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For our summer series we have been asking the same question of eight different topics: Does It Matter? Today we come to our seventh topic: Does Church Matter? But before we consider this question I want to mark two important anniversaries.

For the past few days the world has been celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission that first landed men on the moon. The past two nights, the launch of the Saturn V rocket has been projected onto the Washington Monument in DC, the perfect screen for it. Google marked the occasion with an elaborate video doodle, an animation of the entire Apollo 11 mission, narrated by Michael Collins.

This anniversary of the lunar landing coincides with the second anniversary: it was fifty years ago that I watched TV for the first time. I’m sure I’m not alone in that being my first TV experience.

On July 20, 1969—50 years ago yesterday—the Apollo 11 Lunar Module landed on the moon and the famous words were heard, “The Eagle has landed.” Grainy images were transmitted back to earth from a video camera mounted on one leg of the module. Neil Armstrong slowly descended the ladder, stepped onto the lunar surface, and said, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

All over the world great crowds of people gathered around TV sets to watch these grainy images. I was one of them. I was nine years old, living in rural Thailand where my parents were missionaries. We didn’t have a TV and didn’t know anyone with a TV. At the time we were on holiday at the beach. My father took me in to the nearby town and we stood outside a shop, watching a TV through the window. It’s estimated that 600 million people watched the event on TV. On that day technology drew the world together.

A few years later the Apollo program ended. The scientists and engineers dispersed. Many came here to the Bay Area and continued to develop new technologies at an ever-accelerating pace. Now a watch has far more computing power than any Apollo spacecraft. Now we expect video in HD, even in 4K. Now we expect Video on Demand, rather than be constrained by broadcast schedules.

There are still a few events that gather crowds around a TV all over the world, notably a royal wedding. On our Footsteps of Paul tour through Greece last year a lunch stop was prolonged so people could watch Meghan Markle process down the aisle to meet Prince Harry.

But times have changed. Now we have new iconic images, such as Apple’s ads featuring a silhouetted figure with white-corded earbuds. Now technology isolates people rather than drawing them together. Now in a crowd people are watching their own small screen, streaming video from anywhere in the world, viewing in isolation, sealed off from one another by their personal earphones. People are simultaneously more and less connected than ever: more connected to more media and to more “friends,” but desperately lonely and disconnected.

Technology has spread to the church. Video cameras are now common in church sanctuaries and auditoriums—except here: PBCC is way behind the curve. Video cameras were first used to enhance community: to record services for the benefit of members who were shut in at home or in a nursing home. Some churches still use local public-access cable channels for this. But that’s not how most cameras are used today. Sermons are beamed in real time to satellite campuses that might even be in another state, or webcast on the internet. The person watching need have no personal connection with the preacher or the worship team, be no part of the community. Last year Sue and I attended a church in Maui, where the sermon was streamed in from southern California.

Once you get used to watching a sermon on a big screen at a set time, why not switch to watching at home at a time of your own choosing? Why bother coming to church at all? Why not stay home and put together your own service: say, a