaire which you preferred. The beauty of the communimatic was the fact that it never forgot a name. It always knew who you were.

And the music. Wow! Who could complain about it. In the same holographic presentation that PR Jimmy came to them, a complete worship team from the best churches in the world were displayed in holographic realism. Hillsong, Maranatha, Lakeland, Morningstar. When worship music was played it was the highest and best worship possible. Did God deserve any less? People from the congregation were invited to join the holographic worship team although they weren’t allowed to have their instruments or voices actually heard. But, those who did saw it as a privilege to be able to play along with such a good band, even if it was 10,000 miles away and 6 weeks ago. No one would ever have know the difference except for the one time when there was a lightning strike on a power transformer and the worship band melted away in front of the congregation.

Baptisms were automated. The immersion tanks had a leaning bar, the theological argument postualated was there was nothing scriptural about having human hands actually do the baptizing. In fact they were right. So the candidate after viewing an online preparation stepped into the tank and leaned back on the leaning bar. Baptism were thusly initiated, the person let down and lifted up with the words according to the creed selected, Jesus name only, or Jesus Name and Father Son and Holy Ghost or just Father Son and Holy Ghost. People accepted this and it was convenient. There became 24 hour baptistrys. A reasonable contribution allowed families at 3AM to bring a candidate to be Baptized. For Churches that sprinkled, the Rain Bird corporation had produced a wonderful machine that was sanitary and sprinkled at just the place a laser pointer would point to. You just held the baby and water and words were delivered.

People seeking a prophetic word from God were served by an Automatic Prophetic Word Generator. The theology that justified this was that God could cause the computer to give just the right word for that person at that time. People would come, make a small offering with the wave chip and presto a word like, “Lo the Lord is with you at all times, and the answer to your question is YES. Be bold be brave for the Lord our God is with you.” Sometimes this caused confusion when the word seemed to give approval and encouragement to a questioner contemplating divorce or suicide.

If a person needed healing there was the Healing Cloth Dispenser. Using the verse in Acts where Paul blessed cloths and they were laid on people for healing, the person in need of healing came forward, rehearsed into the HCD what the problem was. A dollop of anointing oil was delivered by a tube directly to the forehead in the sign of the cross while words of faith and deliverance for healing were played from the machine. People loved this. They took the cloths home and revered them. Testimonies were given about this wonderful administer of God’s grace. Little did they know that the machine and the cloths were made in China and the Oil came from a factory in Iran. The only blessing that ever happened was a priest from the old school visited the docks where shipping containers were being unloaded containing the cloths and machines were being unloaded. He would say a few words over them, make the sign of the cross and go home to watch reruns of Seinfeld.

If you wanted prayer, did they have a program for you. There was a realistic representation of a section of the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem. You could approach it and stand there alone or if you asked a loving man or woman image would appear holograhically. They would agree with you in prayer saying "Amen, Yes Lord and Help him/her Lord" as you poured out your heart. Those prayers were automatically transmitted via broadband to a receiver in Jerusalem that transmitted those words of prayer directly into the wailing wall. You could be sure God could hear you better if you prayed so that the God of the wall could hear. Voice recognition remembered your prayers and stored them. Pr Jimmy's Holograph could give assurance of God’s blessings as you left the service.

The beautiful part of this whole thing is Church never closed. It was open 24-7. Many of the other participants in the service were holographs from other churches piped in so that it looked like every service was full. The singing was exuberant. The amens from the congregation were lively. Every service was multicultural. It was such fun. Not real, but fun.

And when the service was over, a holographic image of Pastor Jimmy stood by the door and greeted you and your wife. He would aske about the kids, how your back problem was coming along, your job, how bout them Cubbies and was warm and caring. He missed absolutely no one. And never forgot a name. Never caught a cold, never was absent, never went on vacation and never was tired. The perfect Pastor. Of course all responses to Holograpic PR Jimmy were processed by voice recognition and stored for your next meeting. Pr Jimmy knew all, saw all. Better than Jesus some thought.

Of course all teaching, all Sunday school and all children’s activities were equally cyber-delivered. Keeping track of your kids was never a problem since the Nannybots had subdermal chip readers to know at all times where your kids were. And singing those troublesome Sunday School songs like Jesus Loves Me? No problem, the kids became part of a marvelous little cyber holograph kids singing group and even if they sang off key looked like they were brilliant at all times. No one attending any of the Sunday School Programs ever knew what or who was real or what was Memorex. The parents thought their little darlings were so brilliant.

You didn’t have to wonder what was going on at First. Long since any bulletins or announcements were obsolete, just log on to WWW.CYBERFIRSTGENEVA.ORG and you would learn everything you wanted to know. Or have announcements, prayer requests, and pleas for money send directly to your PDA.

If you had a virtual reality headset you didn’t actually have to leave home to attend First Bapticostal. You could enjoy the whole thing from your easy chair and no one knew that while in Church you also were enjoying a scotch and water and a nice cigar while singing along with the Holographic worship team from Austrailia. Besides, when you logged in a well groomed representation of you showed up in the congregation holographically. People thought you were actually there.

Funerals were given completly over to funeral providers. They did it so well and professionally as they published electronic reviews of a persons life, pictures, videos, imported a few canned holograpic singers of sad songs and family spoke. Many attendees of the funerals accessed and viewed them online with online condolences. Graves were considered messy. So all funerals became mandated to end in cremation. Funerals didn't fit into CyberChurch. It wasn't much of a loss. Funerals could be messy and unprofessional. I mean we can comfort one another can't we? Who needs a Church to do that?

Marriage was outlawed by President Lily M. Johnson D (IL). Weddings were considered discriminatory against homosexuals after the big battles over same sex marriage waged by Christians. So to avoid any sign of religious intervention in "Family" development all weddings were eliminated by an act of congress and the ACLU. There were a few underground weddings but not many. People would just move in together. The New North American Bible written in Spanglish the national language of North America was cleansed of all references to husbands and wives. "Others" was the replacement word for any references previously made about husbands and wives. So much neater and cleaner. Besides, marriages had become messy in the church what with the bitter divorce of the pope and his wife.

Oh there were subversive groups who insisted on doing things without all the electronic cyber froo froo. They were looked upon as old fashioned. Luddite in mentality. They dropped out of cyberchurch and formed little groups in homes. They were questioned and indicted at being anti social; even unchristian. There were laws past. House church became illegal. The government controlled what went on in CyberChurch. They took a piece of the "take" to protect them from Muslims and other alternative religions (like house church).

Sadly there weren’t many Pastors left to visit them. The offices and occupations of Pastor, Minister, Prophet, Teacher, Evangelist, Apostle, Sunday School Teachers and Worship leaders was all but eliminated by the CyberChurch revolution. George Barna III railed against these developments but was laughed off the platform by those insisting "that Jesus deserved the best" even if it did look like a Macys Store with fake decorations, fake muzak, fake friendliness.

Church had become perfect; high quality, clean, always starting and ending on time, professional, sterile, souless, empty and powerless. In other words having a form but nothing else. But, "Did Jesus deserve anything less than professional excellence?" proponents of CyberChurch asked. Opponents of CyberChurch said Jesus didn't die for computers. The computers laughed.



Personal Note:
I know those who know me well know I have grave misgivings about the direction the Church in America is taking. Me Church it’s called by some. Always in the name of doing things even more excellent for Jesus. In the end when you carry something to it’s logical extension you will see that where we are headed with the whole cyber-church phenomena that is invading the church is an abomination I want no part of.

What’s really sad is we aren’t far from much of this right now in the church. Worse, some of these “Ideas” are some that a person with fewer scruples will say, “Hey, that’s a good idea, lets do it”. Sadly many of these ideas are already common and accepted in the Church. We are in such deep doo doo.

Everything I talked about is linked to something that is already in place or contemplated. This is not theory. How far down this slippery slope are you willing to go?

Now that I’ve let the cat out of the bag I’ll probably see the Communimatic advertised in the next issue of Charisma.

Me and my big mouth.