There is a long replacement going on in the church.
One where The Holy Spirit is being methodically replaced by a holy spirit. I’ll need you to pay attention to the capitalization in this piece, because identifying what’s a Ghost and what’s not is as Scooby Do as it gets these days.
There was a time when there wasn’t an app for that. Or this. Or any other thing. If you wanted to do things like church finances or church potlucks. you needed church people that had the right skill set for those things. Often called Gifts. And what you didn’t do was egalitarianly ask the granny making pies to stop filling the crusts and start filing the paperwork because it was serving the Lord in one way. As if it was just as valid as serving the Lord in another. Vice versa, no one wants the head trustee or the finance secretary to touch those pies either. Uless it’s with a fork and some gratitude and grace said beforehand.
You could see it in the abstract and the first hand when the Gifts of hospitality and administration were being exercised by vessels of that Spirit. People who could be filled like a chalice and pour out over years of faithful ministry as a church did what the church does.
And then. Someone made an app for that.
And for the love of all that is Holy I'm not talking about Excel, That’s a tool not an app. You know it’s a tool because it requires talent to use. It can be used well and used poorly, but an app isn’t used. And app replaces. The old dude with the Excel muscles serves the church, and the App that does the same thing with raw data on one side of it serves the developers, who sold it to your church board as a solution to their bad stewardship and lack of succession planning. We all knew the finance guy at our church was on his heart's last legs, but we really thought the Lord would leave him here for tax season, I guess we need to use that new church app that we keep getting emails pestering us about.
That kind of thing happens more than you know because that kind of thing becomes permission to do more of that kind of thing. Once you can replace one role exclusively filled by humans from the halcyon days of yore, well, you can do it to everyone. And what doing it to everyone entails is side stepping the role of what empowered them to do it in the first place.
The Holy Spirit is what give us the gifts we use for the building up of the body of Christ (read Church). A holy spirit, fills that gap when we need those tasks done on our timetable and in spite of our shortcomings. It’s a spirit of christian themed progress and efficiency. It will do the same things as Spirit filled Christians, just without the need for either of those nouns. “This app that replaces our humans. And we’re doing those things for god so it must be a good thing that those humans got replaced, right?” Well, maybe not. Ask yourself. Are you replacing Bill the accounting deacon or the Gifts he brought to the table. Because if it’s Bill then what you really need is Steve the accounting deacon, who may not know hes a deacon yet. But if it’s the Gifts, then you’re literally replacing what the Holy Spirit did for your church with an app.
That holy spirit does the exact same thing as the one with the capitalization with one difference. It does so without the human that used to be involved. That may seem like it’s efficiency and often gets argued as if the human being involved is the last thing the Holy Spirit needs. But it is the main thing the Holy Spirit wants.
“Nevertheless the foundation of God standeth sure, having this seal, The Lord knoweth them that are his. And, let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity. But in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and of silver, but also of wood and of earth; and some to honour, and some to dishonour. If a man therefore purge himself from these, he shall be a vessel unto honour, sanctified, and meet for the master's use, and prepared unto every good work.” 2 Timothy 2:19-21 KJV
The apps delivered by the holy spirit can’t always purge from their midst the idolatrous Hindus that make up their tech support. They can’t staff their development teams with exclusively Christians instead of atheists as they work on code. And they all use an internet not holy and set apart to the work of the Church.
But the Holy Spirit’s giftings are quite literally always from God and for God.
This is why it’s wrong for your Pastor to use a sermon writing service. Why it’s wrong for a seminary student to use ChatGPT to write a paper. Why it’s wrong for the worship and arts team to use video, lights, and sound to emotionally manipulate people into dopamine responses instead of actual conviction. And why it’s wrong for an app to replace what a Christian should be doing instead by the power of the Holy Spirit. Even if Excel is involved a bit.
“But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.” 2 Cor 3:18 KJV
We cannot uber eats our way to fellowship and hospitality any more than we can app our way to good tithing and stewardship. Those come from and are served by men and women and the Holy Spirit that lives within them. Until we come to terms with how technology can be opposed to the church in principle, we will use it as if it could never be opposed to the church out of the lack. Our churches aren’t non-profits that need good management software, they are churches. And if that software removes an individual from leadership by filling the role of what that person would have done. Then it does so in the face of the Holy Spirit's work.
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