What is your church doing for services during the COVID-19 outbreak?

[Mountain Merle]

Do any of you belong to churches where either some or all of the people are meeting, either at a church building or in homes, despite government orders not to gather in groups?

Do you really think we would tell that here?
Actually, our church is trying hard to respect our governmental mandate on public meetings. The last two Sundays we have had a "drive in" church service. Not the fancy FM radio kind but just a big sound system on a flat bed trailer at our sawmill parking lot; people park with some distance in between and roll their windows down to listen. This is specifically spelled out in the guidelines as being ok in our state (Virginia). People are supposed to stay in their cars and not mingle together. This is being well received and this morning we had local visitors that probably wouldn't darken our church doors.
We probably have 20 cars at our normal services; this morning someone counted 35 vehicles present. I told that crowd today that since we can't interact normally, that 2 beeps on the horn means "amen". That was neat to hear!
At one point somebody's child must have hit the wrong button on the key ring and one car started doing the beep-beep-beep thing. I thought for a moment that someone was getting charismatic on us.

[Neto]

.... I told that crowd today that since we can't interact normally, that 2 beeps on the horn means "amen". That was neat to hear!
At one point somebody's child must have hit the wrong button on the key ring and one car started doing the beep-beep-beep thing. I thought for a moment that someone was getting charismatic on us.

On the serious side, you also mentioned having local people coming to your out-door 'service' as well. I wonder if this might be something that God is doing through this situation. I just talked to my mom (in Oklahoma), and the MB congregation there has had 18 people call in to say that they have become Christians through their on-line services ministry. So now they are setting up some sort of deal where people will call in with Bible questions, and the pastors will present answers.

[Mountain Merle]

A clarification here......rereading over my post above I realize it could sound like we had 15 car's worth of people attending that "probably wouldn't darken our church doors". It should have been worded: "this morning we had quite a number of local visitors, a few of which would probably never darken our church doors". Sorry, didn't mean to misrepresent the facts!

[mike]

Do any of you belong to churches where either some or all of the people are meeting, either at a church building or in homes, despite government orders not to gather in groups?

Do you really think we would tell that here?

Well as a mountain man, you probably know that once in a while you can throw a bare hook in the stream and actually catch something!

[Swiss Bro]

That's really cool, Mountain Merle.

We still have our Zoom meetings on Wednesday nights and actually I am leading one this Wednesday so I hope this will work out nicely. However, these are "closed" meetings, i.e invitation only. Not sure what would happen if we would open it up to the public... anybody has experience with this?

[violet]

We have call in church service locally. With the other church we visit monthly, there are no meetings.

I am glad you asked the question Swiss Brother. I read the article Ernie posted on church meetings and we thought about calling one of them this Sunday just to experience a little more variety. So, for us, we are planning on perhaps listening to sermons we might not otherwise get a chance to. How we did it last week was to just mute our phone and listen in. The children could be a distraction at times. From what we have experienced, most families are doing this as well.

[Wade]

I read the article Ernie posted on church meetings and we thought about calling one of them this Sunday just to experience a little more variety. So, for us, we are planning on perhaps listening to sermons we might not otherwise get a chance to. How we did it last week was to just mute our phone and listen in. The children could be a distraction at times. From what we have experienced, most families are doing this as well.

We've done this. I was surprised how excited our children were with sitting around the computer to watch and listen. It has been a blessing, encouragement and we have felt very welcomed.

[Ambassador]

Do any of you belong to churches where either some or all of the people are meeting, either at a church building or in homes, despite government orders not to gather in groups?

I do.

[mike]

Do any of you belong to churches where either some or all of the people are meeting, either at a church building or in homes, despite government orders not to gather in groups?

I do.

I do as well.

[Josh]

Our state's orders are to gather in groups of 10 or less, so we do that and stream the service.

This was done after consultation with the county health department and state health department, who actually have a phone number to call to ask questions about things like this.