UNMUTE YOURSELF: Thoughts on the Architecture of Virtual Worship

Abstract

Here’s my candidate for perhaps the biggest understatement of the year: the pandemic has been disorienting. I don’t think my experience has been exceptional but, even if it has just been me, the last twelve months or so have felt like a crash course in learning how to live in a new culture. It has felt as if I went to bed one night, safe and secure under the comforter of my old culture, and the next morning I rolled out of bed with my feet landing on the cold, hard floor of having to learning new ways of living, relating, and working immediately. It felt as if I went to sleep one night in my comfy home in Durham, North Carolina and woke up, hungry, the next morning in Dzhangyaryk, Kyrgyzstan. (You’re forgiven if you have to use Google Maps to find it.) Part of that disorientation has spilled over into worship as we have had to learn how to indigenize our services into a new culture of social distancing and online platforms. Not only has this been a struggle for those who plan and lead worship but even for those of us who have had to learn how to participate as online worshipers as fully, consciously, and actively as we can. We went to bed one night, eager to wake up and drive to church buildings the next morning, sit in our usual spots, and exchange the peace face-to-face with people we love dearly. But we woke up having to learn how to plan worship remotely, navigate unfamiliar platforms to somehow make it accessible, and still somehow enable God’s church to lose itself in wonder, love, and praise. As a worship professor, I have learned, too, that some of my old categories for teaching others how to plan and lead worship were just insufficient. At times these categories were just unhelpful. For instance, one day I was teaching James F. White’s categories for different liturgical spaces and centers to my Introduction to Christian Worship course. White, a renowned liturgical historian, had developed these categories as part of his specialization in liturgical architecture, past and present. According to White, there are regularly six “spaces” found in liturgical architecture: gathering, movement, congregational, choir, baptismal, and altar-table (i.e., Eucharistic). In addition, White identifies four liturgical “centers”: baptismal font/pool, altar/table, the presider’s chair, and the pulpit/ambo/lectern. I know no better summary of traditional liturgical space and so I regularly teach White’s schema in this class to help students decipher already existing buildings and contemplate organizing new spatial arrangements for worship. In February 2021 I did just that and waited for the students to shake nodding heads of approval and recognition. I saw no nodding heads as I looked through Zoom at the students and, if I had, those heads would have been shaking left and right in disagreement, not up and down in approval. Finally, a hand shot up. I called on the student. And the question of this time was asked: “Professor, what does any of this have to do with worshiping online?” I had no immediate answer because there was no good, obvious answer. Good morning, Dzhangyaryk.