Category: Doug Estes

Your Church is Not Apostolic (and It’s OK)

I have been reading SimChurch by Doug Estes and I read this paragraph that I just had to share with everyone, especially since I have grown so weary over the years of all this talk that we need to “get back to the church of the Book of Acts” (as if that church had any fewer problems that our own). Estes writes,

Everyone wants to claim that their church, their movement, or their ecclesiology is “closest” or a “return” to the early church. Frankly, I get sick and tried of that arguement. I don’t care how many books are published each year that claim such-and-such a movement is the real Acts 2 way; they’re all disingenuous. Why can’t we accept the fact that we will never again be just like the early church? That no one will ever again be swallowed by a fish for three days and regurgitated to call Nineveh to repentance? That we don’t need to be a carbon copt of what we guess the earliest church was really like to be faithful to God’s call. That we should do the best we can today to reach today’s generation in the way that God has prepared for today. (p 108)

Doug is right. We were not placed on this earth to participate in the mission of God in the first century to Palestinian and Dispora Jews, ancient Greeks, and Romans (to name a few). We have some problems that Peter and Paul never faced. We are doing some things better than the early church ever could have done it. All this being said, God has placed us in the here and now. We are not the “apostolic” era church; we are the modern church, and its OK.

How Real is Virtual Church? Do You Have an Opinon?

Today I listened to my former professor, Doug Estes, discuss the virtual church on the Paul Edwards Show (listen here). Formerly, I have considered virtual church to be a possible supplement to what Doug calls the “brick-and-morter” church, but I found this interview very convincing that church in a virtual world (or through means of the virtual world) can be as legitmatly church as anything with which we are familiar.

Have you thought much about virtual ecclesiology? If so, do you have any thoughts on the matter?

If not, I recommend visiting the website of Doug’s book where you can find a list of virtual churches to visit as well as a wealth of additional information on the subject. That can be accessed here.

Do Church Online; Get Free Book


The Koinonia blog has a promotion going on tomorrow for those who are willing to venture into the world of virtual church. If you attend a virtual church this weekend and write a follow up on the Zondervan Facebook page you will receive a free copy of Douglas Estes’ SimChurch. I already have a free review copy coming in the mail and I am excited to read Doug’s book and review it here. I think this is an interesting topic and if you can get a free book for going to church online you may as well do it, right?

For the Koinonia post go here.

Into the Future (of Ecclesiology)


I want to recommend a forthcoming book written by a former professor of mine, Dr. Doug Estes. I finally had the opportunity to preview a portion of SimChurch: Being the Church in the Virtual World. You can do the same at the Brownblog here.

I have two initial thoughts:

(1) There is my skeptical response, which Doug appears to be prepared to address, that says the virtual world is a place inhabited by normal people part of the time and only freaks most of the time. Even those freaks have to come back to the real world for oxygen. There is no way virtual ecclesiology will be anything but a fringe study.

(2) There is the other side of my that realizes I do much of my theologizing with people I have never, ever met in person or that are far, far away from me in the time-space continuum by means of biblioblogs, Facebook, Twitter, e-mail, and so forth. If this is true who is to say that one day many of us will sit in church from the comfort of our living room just as many people manage business from home. Would George Whitefield have foreseen tapes, then CDs, then mp3s replacing yelling in a valley as a means of reaching people with a sermon? Probably not.

I present my first concern–is this a new form of neo-Gnosticism? Not Gnosticism as knowledge-salvation, but the branch that denied the value of the material world. Is it ecclesiastical docestism? Or is it merely an echo of the Pauline concept in Ephesians that spiritually we are already together, ruling with Christ? Any thoughts out there?

Doug Estes for Koinonia Blog

A former professor of mine, Dr. Doug Estes, has had a pretty big week over at Zondervan’s Koinonia blog. He wrote an article titled “John Calvin, Virtual Church Pioneer”, an article titled, “John Calvin: Why He Would Have Embraced Social Networking (and Why We Should, too), an article titled “Return to Calvin: A Personal Reflection on How Calvinism Lost It Way”, and one of those videos where the author is asked about their own favorite authors (in which he sports an amazing beard).