An international service

The photo below shows a test-run for tomorrow morning’s pulpit. For the past few years I have found myself connected with a small church in Davao City, in the far South of the Philippines. On a regular basis Pastor Barquito uses podcasts of my sermons, recorded in Teddington, to play to his congregation. In the grace of God they have been used, and last Summer a number of those who listened to them were baptised as believers.

Tomorrow morning at 5.30am UK time, I shall preach via Skype to the congregation gathered there for an afternoon Sunday service. The split screen which you see above has the webcam feed to the left and my notes to the right. To be honest, I don’t really like using electronic notes – but anything else will rustle infuriatingly and get in the way of the webcam!

As a person who sees preaching as an almost organic act – growing out of the lived and messy relationship with a group of God’s people – this is an unusual step. However, the fact is that a relationship of sorts has built up with this Pastor and his people, and a gracious invitation has been extended by him. Technology is meant to connect, rather than divide – and this is a great example of how it can do so. Tomorrow morning I shall use software originally designed by a Dane and a Swede for music file-sharing to address a group of Filipinos all the way from Teddington about words originally spoken in Israel by Jesus.

This is all very clever, but the cleverness is not what matters. As with any act of preaching, what matters is that the timeless word of God impacts the current lives of those who hear, unleashing the power of the Holy Spirit.

I shall be praying that it might be that way, and that the scene below might be repeated again in the warm waters of the Pacific Ocean.