It is quite possible that we will see thousands of churches with an Internet Campus before the end of the decade.

Cross Point Church (Nashville, TN) just named Chris Surratt as their first Internet Campus Pastor.

I caught up with Chris to get his thoughts about the state of the Church online.

Chris, give us a brief sketch of your background.

Before I came to Cross Point, I was on staff at Seacoast Church for fifteen years and a Campus Pastor for five years. I am now Pastor of Ministry and oversee family ministries, groups, missions and spiritual formation.

Your brother, Greg Surratt was an online church pioneer at Seacoast. Did you get the whole internet ministry thing right away?

My brother saw the Internet as another hook we could put out there, but I was pretty wary of the idea initially, to be honest. I didn’t understand back then how people could receive care or how there could be community online. Fortunately, we had a pastor who had a long-term vision and saw what it could be.

Since then, I’ve seen online ministry really evolve from just streaming services to people being reached who probably would not or could not be reached in any other way.

How important is the role of the Lead Pastor in starting an Internet Campus?

I think it’s extremely important. It was Pete Wilson’s vision for Cross Point to do an online campus. It was his idea to do the live Q&A at the end of each week’s online service, which I think is unique.

Like any church ministry, if an online campus is not part of the Lead Pastor’s vision, if he is not a champion of it, addressing the campus in his message, then the ministry might exist but it won’t flourish.

Did something occur that said now is the time to expand the online campus by adding a pastor?

We were seeing people starting to engage in community. Needs were being shared through the chat. We were getting email and prayer requests. It was really starting to feel like a church and we felt like we needed someone to focus on the spiritual needs of those attending. I offered to step-in and help.

Some say they’re concerned about online church attenders not connecting to local churches or not being in real community.

I have seen community develop online and now I’m a believer. Chris Surratt

Our goal for most people at CrossPoint.tv Live is to connect them into a local church.

We say all the time, “We love that you come, continue to drop in on Sunday nights, but we would love to connect you to a local church.” We’ve been able to do that with a few people in a few towns, and I love it when that happens.

At the same time, we’re seeing people come into chat or send emails who have never been to church or haven’t been in years. Right now this is their church. They have nothing else. They’re looking for someone to pastor them, they’re looking for someone to pray for them.

I’m ok with serving those people and being an outlet for them to get healing, to get prayer. I think it’s great we can meet people where they are outside the walls of the church.

How are you addressing some of the core church practices?

We had a very cool moment recently where we did communion together at all our campuses including online. I came on and explained communion and asked people to get whatever they had in their house for the juice and bread. It was amazing to see people talking in chat about the fact that we were doing this together. That was an amazing ministry moment online which we will definitely continue to do.

We’re working on discipling ideas. We’ve experimented with video chatting. We’re talking to Saddleback Church about how they do their online groups. We’re looking for the best format.

I think it is definitely possible to participate in ministry online.

Is it your sense that the excitement for Internet Campus is growing or mellowing?

It is definitely growing and booming. LifeChurch.tv opened up their free church online platform just this week and I saw Bobby Gruenewald’s tweet saying over 1000 churches had already signed up for it. Churches of any size can now have an online presence. That’s huge.

Through technology we can now go out into the world to spread the gospel everywhere as Jesus commanded. I see no geographic barriers to what can happen online. As a pastor, I have seen Church happen online. It’s been amazing.

And it’s going to be fun to watch what happens next.