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

[Ambassador]

I'm curious how your churches are responding to the guidelines to limit gatherings of people. What is your church doing about this?

A different but related question is "How should the christian church respond if it becomes mandatory to limit gatherings to 10, or even not gather at all?" Does it make a difference if that law would be for 2 weeks vs. 4 months? I realize this is a hypothetical question, but one we may have to face sooner rather than later.

[Josh]

I'm curious how your churches are responding to the guidelines to limit gatherings of people. What is your church doing about this?

A different but related question is "How should the christian church respond if it becomes mandatory to limit gatherings to 10, or even not gather at all?" Does it make a difference if that law would be for 2 weeks vs. 4 months? I realize this is a hypothetical question, but one we may have to face sooner rather than later.

Currently, we aren't meeting. I'm self-isolating along with 3 other people who would have been exposed to me, so the 4 of us are planning to meet on Sunday, read our Sunday school lesson, and sing a few songs.

A neighbouring church one hour's drive away is having just some ministers and a few people to sing go to church (keeping the size at 10 or less, I believe), and will stream the service over the phone line. We plan to then dial in and listen to that. (I used to live there and go to church there and just recently moved where I am now.)

Longer term, and this is a long shot, I am laying plans to try to meet regularly with the 2 families who live closest to us. We could keep our group size around 10 - 20, depending on if everyone shows up. (Anyone sick would stay home.) I would not plan to do this in lieu of Sunday services, but instead just meet sometime during the week for encouragement, and maybe study the Sunday school lessons.

[QuietlyListening]

The way we read MD gov was all churches were to close- didn't even give a people limit. Later for community and other social gatherings gave a 50 person limit.
But either way we would be over 50 so we will not meet. Our pastor will live stream his sermon and he is trying to get the worship team to live stream some songs. We'll see if it works.

[RZehr]

We canceled this coming Sunday service and are planning to split up for services the following Sundays. We are not supposed to have more that 25 people gathered.

[Bootstrap]

We got a Zoom account for the church and we will be meeting on Zoom. Because Zoom meetings are normally limited to 40 minutes with the free account, we bought a pro account for $149/year.

Which means we have to make sure everyone knows how to use it. Some people will use their computers, others will use an app on their smartphone, others will simply call the telephone number. We also have to help each other get set up for this.

If other people are doing online services, I'd be happy to talk about adapting the service for an online format. We are working this out ourselves. I wish I knew a good way to pass the peace online ...

[Josh]

Cisco and Microsoft are offering free videoconferencing for the next several months.

[MaxPC]

All public Masses are cancelled. Priests are saying the Masses privately and streaming them live.

Catholics have had a number of podcast formats for a few years now to teach religious ed. These were used initially for home bound: now everyone is home bound. These formats have taken on a new audience.

We stay in contact with each other through phone trees to check on each other’s well-being and provide encouragement. It’s been a new type of penitential experience but quite apropos for Lent.

[barnhart]

We met last sunday but cancelled the next two sundays. Last night we had a small group prayer meeting over the phone.

[Neto]

They are planning to stream something, perhaps just audio, which they have been doing for some years already, for those who were not able to get to the meetings for reasons of travel or sickness. But we're having problems with our internet, and while it's working right now, sort of (keeps dropping out), it was down all last evening, and a tech will not get here until Monday. So we may or may not be able to see or hear anything of what they put up. (I was trying to figure out how to do a "video conferencing" deal for Sunday school discussion, but that's all too complicated for me.)

[Biblical Anabaptist]

The way we read MD gov was all churches were to close- didn't even give a people limit. Later for community and other social gatherings gave a 50 person limit.
But either way we would be over 50 so we will not meet. Our pastor will live stream his sermon and he is trying to get the worship team to live stream some songs. We'll see if it works.

The gov of MD has now mandated there be no gatherings of more than 10 people under the force of law.