PRELIMINARY SCRATCHING
Just thinking out loud about the nature of ministry. My musing is all somewhat random at this point.

Christianity is an embodied religion -- incarnation. God became flesh and bones. He doesn't save us from a distance. Salvation is communicated face-to-face -- in-person.

The incarnation is our connection/portal into the life of God -- the Trinity (John 13-16) -- we love as he loved -- perpetuating the life of God through high-touch face-to-face in-person incarnational love (perichoresis).

Those who lead the church do so face-to-face. Ministry is fundamentally high-touch. Sure, there are para-church tools which come alongside to aid in the work of communicating the incarnation (e.g. internet, radio, television, books, publications) but the primary connection has to be people-in-the-flesh or at some point the modeling becomes distorted and the incarnational theology gets out of balance -- people begin to think of salvation has merely words or images -- ideas to be embraced rather than a person. As the Orthodox say, the priest is the icon of Christ -- the physical presence which represents the incarnate Christ. The word is not reduced to a disembodied idea to be accepted. It still comes to us in the flesh.

Ministers, at least in the protestant tradition, are ordained to "word and sacrament". The same person who serves you the word serves you communion. The two are never to be divorced from each other. The word is heard, the sacrament is smelled, touched, and tasted. Multi-sensory -- fully incarnational -- dealing with the whole of the person.

The incarnation is at the core of salvation and ministry. As St Ignatius, bishop of Antioch in the second century put it -- "Where the bishop is, there is the church." We are connected to the word through people.

Therefore, we ask:

1. In what sense, if any can the word be fully communicated in a large setting where there is no actual face-to-face encounter with the person who presents the word?

2. Can a disembodied video sermon ever substitute for a face-to-face encounter with someone preaching the word?

3. Is it okay to specialize to the degree that those who offer the word and those who offer the sacrament are different people? How does that affect our thinking and perception of who God is and how he works?

Any feedback?