Core Dimensions of Online Worship

The issue of Liturgy entitled “Fruits of the Liturgical Renewal Movement,” guest-edited by Stephanie Perdew, includes essays by members of the board of The Liturgical Conference (publisher of Liturgy) describing how liturgy and liturgical studies have been affected by liturgical renewal. This is an excerpt from Lester Ruth’s essay on virtual worship, his contribution in a new column called UNMUTE YOURSELF, meant to give board members of this journal an opportunity to explore liturgical matters they have been working on. He is describing the fact that customary ways of delineating parts of worship don’t work when worship is not in actual space but in virtual space. He sees activities, “dimensions,” of worship rather than places where worshipful activity occurs. –– Melinda Quivik

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Thus, I have five core activity dimensions: praying, commemorating, offering, unifying, and transitioning. As I visited various online services over the last year, these are the basic dimensions of worship for which I see churches making room, so to speak, in their services’ online architecture.

But the five core activity dimensions were not the only dimensions that I observed or knew about. These five core activities did not exhaust everything occurring in online services. There were dynamics at play in how these core activities were done or made possible. “Space” had to be given to these dynamics, too. To me there seemed to be four dynamic dimensions.

  • ·musicking (the making of music, to borrow a term from ethnomusicologists)

  • ·leading

  • ·participating

  • ·coordinating (the behind-the-scenes dynamic of facilitating the technical delivery of the service).

The architecture of all online services I have participated in have had these four dynamic dimensions as well as the core activity dimensions mentioned earlier. What these dimensions look like and how they can be used vary depending upon the platform used through which worshipers interface with the service. If White’s “spaces” and “centers” can take different forms depending upon the architectural style of the building and upon the liturgical tradition of the congregation, so these dimensions will be different depending upon the online platform as well as a congregation’s liturgical commitments.

My PowerPoint to discuss liturgical architecture now has some new slides for the architecture of virtual worship. I have a way to begin to talk to my students as we think through the planning and conducting of online worship services. I have a set of categories to suggest to the students “Ok, here’s what’s going on as you contemplate online worship services. Take account of these dimensions.” If White’s schema gave me the categories by which I could teach students to assess brick-and-mortar liturgical architecture and think through different possibilities, my schema gave me a way to do the same with students for online services.

What I have drafted as the architecture of online worship may prove to be deeply flawed, even worthless. In the end so are many initial drafts of blueprints. If you find the dimensions discussed above just poppycock, wonderful. If all I have done is show some paths and categories to avoid, very good. I admit I am still learning the liturgical layout of Dzhangyaryk, Kyrgyzstan, and am likely to get lost in this new cultural landscape. But, like a journey, our conversation regarding excellence in online worship has to start someplace.

Let us not be discouraged, however. Virtual worship may seem like a strange new cultural world. Indeed, it is. But let us draw encouragement from the etymology of the word “virtual” itself. In its origins this word connoted strength. In that hope let us find a way to navigate the power and possibilities of online worship.

The rest of this essay is available in the full digital and print editions of Liturgy. All of the essays in Liturgy 36, no. 3 are available by personal subscription and through many libraries.

Lester Ruth, a member of The Liturgical Conference Board, is the Research Professor of Christian Worship at Duke Divinity School in Durham, North Carolina. Along with Lim Swee Hong, he is the coauthor of a forthcoming volume entitled A History of Contemporary Praise and Worship: Understanding the Ideas that Reshaped the Protestant Church.

Lester Ruth, “Thoughts on the Architecture of Virtual Worship,” Liturgy 36, no. 3 (2021): 5–7.

David Turnbloom