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When I was growing up in rural east Texas, my Baptist grandmother used to tell us we were going to the “church house” on Sunday mornings. “The people are the church; the building is just where we meet on Sundays,” she would explain. At the time it didn’t mean much to me, a seemingly pedantic point that flew over my seven-year-old head.

But today, as my work as communications director at Episcopal Church of the Transfiguration has been upended almost completely, this seems less stilted and more a pure and simple fact.

Last month, my job was transformed from a bulletin-printing, event-promoting, announcement-gathering rat race into one that takes place completely in the digital realm. Instead of in-office appointments and printed drafts to proof, my work is now captured completely in pixels on a screen, coordinated by Facebook messenger and email in equal parts.

After the church announced that in-person worship and events were suspended, I scrambled — just like most church communicators in the country — to devise and implement a plan to facilitate worship experiences online, both live and recorded. But how will people without Facebook watch worship? What about people without internet access? How can we provide a worship service that feels authentic, personal and real?

The answers that revealed themselves were both unexpected and reassuring.

On Sundays, we set up a webcam, perched on a ladder, smack-dab in the center aisle, right up close to the altar rail where folks would usually be directed by an usher during communion, right or left, to the front or to the transepts. I girded my loins for the desert of Facebook engagement that typically plagues our page, which rarely garners likes, comments or shares.

But what happened next contradicted my understanding of what the church is and how it worships. Grannie’s theology that the church is the people, not the building, unfolded before my eyes in real time.

“Roger Everette has joined.” The feed began to announce. “Sally Wilson Garfield has joined; Mark CB has joined; Brad Everhardt has joined.” One by one, I watched as friends, acquaintances, parishioners and visitors virtually gathered to worship.

The feed kept rolling. At the end of the prayer of the day, a deluge of “Amen” comments. Dozens more comments came in, “Praise to you, Lord Christ,” at the end of the Gospel lesson. Snippets of the Nicene Creed were submitted, as if the viewers were standing in the pews affirming their faith in unison. During the Prayers of the People, I watched in wonder as person after person wrote in petitions and supplications, asking for guidance, peace and the healing for the world.

All in all, that worship service, the one I predicted to be lightly watched and barren of engagement, garnished 703 likes, comments and shares, with the message of God reaching more than 2,600 people across Facebook. This for a church with a total membership of around 1,800.

What I witnessed was nothing short of remarkable. The church had indeed gathered to worship in the most beautiful way I’ve ever seen, more beautiful than any anthem, chant or impassioned hymn that could have ever been heard in a sanctuary so strikingly beautiful.

I saw the church that Grannie talked about; I saw the people of God; I saw the body of Christ, the fingers of Christ, if you will, tapping out their worship and praise.

I realized then and there that my assumptions about the church, my expectations of the church, were utterly off-point. What I saw has changed the way I experience God; it has struck down my naive theology, as the Holy Spirit gathers the rubble of these days and rebuilds it into something more mature and well-founded. What I saw has changed my life and faith, and I will forever be grateful for the people, the church, who made that happen.

My faith has been bolstered to say the least.

Judson Watkins is the communications director at Episcopal Church of the Transfiguration in Dallas, Texas. He wrote this column for The Dallas Morning News.