How has our church innovated?

Alice YoungUncategorised

As age-old institutions, churches are not famous for innovation. But I thought as an exercise of thankfulness it would be good to reflect on just how our church community has responded in these past few months.

  • On March 22, we shut our building and live-streamed for the first time. This was done with just over a week turnaround, while we maintained business as usual; 
  • Over the next month we learnt how to produce video, zoom interviews, mix sound for live stream, host, perform, preach for an online audience; 
  • Our tech crew learnt new software, hardware, processes, skills; 
  • We had an amazing online Good Friday Service and Easter weekend; 
  • How incredible were those dramas our young people did at Easter!
  • We learnt how to worship together while with our households; 
  • We had the Hutchinson’s speak live to our online service from Cambodia and then lead us in communion; 
  • We refitted the way we did Kids Church with resources for at-home teaching, videos for Kids talks and lessons. 
  • Youth Group met in virtual groups, produced video teaching, and ran YouTube events 
  • Our Council and Growth Groups met virtually, with many of our older members learning this technology for the first time. 
  • We partnered with Mahdavi Parker to deliver an online seminar for families which had more than 300 people attending. 
  • We ran our series ‘Jesus the Gamechanger’ across all groups of our church, for 6 weeks virtually. 
  • We now have a YouTube channel, will continue to live stream and video our services 
  • We produced and enacted COVID19 plans that required significant updating most weeks, due to constant changes. 
  • Our congregation increased its commitment to care through intentionally looking out for one another. 
  • Our pastoral care team increased its 1-1 contact through personal phone calls. 
  • We blessed our local public-school teachers with coffee and sent thank you videos. 
  • We joined with Goodwood Community centre to encourage our local community. 
  • We built connections and encouraged people who have never been to our church and in some cases live overseas. 

Anything I missed? Well done church. Not bad at all for a bunch of ‘non-innovators’ 😉 Deep thanks to ALL of you. Together we have grown as the people of God and as a blessing to others. 

Enjoy, 

Jason (Photo on www.moneycrashers.com)