LCMS World Mission Blog

“A year ago, Immanuel Lutheran Church in Palatine, Ill., added a live video and audio broadcast of worship services to their Web site. The church’s director of technology, Michael Marcelli, combined an inexpensive Webcam with a free, streaming broadcast service (Camstreams.com), and people began coming—from both outside the church and outside the country. The live broadcast can be accessed through the church Web site (ilcp.org), through the Camstreams.com entry, or through several ‘virtual church’ sites that Marzelli has set up on the Internet, including at MySpace.

“Marcelli says, ‘When we started, we wondered: Will this just be a fad? Will this get traffic for a while then disappear?’ The answer: It’s caught on. With a few common computer tools, Marzelli helps Immanuel gain a global perspective on being the church. The chat room enables people watching the service to talk amongst themselves via text conversations, right while the service is going on. It also allows Immanuel’s volunteers to engage them in conversations. Marzelli says the whole idea of using a chat room started out as a novelty. ‘We didn’t really anticipate it would have the power it has shown, because it’s something we haven’t seen a lot of,’ he says. ‘Sure, a lot of churches stream their service, but we’ve got the chat room—that’s our niche.’

“Overall, Marzelli says visitors fall into two categories. ‘There are the kind that come, ‘camp out’ and watch the service. And then we have ‘randoms’—those who just pop into the chat room due to the novelty of the whole thing.’

“‘We get a variety of people visiting the chat room,’ notes Tim Storm, Immanuel member and a chat room volunteer, ‘from Christians who want to attend a service, but are trapped home because of snow, to people who are home-bound, to people from other countries looking around and curious as to what’s on the site.’ He recalls conversations with a Buddhist from Taiwan, a Wiccan from Minnesota, and a doubter from England. As in face-to-face conversations, sometimes people can be difficult to deal with. Yet, Storm sees it as an opportunity. ‘We had this one guy saying how can you people really believe this stuff,’ Storm says. ‘It’s really interesting, because here he is, an extreme doubter, yet he came into the chat room and stayed. We ended up talking for 20 minutes.’

 “‘Along the way, things change. You actually start to develop a relationship with this person,’ Marzelli adds. ‘It’s really neat to see it go from a casual, novelty conversation to a real connection.’ Because this all takes place in real time, Immanuel volunteers in the chat room have the unique opportunity to provide spiritual care for people. ‘There’ve been times where we’ve been having chats and the person will ask for prayer about a situation,’ Marzelli says. ‘We are able to pass that prayer request along to the pastor, and literally minutes later the person hears the pastor offer the prayer up and sees the congregation praying for them.’”

This story, written by Diane Strzelecki is published on the Northern Illinois District’s People Ablaze! Web site. You can visit this Web site at www.peopleablaze.com.