Electronic church refers to a number of means (TV, radio, DVD’s) believers use to “worship” God by themselves instead of with a body of believers that is becoming more and more popular in our fast-paced, instant-minded society, but true Christian worship is both private and communal and one should never be practiced in place of the other.
There are times for personal piety all through the week that are absolutely essential to the Christian’s life. The Lord Jesus demonstrates this in his habit of withdrawing alone to a quiet place to pray and commune with the Father. Personal Bible study and prayer are godly habits that we must practice between the Sundays. We need to maintain our personal devotional life.
There are also times for public worship. New Testament commands regarding the assembling together on the first day of the week and how imperative it is for the life of the Christian abound (see especially Hebrews 10:24, 25). Praying together, standing together for the public reading and preaching of Scripture, singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to one another, and giving our offerings are just some of the vital expressions of communal worship, which is the only kind that the Book of Revelation shows us as being characteristic of the saints in heaven - eventually, all worship will be communal.
We can see a sweet relationship between private, individual worship through the week and communal worship on the Lord’s Day, and it is specifically that one leads logically to the other. Private worship prepares us for communal worship, when we come together to sing God's praise for what He has done in our lives the week past. Interestingly enough, communal worship will then go on to prepare us for private worship in the week ahead at our jobs, our homes, our social gatherings, and in our prayer closets. We see that each aspect of worship enhances the other, and this blessed circuit should be present in the life of every true believer. You cannot have one without the other. Both affect each other.
As a result of this inextricable and sweet union, we might consider taking stalk of our private devotional life if our worship on Sunday is not what it should be, or examining how we worship with the body, if our private devotional life is not what it should be.
We do recognize that there are shut-ins physically incapable of assembling with the body for worship on the Lord’s Day, but their situation does not represent the norm. And far from canceling it out the two-fold aspect of worship, it rather supports it - in cases like these, the body must go to them to encourage, build up, and offer needed fellowship, that they might not forget their place in the body and that someday we will be together as the Bride worshiping perfectly.