Back to church?
Sallie Draper
Good morning WELSTech-ers –
I hope everyone is healthy and enjoying a the onset of Spring. In Wisconsin we are looking forward to the Safer at Home restrictions being lifted at some point (May 26 is our current date). Are restrictions being lifted in your location?
I’m curious about your congregation’s plans/considerations as you prepare to open back up. Specifically, what will be different about church as you re-open and how do you envision using technology as you move forward? If you have plans, would you be willing to share them here so others can benefit?
God’s blessings!
Sallie Draper
Systems Analyst, Technology
phone: 414-256-3216
Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod • www.wels.net
N16W23377 Stone Ridge Drive, Waukesha, WI 53188-1108
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Sallie Draper
All –
Pastor Keith Schleis responded to me directly and agreed I could share here. His congregation in Abiding Faith in Smyrna, TN seems to have set up a lot of great protocols which may be of interest. Perhaps best read from the bottom up …
From: Keith Schleis <keith.a...@gmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, May 7, 2020 9:23 AM
To: Sallie Draper <Sallie...@wels.net>
Subject: Re: [WELSTech] Back to church?
Sallie,
I'm sorry, if you could forward that previous email to the group, that would be great. I apologize for my mistake.
We have a dedicated cleaning crew that does a great job before and after services. It's really worked well. I should have mentioned that since March we've made everything touchless - door propped open, drop off offering and friendship register on the way out, pick up sanitized bulletin and pens (CDC has recommendations for cleaning pens on their website... things you learn), everything printed in bulletin so people don't touch in-pew Bible/hymnal, gloves and masks and sanitizer at the door, little signs are placed in pews reserving them for the Holy Spirit to keep social distancing, and to mark areas of special cleaning.
Our sanctuary used to smell like flowers.
Now it smells like bleach.
Comforting, though.
Thanks,
Keith
On Thu, May 7, 2020 at 8:59 AM Sallie Draper <Sallie...@wels.net> wrote:
Hi Pastor Schleis –
Thanks for sharing! Very interesting that you continued in-person worship with 10 all throughout the shutdown. And also that you are going to do two sizes of worship. And your experience with SignUpGenius. What about “deep cleaning” between services. Do you have protocol in place for that?
Also I noticed you replied just to me, not the full Google group. Would you mind sharing your response to the group (wels...@groups.wels.net)? Alternatively, if it is ok with you, I could share it there.
Thanks again!
Sallie Draper
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From: Keith Schleis <keith.a...@gmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, May 7, 2020 8:04 AM
To: Sallie Draper <Sallie...@wels.net>
Subject: Re: [WELSTech] Back to church?Sallie,
Good morning.
We've used SignUpGenius to register for 30 minute worship services according to our Governor's restrictions. We had services of 10 people during March and April. We also premiere a pre-recorded 30 minute service on YouTube and Facebook each week.
Beginning in May, Gov. Lee relaxed the restrictions for churches in Tennessee. We don't have to abide by the 10 person limit, provided we follow social distancing, cleaning, etc.
People now use SignUpGenius to register for 35 person or 10 person services. Our plan is to continue using SignUpGenius to register in advance for worship. This has worked very well with prospects. We had 5 prospective families who came to worship last week, all using SignUpGenius.
We had accessibility problems with SignUpGenius's free plan and most mobile devices. We pay a small monthly fee for their cheapest plan and that works well.
Our plan for the rest of the summer is to offer large and small group worship options using SignUpGenius, teach BIC classes using a hybrid of Zoom and in-person, and upgrade our livestream equipment.
For us, the biggest ministry changes are (1) livestream is new expected normal (2) comfort with Zoom especially for our members of distance and (3) demands for higher quality livestream. I've found a number of long-term prospects who I can't get into church on Sunday morning but will watch our livestream each week and text me about it.
I'd love to hear what others are doing, especially when it comes to Sunday School, outreach, and livestreaming.
Thanks,
Keith
CindyK
- We'll restart worship on Sunday, May 24th.
- There will be 4 total services each weekend. 3 on Sunday, and 1 on Monday night.
- The Sunday services will be at 8, 9:30, and 11am. The Monday service will be at 7pm.
- In order to maintain social distancing, we will possibly have sign up forms for all of the services.
- We'll be blocking off every other pew.
- No hymnals; all the words will be in the bulletin
- No ushers or greeters
- Mask wearing at the discretion of each person
- Limited singing
- We'll sanitize after each service.
- The services will probably be about 35-50 minutes long.
- We'll stick to the regular schedule for communion (the 1st and 3rd Sundays of the month). We've discussed how to do this in a safe way.
- We'll probably continue to tape the service during the week for those who don't feel comfortable going into public or who are in the vulnerable categories.
- If you are in one of the vulnerable categories, use common sense and your own discretion in choosing whether or not to come to public worship.
- The pastors will continue to offer private communion throughout the week. Call to set that up.
Sallie Draper
Thanks to all who have replied! I also heard from Pastor Rob Guenther at St John in New Ulm, MN, and I have his permission to share here …
From: Pastor Guenther <pastorg...@gmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, May 7, 2020 11:08 AM
To: Sallie Draper <Sallie...@wels.net>
Subject: Re: [WELSTech] Back to church?
Sallie, we've made a few changes we hope to keep...
1) We made the switch from Vimeo to YouTube (which I'd been pushing for a while). :) (Vimeo's great, but YouTube has like 8x more viewers and most have YouTube built into their smart TV's, but not Vimeo.) We've averaged around 400 views per service (and if you figure there are 2 or more in the room per view, we've actually had record "attendance" in worship lately). (With MLC in session we had about 600 in attendance per week. Now we may be up to 800.) For Easter we had 820 views. So, I'd guess around 1,600 in "attendance." That's been awesome. That in turn, has pushed us to up our game in video production...
2) We used to just hit record at the start of the service and stop when it was over. That's what went out to NUCAT (New Ulm Cable Access TV) and on our Vimeo page. But we're doing a little more editing now, adding hymn lyrics, scripture texts, etc. Cf. here for a sample: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiL4AB7zKmE. A lot of the home-bound members have expressed appreciation for it. (I guess it took the rest of us having to watch it to see that we needed to increase our quality. We'll continue to add the lyrics and texts to our videos before we post to YouTube and send it to NUCAT.
3) We've been meeting for live Bible Class on Google Meet each Sunday morning. We have about 70 viewers and so, trying to count who's in each camera shot (families and couples), we've averaged just over 100 in "attendance." (~110). (We used to average 94, so it's actually gone up.) Didn't hurt that it was Professor Koelpin teaching the book of Isaiah instead of me. :) I'm starting a new study on Sunday at 9:30am (The Screwtape Letters). The Board of Ed has agreed that we should keep this online aspect of our Bible Studies so that the home-bound (and family and friends) can join us. So even when we can meet in person again, we're going to add a laptop to the podium and present it live to others who can't be there.
4) We've been more aware of our presence on social media. A member put together a social media calendar/plan where we have a daily post on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. We've gone from 350 to 740 FB followers in the last 2 months. So we're being more deliberate and intentional about leveraging that influence.
5) We've been doing is online devotions for our school kids. Here are a some of mine... (In various qualities, depending on what we used to record -- camcorder, phone, digital recorder from MLC. Turns out the smart phone is really the best option. Highest quality and easiest to use.) Share as you see fit.
All in all, we can see God working some cool things through all of this. But eager to hear what others are doing and what we can learn from them. Thanks, Sallie!
Sallie Draper
All –
Thanks to Pastor Emile Burgess from Crown of Life in West St Paul and Eagen, MN who shared a link to their work-in-progress restarting worship planning document.
On May 7, 2020, at 12:28 PM, Emile Burgess <emi...@yahoo.com> wrote:
Hi Sallie,
Here’s ours. It is a working document and we have not publicly shared the plan with our congregation as of yet—only that we have a plan. We have also not sent out the congregational “comfort-level" survey either and it too is a work in progress.
(We are a dual-campus congregation of ~1100 souls with a 170-student school.)
Emile