Article3 Differences of Offline and Online Church
5 minutes - 2 November 2022
Entering the current new normal, all activities are starting to take place as before. Starting from offices, schools, campuses, public service centers such as urban villages, hospitals, and so on now that takes place offline (outside the network). Not only that, now the church has started to open the doors of its building to worship offline.
However, will offline worship be effective again after so long doing online worship? This question arises among the congregation, especially the youth. According to them, worship can be done online anywhere through digital media platforms such as live streaming Youtube, Google Meet, Zoom, and so on.
From these questions, comparisons arose between the offline church and the online church. Here are some differences between offline and online churches:
1. Worship Place
The first thing that makes the difference between an offline and an online church lies in the place of worship. Offline worship is usually done in church buildings. While online worship can be done anywhere because it can be accessed through digital media platforms.
2. Worship Environment
The atmosphere or environment during offline and online worship is certainly very different. The offline church has a more solemn and wise worship atmosphere because it is located in a church building environment. Worshiping offline in a church building is more solemn and wise because that is the main function of the church, namely as a place of worship. The atmosphere of online worship tends to experience many disturbances because it can be done anywhere that does not have the main function of worship. This is one of the drawbacks of online churches.
3. Clothes during Worship
Although the church does not forbid how to dress in worship. However, usually someone will be neater in choosing clothes when they want to worship offline. This is because even though we are in church our main goal is to praise and worship God, but there is no denying another reason because we will also meet other congregations who come to church to worship as well. This reason also makes us look presentable when attending offline worship. Meanwhile, if someone is doing online worship, they tend to look simple depending on the place of their online worship.
Even though offline and online churches have some differences, the church still has to be able to control and monitor its congregations to keep up with worship both offline and online. The number of congregations who choose online churches in the current new normal makes the church need an application that helps the church to be able to reach its congregations, because they no longer come to offline worship. With an application that can reach the congregation, the church can keep in touch with the congregation and can provide understanding to the congregation to return to church offline again.
Erista is one of the technologies that are present to help the church to keep monitoring the congregation through its application. This ERISTA ChMS serves to assist church services in terms of church data collection. The software owned by ERISTA can also help the church when it wants to contact or notify the worship schedule, volunteer service schedule, or other information owned by the church to the congregation via email.