If you ask the average person, what is the purpose of people gathering together Sunday after Sunday in church, the probable answer that most people will give is that they gather together to worship. Another answer that one might expect to receive is to listen to God’s Word. Very few will perhaps say that the purpose of the church and the gathering together of God’s people is to provide fellowship. In fact, fellowship is an essential ingredient of the church’s role. One could conceivably worship in solitude, it is possible to listen to some very edifying sermons on tape or on the radio, but fellowship is some thing that can happen only when people gather and relationships develop. It is the thing that cannot happen over the radio waves or in isolation. Fellowship requires people to gather together and pray and meet together and bear one another’s burdens.
In fact, in the many sermons that I must have listened to over the years, the one sermon that I clearly remember was delivered over twenty years ago from the opening verses of Philippians chapter two on the theme of fellowship.Today, it is the age of social networking sites. Orkut, Facebook and My Space and so many others. They are all supposed to bring people together. They have their uses. They do bring people together. People who would otherwise have never met get to meet. I have joined a few and sure, have met some people. We don’t exchange post cards there. We count scraps. And it has its zip and zest, I must say. But when I look at some of the profiles and see that they have 50, 100, 200, 300 contacts, I wonder. Can you really have some thing meaningful to say to 300 “contacts”? Are Orkut notes balms that can heal the soul or merely scraps that itch? Christians are not lagging behind in this race.
There are plenty of Christian social networking sites too if one does not fancy the secular ones, though Orkut and all the others too have their share of tradition groups and “communities”. These are all good. These are all good. If technological innovations are happening and they are redefining the manner in which friendships and social equations operate, there is no reason for Christians not to take advantage of them. I myself can recollect many people who I met fro the first time on line and then these ties were then cemented by off line exchanges and friendships. There are many people who I would never have met had it not been for the online platform that is available today and I am in that sense grateful for technology and for all that it enables us to do.Having said that, I must also say that on line encounters, no matter how long and how often cannot automatically translate into friendship and fellowship.
The writer to the Hebrews cautions his readers that believers ought not to forsake the meeting together of each other because meeting together, talking together and praying together, physically and face to face serves a purpose that chats and scraps simply cannot. Christian Fellowship is about bearing one another’s burdens before as said before and also about rejoicing with those who rejoice and weeping with those who weep. But can we share out our heart’s concerns or deepest joys on scraps and notes for the world to peep at on Orkut’s scrap books?Yes, Orkut is popular today. It generates a lot of traffic. It is a buzz to be on Orkut and collect scraps. But will Orkut last like friendships do? Do edifices built on sand and largely cemented through scraps and hits survive? Or is it that when the storms come and the waves rise, the foundation will give in and collapse? Will Orkut last a generation? will groups that are largely “virtual” really survive? Really? If not, why bother to destroy some thing that is already programmed to self destruct ?
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