Covid Response

This page is work in progress and contains a summary of what has been done within the congregation in response to circumstances surrounding the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020.

Worship

Attendance at the church for the worship was not safe. Traditional worship was replaced by:

Worhship streamed live in Sunday mornings at 10:00am on a YouTube channel and subsequently made available as a video podcast.Members of the congregation pre-record prayers, bible readings, songs, and other relevant materials for use in worship.

Prayer Live Broadcast 7:00 am Wednesdays

Evening Reflection Live Broadcast 7:30pm Thursdays.

See also CovidResponseMarch18

Contact with the Ministerial Team

For reasons of safety, the ability of the ministerial team to visit members of the congregation is extremely limited. While the ministerial team is generally acessible by phone, designated times have been set aside each week to encourage Cuppa Calls with each member of the ministerial team as well as a time for a zoom check-in with Neil Peters.

Activities for Children, Families, and Young People

Details to be added.

Keeping in Touch with Members of the Congregation

The following initiatives encourage people to keep in touch.

Happy Day emails. Every day an email is sent to all on-line members of the congregation containing something encouraging, light hearted, or inspirational as a reminder that the community of the congregation is still active, even though we can't meet with each other.

Drop-in (mystery) call. Provides a way for people to meet people in the congregation that they may not know well. People were invited to register their interest in receiving a phone call (or a zoom) from someone in the congregation that they may not know with a view to getting to know them better. With this list, pairs are randomly selected and the people involved informed and invited to call each other.

Watch and chat. Some people are enjoying watching concerts, musical events, and other things on YouTube and catch up TV. This initiative encourages people to agree a time to watch something and then follow up with a chat to discuss (either one or one, or in small zoom groups).

Did you know? Provides information about on-line entertainment that members of the congregation might enjoy. See GomerFun and CovidCommunications.

What's going on? Groups are asked for a sentence or two (and maybe a photo or screenshot) about what they are doing to keep together when we can't physically meet. Responses will be put on a wikipage, in Kingsway and peerhaps trickled out in 'Happy Day' emails.

Who am I? To help people get to know more people in the congregation, clues about a person are given out over a week in 'Happy Day' emails and members of the congregation asked to try to guess who the person is. Saturdays are the reveal.

Feedback during worship. A cheap pre-paid mobile SIM and number is published during live stream worship with a question seeking SMS feedback (during worship).

Would you like us to contact you? At the conclusion of worship live stream, watchers are asked to contact us if they wish. Watchers are also asked if they would like us to contact them (e.g. send us an email at .... if you would like us to contact you).

Remembering those who are not on-line. Many of the activities of the congregation during Covid-19 restrictions are on-line. However, we are mindful that not everyone is on-line. To keep in touch with those people, letters are periodically sent to those people containing news. Some people have DVDs of worship delivered to them. Contact with some people is maintained by telephone.

Church Council, Missional Groups, Functional Groups

Committees of the congregation that usually meet in person used Zoom (see CommunicationsChannelsZoom) meetings to do their business.

Other Church Groups

Gomer

GOMER (GomerInfo) is a group for men to have a walk, coffee and a chat on Monday mornings. This has transitioned to a zoom meeting on Monday mornings at 10:00am.

Mindful Meditation

The mindful meditation group has transitioned to zoom meetings on Tuesday afternoons at 2:00pm.

Free Spirit (Choir)

FreeSpirit has been meeting using zoom at its normal practice time to prepare musical recordings for use in worship.

Details of more group activities to be added.

Watch this space.

Status Updates

ChurchCouncil updates on how the congregation will operate are provided as necessary in the ChurchBulletin.