Church Life in Lockdown - some lessons we've learnt

"I in my small corner and you in yours"

Church Life in Lockdown

Many people have asked me what church life is like in lockdown and what we have learnt over the last eight weeks or so.

Here are a few reflections.....

(1) Online Church is Good

From the very first Sunday in lockdown, Manor Park Chruch went online. You can visit us HERE. Instead of trying to do church "live" we opted for a pre-recorded version of morning worship. Key to this move was:

• a change in teaching material to be compatible with those whose understanding may be limited or those with no understanding of the Gospel: we wanted everyone who might listen to benefit
  
• limit to one hour, preferably less, so sermons 20-25 mins
• music was undertaken by three different teams who have got better and better as the weeks have gone on
• music is all mult-tracked - which means that the singers send their recording to the music leader to be added to the mix
• use as many different people as possible - even church online should involve the whole community
• a different reader every week
• we use our normal meeting leaders - we have not sought to "go professional"
• a children's talk which involves all the children singing / reciting Bible verses
• all ten or so mini videos are added together to form a single video
• we premier the video for 10:30 Sunday mornings to foster the habit of meeting together at that time. You can watch afterwards, but not before.
  

(2) Online Devotionals are Helpful

Every single day since lockdown the church members have received a daily devotional with an audio version attached to the email. This has proved to be very helpful by many folk.

(3) Home groups by ZOOM

All of our home groups / small groups (nine of them) moved over to Zoom. And we have discovered more people come to Zoom home groups than to "real" ones! Our prayer meeting has moved to our home groups and this too seems to be working.

(4) Pastoring

Pastoring is done by zoom, many phone calls, emails, texts and so on. It seems to work. Now that lockdown has eased somewhat we are also able to meet people one to one - at 2m of course!

(5) Blessings

Perhaps the most remarkable facet of going online is that God's people have grown in their love for one another, with phone calls, making protective masks and meals and so on as evidence of their love. Financial giving has increased. New practical and spiritual gifts have emerged (they have had to). Two people in our community have recovered / are recovering from Covid-19. Praise God. More people are watching us online than belong to our community. We know a few, but others we don't know.

(6) Challenges

2-D zoom is not the same as 3-D face to face contact. Some folk have struggled more than others with not seeing other people. Especially people living on their own. For these folks making a meal for them is a tangible way of showing love.

Fortunately in the church there was enough techy know-how to enable us to get going from the start. But sound quality is always the number one challenge. Video quality on most mobile phones is excellent, but sound not so good, so we all use lapel microphones.

(7) Opportunities

Since all our direct evangelistic opportunities have come to an end we have had to prayerfully consider new means. One of those has been "Bags of Hope", a bag with boredom-busting goodies to help families in lockdown.

I am sure that given time, many more deeper reflections will come to light. These are just an immediate sample of what we have observed.

Lockdown, we are not surprised to hear, has not in any way hindered the mighty expansion of God's kingdom!

To God be all the glory!