COVID-19: Learning to Be a Virtual Church

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The public health crisis brought about by the spread of COVID-19 has churches scrambling to figure out how to do church in new ways. It’s the season of Lent which means an interruption to the normal flow of church is highly disruptive. New advisories from the CDC have us now looking at a series of weeks before we can hold public worship in person again.

In light of this chaos, this is precisely the time for churches to find new ways to be the church! At Trinity Church, we are creating a comprehensive plan to become a temporarily virtual church. Besides shifting our worship experience to livestream only, we plan to have the work of the church continue remotely.

For those looking for ideas on how to adapt in these trying times, here are some of the basic parts of our plan.

Livestream Only Worship

Molly Carlson and I have started The Faith Revisited Podcast. In Episode 15, we outline the basic steps we took to create our livestream worship experience. IMPORTANT: It does NOT have to cost a lot of money. Once we got a quality internet connection installed we produced the entire thing for less than $3,000. This important innovation made it very easy for us to make the decision to switch to livestream only for the coming weeks.

In designing the service itself, here are some basic things we found to be best practices:

  • Shrink your worship set! This is like going from live theater to television. Worship is typically designed to fill a large space full of people. You’re adapting to meet people in a lens that is only a few inches wide. Bring everything to the ground level and closer in to create a better sense of intimacy on camera.
  • Lock in on your camera! When you speak, speak directly into the camera. Don’t let your eyes wander around the room like you normally do when people are present. You’re connecting with viewers on the other end of the camera, which means that’s your point of visual contact.
  • Include the normal elements of worship as much as possible! We decided to normalize worship as much as possible. Give people as much of the rhythm of worship as possible — it’s more comforting than you probably realize. We played the hymns and had someone singing along. And we put our order of worship online so people could engage right where they are.
  • Make room for actual engagement! We decided to have people put prayer requests in the comment section during our prayer time. This gave people an active role in worship they might otherwise miss being at such a distance. Encourage people to comment as much as possible. IMPORTANT: More engagement also means your social media engagement will only grow. The more people comment, the more people end of seeing your posts.

We just released a brand new episode of Faith Revisited to share how we made this transition so quickly and seamlessly.

Continuing the Work of the Church

We will be shifting to virtual committee meetings using Zoom. Zoom is a wonderful online platform that allows for audio/video engagement. You can utilize a free account, but there are time limits on meeting length. The premium account may well be worth the investment long term, especially if this lasts months instead of just weeks. This goes for administrative committees as well as our Prayer Team and other small groups.

We are working on a comprehensive list of small group devotional materials. We subscribe to Amplify, a new streaming service through the United Methodist Publishing House. We’ll be encouraging virtual small groups to utilize these materials at home and then discuss and share during their virtual meetings.

We are adding a mid-week online prayer service. In this time of social distancing, we will seek to increase connection with a time during the middle of the week to share in evening prayer. This service will be on our Facebook Page via Facebook Live.

NOW is the Time for Innovation

I truly believe this time of social crisis is precisely the opportunity God wants us to take advantage of to do church in new ways. The limitations presented during this season of social distancing means we can recommit ourselves to connecting with one another in creative ways. People need one another, now more than ever. These are just a few of the ways we plan to adapt during these crazy times. It’s definitely a time for hope and innovation, not fear and despair!

The Rev. Ben Gosden serves as senior pastor of Trinity United Methodist Church in Savannah, Ga. This post is republished with permission from his website, Covered in the Master's Dust.