Today I participated in my first virtual prayer meeting. It was a most wonderful experience! Juha-Matthi and Toni work at the e-learning department of the big Finnish company Kone. They are using the Centra software for online communication and instruction and had the permission from their company to introduce it to us.

This afternoon we logged on to their central server. My new web camera was installed. We could see each other and talk to each other. Four people were gathered in Toni and Tuulia’s living room. I could see them all and talk to them! Today I met Jesaja’s wife for the first time! Håvard from Trondheim joined us as well. We were located at three different locations as we were sharing the word of God with one another, encouraging one another and having a very powerful time of prayer together!
It was so exciting! I thank God for these new inventions that are enabling us to communicate and fellowship in spite of big geographic distance between us. I can foresee that this technology will be of great blessing to the covenant community in the training of leaders and workers.
However, these virtual gatherings can never substitute the gathering of people in the flesh and blood world where we may touch one another in a physical way as well. But for training purposes I think they will be very useful!
I look forward to explore this technology even further. Next Thursday we will have a Bible study with a Powerpoint presentation.