Why is it so hard to explain why physical is better than virtual?

The other night I was part of a meeting for the children's ministry committee at my church. As we planned for the start of the school year we faced a thorny issue that many other churches across the city have been tackling: Should we run Sunday school in-person or over Zoom? 

To be fair, for many churches this is a no-brainer for one reason or the other. Since the vaccination rate for NSW hit over 95% at the end of last year many churches have reopened normal physical service and never looked back. But there are also plenty of churches who still meet primarily over Zoom. 

My church falls more into the latter category. Currently as I write, only two of our six Sunday services is meeting physically, while the rest are still operating fully online. Let me say that my purpose in sharing this is not to make a judgment on whether churches should fully open up or stay online. If I had a general opinion on that, it would be that no one should generalize such a complicated issue and certainly no one should grandstand their opinion on this matter based on one or two soapbox theological positions. Every Christian has their own risk profile and each church has their own unique set of circumstances to consider, and if we should generalize any principle, it should be the principle of submitting to the leaders that God has placed over you. 

What interested me about our Sunday school dilemma was that to our whole ministry team, it was blindingly obvious that physical Sunday school was superior to teaching the lesson over Zoom. I might even cautiously wager that to pretty much everyone it's blindingly obvious that children and virtual meetings don't mix well. For one thing, by this point our culture is already hyperaware of the negative effects of screentime on young children. For another, if you've ever taught Sunday school or even been around kids, you'll know how important multiple learning modes are to children. How are you supposed to do arts and crafts over Zoom? What games or activities can you play when all your classmates are hidden behind and iPad? You can forget about getting them to sit still long enough to memorize even half a Bible verse. 

Bottom line: Zoom church services might somewhat work for grownups, but Zoom Sunday schools does not work for kids. Kids don't thrive in a virtual space. Kids need to be together to play with each other, to learn from each other, to feed off of each other's energy, to do activities together, to connect with each other. 

Here's the epiphany that I had in that meeting: What we consider obvious about children is also exactly true for grown-ups but for some reason it's so much harder to explain to adults why virtual gatherings are inferior to physical. Grownups don't thrive in virtual space. They need to be together to joke with each other, to learn from each other, to feed off of each other's presence, to do activities together, to connect with each other. Grownups and virtual meetings don't mix well. How are you supposed to share the Lord's Supper together through a computer screen? How are you supposed to pay attention to the sermon when Facebook is just an alt-tab away? How are you supposed to belong to your community and tie invisible strings of attachment to each other? How are you supposed to feel like this is your family, like your church friends are deeply embedded into your life and you in theirs? How are you supposed to feel like your soul would be wounded if you were separated from your church community... if you actually ARE separated from your church community every Sunday?

I think that most of us acknowledge that Zoom services are somewhat unideal compared to physical gathering but to be truthful I'm not sure if I sense the right amount of urgency and I don't know if most people feel the weight of the spiritual loss the longer we stay on Zoom. And I'm trying to stay true to my word: I'm not advocating that everyone return as soon as possible; if I've learned anything in ministry it's that the obvious answer is never obvious and there's a cost with every easy "no-brainer" decision. 

One of my biggest frustrations as a pastor over the last year has been trying to explain in a simple way why physical is better than virtual. I haven't figured out how to articulate clearly the reason for it, and I think part of why it's so hard is because our culture already struggles to appreciate existence beyond the material. We struggle to discern the meaning underlying the things that we can see, hear, taste, and touch. And we struggle to feel the importance of physically expressing things that are spiritually meaningful. If we're "brothers in Christ", that is a spiritual truth and it'll be true no matter how near or far apart we are and no matter if we see each other once a week or once a decade. So there's no point making it true through through seeing, hearing, and touching each other (I can skip tasting each other). 

You can also see this bifurcation of physical and spiritual in how we treat the Holy Communion and church membership.  These aspects of church life used to be of tremendous importance but today most Christians don't appreciate the significance of sharing the Lord's supper together and church membership is perennially on the list of things we'll get to once we finally sort out all the urgent stuff. 

In church today, we struggle to appreciate what's not practical or convenient. When a deadly virus is spreading across the globe in an epochal pandemic, Zoom is very practical and convenient. 

I'm going to say one more time that I am not crusading. I'm not advocating church leaders do one thing or another, not even for my own church. I am just worried. I am worried about the cost. Zoom has made some sense of community practical and convenient even when we're not physically together. By that very same token, Zoom has also made it practical and convenient never to see your brothers and sisters at church. Zoom has lowered the cost essentially to zero, to leave the church. If you want to sever a human connection, one way to do it is to first reduce it to a virtual connection. Remove yourself from having to see, hear, or touch them. Over time, even the virtual meeting becomes vestigial. Bye.