Interesting
I have encountered, let us call it, an “internet credentialing” simply because someone was asking me what to make of the concept and actually I had to do research to understand what was even being asked as it was very foreign…in every sense of that word.
snip…
But, even in the more extreme cases like this, I have not actually met people who seriously posited that they were ordained over the Internet and that such was then the basis for them shepherding a congregation. Where in the United States does this phenomenon happen, since “It has added greatly to the proliferation of Protestant faith and churches”? It is a straight forward question. I wish to find out a bit more about this phenomenon, if it really exists, as I am genuinely fascinated by what has been brought up in this thread.
Most of the people I have met that were in a tradition somehow stemming from the reform were from more conventional backgrounds and practices. When the moment arrived to talk about how they or the one over their group was ordained, some ordinance was described to me that – however distinct it may be from Catholic theology – had elements the logic of which I easily grasped. (I have always found most interesting speaking with those who have a thought process that the ordination is actually effected by the believing community; that supposes an interesting ecclesiology and derivative concept of ministry.)
I remember once I was on a visit to a place in the United States. A group I had met with was also located there. They had invited me to visit them in their church, which they wanted me to see. Fascinated by the opportunity, I set aside a couple of hours to do so. I remember they were so proud of their worship space and showing me how it facilitated their form of worship service, which was very musically oriented. It is where I had an introduction to the terminology of “church planting”
They were also proud of the state of the art coffee shop they had in the narthex (really I should say lobby – the whole scheme all seemed modeled on an American concert theatre, actually). They assured me it was quite a tool for evangelising unchurched young people. I told them I found American Catholics very enthusiastic about coffee as well but that the basements I had visited were not so state of the art…and that the crypts and undercrofts in Europe typically have the dead of centuries past about and really do not readily lend themselves to such innovations of today as making them venues for partaking coffee.
Are these ecclesial communities with their internet ordinations unaligned, I assume? Who EXACTLY are they? Who constitutes their congregations? How, theologically, do they understand an ordination to be effected over the Internet?
