Following months of lockdown, we wanted to open the building to support the wider community, for those who do not know of or cannot access our online worship, or those who are looking for God and not sure where to turn. If this is you we’d love to see you as we meet each Sunday from 11-11:45.
Due to the need to maintain social distancing and our small building we can not accommodate a full congregation yet. So most of us will remain worshipping online. And being a COVID world, it’s all different: we must wear masks, not sing (but listen to recorded song instead); there is a 1 way system, hand gels and the whole service will be streamed to the screen. However we know wherever 2 or more meet in His name, God is there, it will be great to rest in His presence.
And despite asking ourselves how many signs & risk assessments does it take to open a church – and losing count – we have opened our doors for our first “hybrid” service, with 11 video callers, 5 more on the phone, and 6 of us in the building. The reading was shared from the Lectern in the building, the speaker was on Zoom in his home office, and the technology driven from another home – but it all worked, we were able to socially distance and it was so good to be back – yes, a few tears were shed.
God willing we will be back again next week and for the foreseeable future. Come and join us – no need to book – but please forgive us if we need to close the doors – a socially distanced church is very easy to fill to capacity… there’s always next week.
For anyone else looking to open and wondering what we have below is a little summary of the technology side:
- A laptop runs Zoom from the music area at the front. Running twin screens, we copy the zoom session up to our projector, an HDMI splitter mirrors the projector feed to a small screen so the welcome team can see it without having to look behind them.
- A long USB cable links a webcam up on front wall (just below the cross) giving a wide screen view to those at home. A tripod mounted phone gives a simple second camera pointed at the lectern.
- Audio runs through our usual mixer and sound system, the welcome team have radio mics so they can join in with those on zoom. We still need to sort mic options for others, as right now only the welcome team can be heard, but we’re sure handheld mics in plastics bags should keep them hygienic and still working. .
- We run the service itself on Zoom with the leader, preacher and all music managed from peoples homes. And the in church team control what is on the screen, and can manage the in church volume if needed from the mixing desk.