Technology is a beautiful gift that has been discovered and utilized by mankind.

It has so much redefined different spheres of our lives from basic communication, politics, culture and even religion. It has become a constant part of our lives.

While technology is outstanding, innovation, which is the foundation for technological inventions is more remarkable in its own right.

These days technology and innovation have provided you an opportunity to be at the comfort of your home and also be somewhere else simultaneously. One of these ideas is called live-streaming.

Some Nigerian neo-modern churches have hopped on the idea and have had their Church services beamed live via the Church’s website or YouTube.

People who are unable to attend Sunday services are now able to livestream the service or watch it later. With the services stored safely on the internet, people can easily watch and rewatch it at their convenience.

I had thought that it was an innovative idea that will have far reaching consequences in the spiritual lives of Christians.

However with the seamless possibilities technology had offered people, I had questioned myself on how much of an impact it had on Church service. Could it serve the same spiritual experience as being physically in church?

So for this week on Church crawler, I decided to try it on a Nigerian church who has built up quite a reputation for live-streaming its church services – Daystar Christian Centre.

Led by Pastor Sam Adeyemi and his wife, Pastor Nike, the church has even tagged its web audience as “The Internet Church.”

Armed with a steady internet service, I sat at home on Sunday and watched the service of Daystar Christian Centre on their website. I have, in the past, attended Sunday services at Daystar before and I knew firsthand how it feels to actually be in the church.

I mean i knew I wasn’t missing anything different from the usual fashion parade that precedes each of the four sessions. It always looks like it’s some competition of who can out-dress the other.

So the internet church gave me an opportunity to skip past all of that shenanigans and get right to the message of a man whose wise words I admire so much. I mean if Pastor Sam Adeyemi was a rapper, he’ll be dropping hit records back to back every Sunday.

So I got to watch Pastor Sam preach which was as usual, deeply insightful but this time something was missing. The sermon lacked teeth, energy and it was less exciting watching on screen rather than in person.

Equally absent was that feeling of connectivity between people present at the service. It quickly brought to mind the popular Bible quotation that “for where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.” (Matthew 18:20)

Truly, the idea of the internet church as Pastor Sam calls it is innovative but it’s not even close to being physically seated in the beautiful Daystar auditorium. Maybe it could be an alternative but I doubt the potency of it.