Indianapolis--Fairview P.C.Worship is streamed through Facebook Live and Zoom Webinar (for phone access). We are fortunate to have a member who is a techie and A/V geek. I’ve attached a photo of our setup. We have one mic for the speaker/singer and one mic on the piano, both going into a portable mixer which goes into the laptop. We use OBS ( https://obsproject.com/ ) because it allows us some options (text, images, etc.) that Facebook Live online wouldn’t.
I lead worship with the same liturgist each week (to cut down on number of people involved). The liturgist is important because online worship is already harder to pay attention to, only having one speaker makes it even more so. Our organist plays piano on a prelude and postlude and accompanies a soloist who sings a hymn and a response or two. We share a bulletin by PDF several days ahead of time. Staying connected - We have an online spreadsheet with every person’s contact info and a place for the date of when we last checked in with them and any notes/needs. The Session and our Congregational Care Team are all taking part in using this to check in with every person active at Fairview right now. We also have a smaller team that has volunteered to make phone calls, either each day or each week, to members that we need to check-in with more frequently. During worship, I ask people to take a selfie with them and their screen that they are watching worship on. We then share these on Facebook, newsletter, etc. to give people a sense that they are not alone in worship. We also take prayer concerns through chat in worship, and have a “passing of the peace” where people chat to each other and I go through many of the names of people I see watching. This next week we are starting a Tuesday morning Bible Study by Zoom where I will lead people through the scripture passage for next Sunday’s sermon. We are also starting a Wednesday evening prayer group on Zoom. Meetings are handled through Zoom and email. Our Session is meeting on Sundays through Zoom every two weeks and having email discussion in the in-between time. I and the secretary have been in the church each day (separate offices). |