Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength. 
Psalm 8:2

In the decade and a half since David’s observation, the state of computer technology has advanced far beyond anything imagined in the mid-1980s. Today, a new kind of church is emerging for people to attend. The global hive of interconnected computers known as the Internet is the "Roman Road" network of our day, connecting the body of Christ in ways never before possible. In scores of Internet chat rooms, people and computers now "go to church" together. It is not the kind of church to which most of us are accustomed. Nevertheless, people -- and perhaps computers? -- are experiencing worship within these Internet churches. And young people, especially teenagers, are often leading these online congregations -- with the assistance of their computer software programs, of course.

One evening, I discovered a few of the faithful cyber-congregants gathered in a chat room called #ChristianTeens. No one in this virtual sanctuary was preaching a sermon or singing praises to God. Instead, what they were doing resembled a cyberspace version of a Bible drill, with "f|owrpowr" and "Drake" quizzing a #ChristianTeens regular named "JesusFrk" on his knowledge of Scripture.

But JesusFrk is no typical Bible student. On my screen, JesusFrk appeared as simply one of seven ASCII nicknames listed down the right-hand side of the "window"; that connects me to this virtual room. Other than the @ symbol appearing before the nickname, indicating JesusFrk’s status as a channel administrator or operator ("op"), JesusFrk looked no different than any other member of the chat room.

Unlike f|owrpowr and Drake, however, JesusFrk is not the textual representation of a human being. JesusFrk is a computer program. He (or rather it) is a virtual robot, or "Bible bot," an automated software program that spews Bible verses -- in either the King James or the New International versions, depending on the User’s preference -- onto chatters’ computer screens on command, as f|owrpowr demonstrated:

As access to the Internet continues to increase, more people -- young and old alike and both Christian and non-Christian -- are logging on to the Net in their quest for meaning. Chat networks such as the Undernet and Dalnet allow people from all over the world to do that with ease. In this virtual world, they visit, debate, discuss issues, engage in Christian fellowship, and even hold Bible studies. If the room happens to have a Bible bot (and many Christian chat rooms now come equipped with them), Bible study becomes quite convenient. The bot acts as the lector for the group, looking up and presenting Scriptures on command. With a JesusFrk in the house, chatters can hold a Bible study without a "real" Bible. Just feed the bot Scripture references, and it will provide the words from a virtual Word.

The presence of such online automatons raises many questions in light of David’s assertion that humans will “still be the ones who will go to church.” Of course, no one who attends a Sunday morning church service or a Saturday evening mass will find an android behind the pulpit, the preacher’s monotonous delivery notwithstanding. Star Wars-style droids are not likely to be preaching in any church house or house church anytime soon. Nevertheless, with the advent of the Internet and all of its trappings -- Bible bots, hypertext online Scriptures, streaming video and audio of worship, and thousands of Christians assembling together in these virtual rooms -- the church is being pressed to rethink, and perhaps expand, its definition of itself.

In today’s wired world, defining church as merely a regular gathering of “church members” in a “church building” no longer suffices. Even before the Internet became embedded in our culture, the church had been defined more broadly. In its truest sense, the church is the company of all believers. It is the global church, unbound by geography or time. The Christian idea of fellowship includes the local church, but it extends beyond the local congregation to encompass believers everywhere.

Before the advent of cyberspace, this notion of a global church remained an abstraction for many of us. Even today, with the online population approaching 50 percent in the United States and Canada, few Christians recognize the Internet’s potential as a medium that could broaden Christian outreach to those who might never darken a church door, foster dialogue among people of diverse faiths and denominations, and help church leaders develop a sense of unity within our diverse faith. Cloistered in our own denominations or local congregations, some of us do not see beyond the four walls of our own local fellowship, except for the occasional missionary visit and slide show.

The development of online communities of Christians, however, has made the once-abstract notion of the universal church more real, more current, more intimate. The realm of cyberspace has the potential to link the local church with the global church in new and exciting ways. An online church is both global and local. It is a common gathering place that transcends the boundaries of time and geography. In cyberspace, believers routinely assemble but in a way that is foreign to our traditional idea of church. On the Internet, the church no longer requires a physical gathering. It is an ekklesia that encompasses the globe, a church without stained-glass windows. The online church, in the words of one observer, is a “congregation of the disembodied.”

Christians meet online to pray, discuss their faith, seek spiritual guidance, and study the Bible. In the language of the Internet, chat channels such as #ChristianTeens are “rooms.” Some such rooms are even modeled after the physical church of the “real” world. To the people who meet there, the chat rooms do have a sense of place. If a chat channel is church, it is computer-mediated church; the computer serves as the middleman. But does the fact that the adolescents who congregate on #ChristianTeens do so over a computer network make their experience any less legitimate than if they were to gather in a church building, in a home, or on a street corner?

· An otherwise unchurched six-year-old startled his teacher (me) one Sunday morning with his response to the reading of a Scripture passage so familiar to churchgoers: For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. “That’s John verse three sixteen,” the boy blurted out. (It wasn’t exact chapter and verse, but it was a lot closer than some of the generally churched kids could have gotten.) “How did you know that?” I asked. “Because that’s what it says on my mom’s screen-saver!” he replied.

· Some 150 kids in Southampton, England, log on to Southampton’s Community Church Web site  http://sublime.hants.org.uk for virtual church. Although they are all members of the same local church, the kids are spread out in twenty different cell groups throughout the city, and the Web site offers them a meeting place they might not otherwise have.

· Since July 1999, teens have been logging on to a Web site called the Internet Youth Group  http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Prairie/5083/  to download Bible studies and devotionals and discuss issues with other teens via the Site’s bulletin board.

· A three-year-old ended her bedtime recital of the Lord’s Prayer with “and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us some e-mail. Amen.”

The preceding examples are just a few of the ways that the Internet is influencing the generation that is growing up with it. We are bombarded daily with other examples, mostly in the form of sensational media reports, that portray this new medium as something that is inherently evil and destructive to the human soul. Any form of technology undoubtedly influences behavior, and the Internet does pose dangers to our society. But the Internet is no more an implement of evil than is a hammer. Both objects are tools that can be used for either good or evil purposes. A Habitat for Humanity group uses hammers to build affordable homes for the needy, while vandals use them to smash car windshields. In both cases, the person, not the tool, is responsible for how the tool is used.

Will computers and the Internet ultimately contribute positively to our faith and culture? I am hopeful, but only time will tell. The Net is a young medium; whether it ends up becoming a positive influence or a detriment to our spiritual lives remains to be seen. What is certain, however, is that the Christian faith will not be left untouched by the Internet. In fact, this technology is already shaping Christianity in ways that few people in the traditional church would have imagined. Along with the rest of the Internet, the Christian presence in cyberspace has expanded tremendously over the past decade. Whereas in the mid-1990s, when the Web was just beginning to flourish, Net-surfers could find only a few hundred Christian resources on the World Wide Web, today we are awash--some people would say flooded with--online information about our faith. The Net houses tens of thousands of Christian Web pages and thousands of Christian-oriented chat rooms, newsgroups, forums, and other online “communities.” These online projects offer a wide range of services, from free electronic mail to music and movie reviews to investment advice.

Given the heavy interest in the Internet by ordinary Christians in the United States and elsewhere (the creators of one online survey estimate that more than one-third of Web users are Christians), church leaders must recognize how ingrained this technology is becoming in the lives of their congregants and welcome the cyberchurch into the fold. The Internet is here to stay. So, too, are thousands of seekers who feel alienated from the traditional church and are turning elsewhere to find relevance, meaning, and spiritual connections.

If the church does not begin to encompass the online world in its ministry, it risks losing even more of its eroding influence in society. Although, as George Barna writes, “Americans today are more devoted to seeking spiritual enlightenment than at any previous time during the twentieth century,” the church’s influence in people’s lives is at an all-time low. The church is not ineffectual because of its message but because “a growing majority of people have dismissed the Christian faith as weak, outdated, and irrelevant.” Author and pastor James Emery White concurs with Barna, noting, “People are very interested in spiritual things, are asking spiritual questions, and are on spiritual quests as seekers, yet they have no interest in the church.”

Also concurring is futurist Tom Sine. In Mustard Seed Versus McWorld, Sine notes that “everyone from George Gallup to Time magazine has documented a growing hunger for spirituality throughout the Western world,” yet he laments that the church seems oblivious to this hunger and the many other challenges globalization, hastened by the Internet, is wreaking in our world. “We are living in a world changing at blinding speed,” he writes, “yet in our homes, churches, and Christian colleges we unconsciously prepare our young to live and serve God in the world in which we grew up instead of in the world of the third millennium. Don’t we have a responsibility to prepare our young to live in tomorrow’s world?”

I neither expect nor desire for the church to allow the Net to supplant more traditional methods and tools for ministry, nor do I advocate that young people abandon traditional church, Sunday school, or youth group relationships in favor of a totally virtual spiritual experience. But because we Christians are called to relate to the world in which we live, we must understand the culture and society of our times and do all that we can to influence them for Christ. As the Net becomes more influential in the lives of young people and as more children access the online world from both school and home, we Christians must be prepared to deal with the challenges that cyberspace presents. We must become salt and light in cyberspace.

My hope is that the church will seize the power of the Net to supplement flesh-and-blood ministries. Another of my hopes is that those of us in the church who work with children, adolescents, and young adults -- whether “officially” as Children’s ministers, youth ministers, or church pastors or unofficially as volunteers -- to more fully understand the effects of the online world on those whom God has entrusted to our care. And I hope that we respond with unconditional love, which never goes out of fashion.

For more information about Andrew Careaga’s new book, eMininstry: Connecting with the Net Generation, visit the book’s companion website at http://eministryonline.com . Editor's Note: For a great example of how one church is impacting and being impacted by the internet check out Vineyard Central's (Cincinnatti) web site.

Andrew Careaga is the author of E-vangelism: Sharing the Gospel in Cyberspace and editor of the Good News Bulletin, a weekly newsletter on the topic of Internet evangelism, available online at http://www.e-vangelism.com/. His next book, eMinistry: Connecting with the Net Generation, will be published in February by Kregel Publications.