I think for me it's having to passively watch a service like it's a TV show that makes streamed services harder to connect with. Obviously I appreciate that churches have limited options and are doing their best!
Yeah - I certainly get that. I find it very hard to engage with services on TV. Our place does morning prayer on zoom, with 6-8 different people taking turns leading different parts of the service, which I find much easier to engage with than the sort of service that is a passive live-stream on youtube / facebook / whatever. On the other hand, Mrs C hates the zoom service, and far prefers the passive live-stream option where nobody can see her.
I'm just not really understanding what you're proposing you do in the typed chat - is it a discussion? Are you typing out the Gloria? Are you commenting on the sermon?
We also introduced a short discussion / response slot after the sermon, where people can share their response to the sermon or readings, how they apply this reading to their daily life or whatever. I have found that to work well over zoom, but I don't think it would work in an in-person format (I think it's mostly being able to see people's faces on zoom vs the back of their heads in a pew, but I also think people are braver about speaking up if they can do it from their home.) (FWIW, Mrs C virulently hates this bit of the morning prayer zoom, too!)
This is popular enough that we are starting to think about how we can preserve it when we are able to have physical services again. I'm not sure it's possible, and I'm certain that putting a discussion slot in the middle of our communion service wouldn't work, but I'm skeptical that many people would show up for a discuss-the-semon slot after the service (and the logistics of people's lunches etc. make hanging around difficult). But we'll see if anyone can come up with a smart idea - one that can accommodate both those who love this, and those who hate it.
In the typed chat I was thinking of a discussion - I suppose you could have one running after the other, similar to adult Sunday School that some US Episcopal churches have. Otherwise I wonder if you could use it as more of a cafe church situation.
OK, for discussion I see how it would work. I was having difficulties with typed worship. I'm not sure I really understand cafe church.
If you didn't want to tie it to a live service, setting up a slack or a discord would be free, and not really require anything beyond someone saying "hey, I've set this channel up so we can discuss the sermon / readings / whatever". And it's something that can be done without official sanction - if you've got a few people that want to have a discussion, you could just set one up and try it for a few weeks, and see if it was something you all found useful.
Although I remember that you've just moved house, and so you have the problem of not really knowing anyone, and no physical place to go and stand to look out for like-minded chatters. And you can't really try it without having a group of people to try it with...
Yes, this is the problem really - to compare it to my Slimming World group (not actually too bad of a comparison) we also have a Facebook group rather than just a page, so there are opportunities for conversations and getting to know one another outside of the Zoom meetings. Most churches around here only have Facebook pages, which don't allow for as much interaction, and don't use Twitter in an interactive way. The church I went to a few times before I moved has home groups etc online, but via Zoom.
In my area digital poverty is mostly confined to older people and not a particularly common thing overall. I would be interested in hearing how churches in areas where it is a more widespread problem are dealing with it.
The church I went to a few times before I moved has home groups etc online, but via Zoom.
Interesting - all our online stuff is zoom as well (because they all used to be physical meetings, and when we weren't able to do that any more, they all moved to zoom). We have a website and a facebook page, but like you say, they're not really interactive - they're basically a newsletter.
Many parishioners are facebook friends with each other, but there's no church group.
I think I'm a little wary of setting one up, though - creating a community on facebook walks a little close to encouraging people to use facebook for my taste. When it's just a newsletter thing it's fine - we have several ways of advertising church activities, and this is one of them - but encouraging people to join facebook and gather on it seems a bit of a step too far.
It might be worth giving more thought to this, though.
Our Sunday services are on Zoom and live-streamed to Facebook, and the Facebook feed is embedded into our websites. Zoom seems to create a better sense of connection for people and means people can join by phone ( though few do). The Facebook livestream means that it is still ‘public worship’, and we tell people who to contact if they want the information to join up via Zoom.
(I loved this year's Greenbelt Beer and Hymns, they played old videos of Beer and Hymns and we sang along at home with our beers, and saw each other raising our glasses).
Firstly, a decade ago 40 odd of us piled into the Ship's Café at the time of Erin's funeral and held our own service, typing in bits of the service together (I was just back from running the sound system for a church funeral and had that service sheet in my hand so knew the formal bits). So services in a chat medium are possible.
Secondly, one of ways folk festivals and concerts are still going is either live streamed or prerecorded on YouTube and/or FaceBook with enabled chat. If prerecorded, the artists are chatting along in the live chat, if live-streamed, they are often responding to the comments. From the numbers quoted as viewing, the majority seem to use the YouTube stream, which tolerates having over 1000 watching without falling over. Having seen both, I prefer the quality of YouTube, and that's not just I'm not signed up to FaceBook. For paid concerts, a private YouTube link is provided, and taken down after a specified time, that seems to work for prerecorded streams. Zoom is also used, but YouTube quality is massively better than Zoom, although the artists seem to like the immediacy of Zoom.
We have been running Girl Guides on Zoom since April last year, and we've managed to retain most of the group (14 out of 19) for this year. But ... girls using a mobile phone can only see 4 people, including the person speaking, which complicates things massively. Because every time someone opens their mouth the screen leaps to them.
Going back to concerts on Zoom, the audience I experienced was, I suspect, a similar demographic to church congregations and a similar size of a couple of hundred. Trying to teach everyone to mute and close video during the concert section was - um - *interesting*. Someone got irritated enough to say they were paying to hear the musicians not the audience catching up with each other. That lack of muting and shutting down video killed the quality. You can set the person you'd like to watch as the main picture on laptops, but we were trying to teach others to do that on the hoof too, not entirely successfully as much of the audience were not digital natives.
We might well have gone for YouTube rather than Facebook except that to livestream from a phone to YouTube you needed to have 100 subscribers. Given time we could probably have achieved that, but we were in a situation where we needed to be doing it almost instantly.
With Zoom we have found it important for the Host to be willing to use ‘Mute All’ and also to use Zoom’s ‘Spotlight’ feature to prioritise for everyone the speaker(s) who at any given point are meant to be the focus.
We started a telephone conference call at the beginning of the first lockdown. It lets the people without internet access join us, so is good for some of our elderly members. We have also had some people's friends and family from elsewhere in the country join us regularly, if they don't have a similar thing locally. People can announce themselves and chat on arrival or stay anonymous. We also had a repeat of the sermon with some prayers on FB later in the morning, but that has now developed into a livestream linked to the phone service.
We also have a Zoom session in the afternoon in place of a 4pm fresh expression-y interactive service
The phone service has continued when some are in church, and those unable to join in person have still been able to lead intercessions or read scripture, as a disembodied voice through the speakers!
Pomona, are any local churches providing worship via technologies other than Zoom?
With Zoom we have found it important for the Host to be willing to use ‘Mute All’ and also to use Zoom’s ‘Spotlight’ feature to prioritise for everyone the speaker(s) who at any given point are meant to be the focus.
Yes, this.
Zoom also has a webinar mode which is intended for mass presentations (rather than its normal conference mode) - I don't know what you have to pay to get that, but it provides a format that is better suited for one-to-many one-directional broadcast. I think in the webinar mode, the host can unmute individual attendees to allow them to ask questions, but it's not suited to a round-table discussion.
We started a telephone conference call at the beginning of the first lockdown. It lets the people without internet access join us, so is good for some of our elderly members. We have also had some people's friends and family from elsewhere in the country join us regularly, if they don't have a similar thing locally. People can announce themselves and chat on arrival or stay anonymous. We also had a repeat of the sermon with some prayers on FB later in the morning, but that has now developed into a livestream linked to the phone service.
We also have a Zoom session in the afternoon in place of a 4pm fresh expression-y interactive service
The phone service has continued when some are in church, and those unable to join in person have still been able to lead intercessions or read scripture, as a disembodied voice through the speakers!
Pomona, are any local churches providing worship via technologies other than Zoom?
We do a Zoom thing on Sunday afternoon. I can't even begin to understand how someone on a telephone or landline can join in? I'm pathetic when it comes to technology.
We do a Zoom thing on Sunday afternoon. I can't even begin to understand how someone on a telephone or landline can join in? I'm pathetic when it comes to technology.
You can join a zoom call with a telephone. The how is easy enough - you dial the zoom dial-in number from your phone, then enter the meeting code when prompted (an 8-10 digit number), then enter the meeting passcode (there's a numeric version for phone use), and you're in the zoom call.
The person who sets up the zoom meeting should have the option to produce instructions for dial-in from phone, as well as the join-by-computer https link. Then you need to distribute those instructions.
The host of the meeting has to be on a computer. If you've got phone people in your meeting, you'll see a black box with a phone icon and some of the digits of their phone number, rather than their name or video feed.
Here are a list of zoom dial-in numbers that might help.
Once on the zoom call, dial *6 to toggle mute on and off.
The cathedral is livestreaming via their website, and some churches are using YouTube for services but comments are switched off - it's for streaming only with no interaction. I understand wanting to deter trolls though.
We do a Zoom thing on Sunday afternoon. I can't even begin to understand how someone on a telephone or landline can join in? I'm pathetic when it comes to technology.
You can join a zoom call with a telephone. The how is easy enough - you dial the zoom dial-in number from your phone, then enter the meeting code when prompted (an 8-10 digit number), then enter the meeting passcode (there's a numeric version for phone use), and you're in the zoom call.
The person who sets up the zoom meeting should have the option to produce instructions for dial-in from phone, as well as the join-by-computer https link. Then you need to distribute those instructions.
The host of the meeting has to be on a computer. If you've got phone people in your meeting, you'll see a black box with a phone icon and some of the digits of their phone number, rather than their name or video feed.
Here are a list of zoom dial-in numbers that might help.
Once on the zoom call, dial *6 to toggle mute on and off.
Thank you! I'll have to ask our Zoom coordinator to see if there's a phone number in addition to the link. I'm not sure if he uses a computer to host. It sounds straightforward enough.
And to make sure that the dial in is from the right country. It defaults to the USA every time, unless changed. There is Lao a strange bit on the dialling in where you may be asked for your personal aid number, and not told that if you don’t have one (most church people won’t) you can skip on by hitting the hash button.
Well done (and well read). I thought the interview with the Nun was excellent - a fascinating insight into another part of the world of God's *Rainbow People*.
Comments
Yeah - I certainly get that. I find it very hard to engage with services on TV. Our place does morning prayer on zoom, with 6-8 different people taking turns leading different parts of the service, which I find much easier to engage with than the sort of service that is a passive live-stream on youtube / facebook / whatever. On the other hand, Mrs C hates the zoom service, and far prefers the passive live-stream option where nobody can see her.
I'm just not really understanding what you're proposing you do in the typed chat - is it a discussion? Are you typing out the Gloria? Are you commenting on the sermon?
We also introduced a short discussion / response slot after the sermon, where people can share their response to the sermon or readings, how they apply this reading to their daily life or whatever. I have found that to work well over zoom, but I don't think it would work in an in-person format (I think it's mostly being able to see people's faces on zoom vs the back of their heads in a pew, but I also think people are braver about speaking up if they can do it from their home.) (FWIW, Mrs C virulently hates this bit of the morning prayer zoom, too!)
This is popular enough that we are starting to think about how we can preserve it when we are able to have physical services again. I'm not sure it's possible, and I'm certain that putting a discussion slot in the middle of our communion service wouldn't work, but I'm skeptical that many people would show up for a discuss-the-semon slot after the service (and the logistics of people's lunches etc. make hanging around difficult). But we'll see if anyone can come up with a smart idea - one that can accommodate both those who love this, and those who hate it.
OK, for discussion I see how it would work. I was having difficulties with typed worship. I'm not sure I really understand cafe church.
If you didn't want to tie it to a live service, setting up a slack or a discord would be free, and not really require anything beyond someone saying "hey, I've set this channel up so we can discuss the sermon / readings / whatever". And it's something that can be done without official sanction - if you've got a few people that want to have a discussion, you could just set one up and try it for a few weeks, and see if it was something you all found useful.
Although I remember that you've just moved house, and so you have the problem of not really knowing anyone, and no physical place to go and stand to look out for like-minded chatters. And you can't really try it without having a group of people to try it with...
Interesting - all our online stuff is zoom as well (because they all used to be physical meetings, and when we weren't able to do that any more, they all moved to zoom). We have a website and a facebook page, but like you say, they're not really interactive - they're basically a newsletter.
Many parishioners are facebook friends with each other, but there's no church group.
I think I'm a little wary of setting one up, though - creating a community on facebook walks a little close to encouraging people to use facebook for my taste. When it's just a newsletter thing it's fine - we have several ways of advertising church activities, and this is one of them - but encouraging people to join facebook and gather on it seems a bit of a step too far.
It might be worth giving more thought to this, though.
(I loved this year's Greenbelt Beer and Hymns, they played old videos of Beer and Hymns and we sang along at home with our beers, and saw each other raising our glasses).
Firstly, a decade ago 40 odd of us piled into the Ship's Café at the time of Erin's funeral and held our own service, typing in bits of the service together (I was just back from running the sound system for a church funeral and had that service sheet in my hand so knew the formal bits). So services in a chat medium are possible.
Secondly, one of ways folk festivals and concerts are still going is either live streamed or prerecorded on YouTube and/or FaceBook with enabled chat. If prerecorded, the artists are chatting along in the live chat, if live-streamed, they are often responding to the comments. From the numbers quoted as viewing, the majority seem to use the YouTube stream, which tolerates having over 1000 watching without falling over. Having seen both, I prefer the quality of YouTube, and that's not just I'm not signed up to FaceBook. For paid concerts, a private YouTube link is provided, and taken down after a specified time, that seems to work for prerecorded streams. Zoom is also used, but YouTube quality is massively better than Zoom, although the artists seem to like the immediacy of Zoom.
We have been running Girl Guides on Zoom since April last year, and we've managed to retain most of the group (14 out of 19) for this year. But ... girls using a mobile phone can only see 4 people, including the person speaking, which complicates things massively. Because every time someone opens their mouth the screen leaps to them.
Going back to concerts on Zoom, the audience I experienced was, I suspect, a similar demographic to church congregations and a similar size of a couple of hundred. Trying to teach everyone to mute and close video during the concert section was - um - *interesting*. Someone got irritated enough to say they were paying to hear the musicians not the audience catching up with each other. That lack of muting and shutting down video killed the quality. You can set the person you'd like to watch as the main picture on laptops, but we were trying to teach others to do that on the hoof too, not entirely successfully as much of the audience were not digital natives.
With Zoom we have found it important for the Host to be willing to use ‘Mute All’ and also to use Zoom’s ‘Spotlight’ feature to prioritise for everyone the speaker(s) who at any given point are meant to be the focus.
We also have a Zoom session in the afternoon in place of a 4pm fresh expression-y interactive service
The phone service has continued when some are in church, and those unable to join in person have still been able to lead intercessions or read scripture, as a disembodied voice through the speakers!
Pomona, are any local churches providing worship via technologies other than Zoom?
Yes, this.
Zoom also has a webinar mode which is intended for mass presentations (rather than its normal conference mode) - I don't know what you have to pay to get that, but it provides a format that is better suited for one-to-many one-directional broadcast. I think in the webinar mode, the host can unmute individual attendees to allow them to ask questions, but it's not suited to a round-table discussion.
We do a Zoom thing on Sunday afternoon. I can't even begin to understand how someone on a telephone or landline can join in? I'm pathetic when it comes to technology.
You can join a zoom call with a telephone. The how is easy enough - you dial the zoom dial-in number from your phone, then enter the meeting code when prompted (an 8-10 digit number), then enter the meeting passcode (there's a numeric version for phone use), and you're in the zoom call.
The person who sets up the zoom meeting should have the option to produce instructions for dial-in from phone, as well as the join-by-computer https link. Then you need to distribute those instructions.
The host of the meeting has to be on a computer. If you've got phone people in your meeting, you'll see a black box with a phone icon and some of the digits of their phone number, rather than their name or video feed.
Here are a list of zoom dial-in numbers that might help.
Once on the zoom call, dial *6 to toggle mute on and off.
Thank you! I'll have to ask our Zoom coordinator to see if there's a phone number in addition to the link. I'm not sure if he uses a computer to host. It sounds straightforward enough.
But I thought it was a good one. Our minister spoke to a Nun from a Dublin community the Redemptoristine Nuns. Really interesting.
Some of us shared the peace by video clips at the end and I confess to having a tear in my eye. So many dear people I haven’t seen since March.
Maybe some here might like to use that idea?
https://youtu.be/M2SFkJYRNNU
Well done (and well read). I thought the interview with the Nun was excellent - a fascinating insight into another part of the world of God's *Rainbow People*.