The first of Luther's three church missions is preaching sermons that congregants heed, or at least hear. Personally, it would take some time and thought to figure out why I go to church in the first place. That doesn't necessarily mean that your guess be as good as mine. The core message of the bible is relatively constant even though the duty of ministers is to bring this message to life as so eloquently put by Ralph Waldo Emerson as follows.
The true preacher can always be known by this, that he deals out to the people his life, life passed through the fire of thought.
The sermon is held in the light by the service, the congregation and the world around it. A pre-recorded service allows the congregant to jump right to the sermon and skip everything around it when they listens (please be patient with my use of the singular "they" singularthey) to it on Youtube. Inversely, technical difficulties at the Cathedral created a situation where we had everything around the sermon, but not the sermon itself because the sermon was supposed to be delivered from a recording, but the speakers (audio in) didn't work.
Consider the following questions. Is this pandemic period a time to pause "standard" or "customary" or "traditional" activities? Is this time bringing about "new" practices that could be used in the future? If so, how?
Lucinda Laird suggests that we are headed toward an environment with a permanent mix of pre-recorded and live components for a live Sunday experience. My assumption is that this involves both the physical space and the virtual space. This would involve a virtual video mixing table in the church building. Congregants would need to take particular care to make their viewing environment a sacred space. I haven't given much thought to this, so that is all the ink I will dedicate to it for now.
I notice that services of the American Church are divided between Vimeo and Youtube platforms, never quite breaking the 1000-views mark on either platform, mostly staying under the 500-views mark. One service, that of August 16, 2020, only showed 4 (four) views. Nor has the viewership increased. Although the video productions are of excellent quality and very topical, interest in celebrating through video-viewership is visibly waning.
Hybrid physical and virtual gatherings is one scenario that is of particular interest and applicable to preaching sermons in these times of social distancing. This technology has the ability to potentially fully welcome online guests who wouldn't otherwise be able to congregate.