Virtual Worship - When You Can't Physically Attend *

Virtual worship is simply the act of extending the experiences that would otherwise only happen within the confines of our physical church building (worship services, prayer services, Sunday School classes, church committee and business meetings) to remote participants who physically can’t be present in the church’s building at the church’s location during the appointed time.

Virtual worship extends the reach of our message beyond the walls of our church.

With virtual worship, a participant can:

• Be remote instead of local.
• Be virtually present instead of absent.
• Be at the participant’s location instead of the church’s location.
• Participate either in real-time at the appointed time or time-shifted on demand.
• Have all of these characteristics and still participate in true congregational worship.
• Can actually bring people into our church during our worship services who otherwise couldn’t participate; albeit by bring them in virtually instead of physically.

Because virtual worship can be delivered in real-time concurrently with our physical congregational worship, people are actually worshiping along with the rest of our congregation; they are merely separated by distance. Temporal concurrency, participating in worship contemporaneously with others even at a distance, makes true participatory congregation worship possible.

Virtual presence makes it possible to remotely participate in a worship service or church event by using technology to remotely transport sufficient sensory information (sound and/or images) to a participant to convey the sense and meaning of the shared experience. The participant can be located at a significant distance from the site where the event occurs and originates but still receive sufficient amounts of information of be immersed in the experience to some degree. Although the remote participant may not get 100% of the sensory experience of the physically-present participant, the remote participant receives enough of the experience to get a true representation of what occurred at the physical venue.

*Copright (c) 2006 by TeleWorship Corporation - Used by permission.