From topics like "How Professionals Can Aid Churches During COVID-19" to "Quick Streaming Solutions for Stressed-Out Churches," the web puts an unfathomable amount of helpful information at church designers' and leaders' fingertips.
These are unprecedentedly challenging times for church leaders and the church architects, AV design consultants, and integrators who work with them.
Fortunately, there are many useful sites on the web to help this community deal with COVID-19. Here are seven of them, all of which can be used by Church.Design readers to assist the churches we serve.
The Basics of COVID-19 Response
Churches and the people who support them require clear, non-biased, scientific information about operating safely during the pandemic. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) "Considerations for Communities of Faith" web page delivers this kind of useful data, covering everything from scaling up church operations while protecting the vulnerable; managing hygiene, face coverings, and social distancing; and protecting staff as well as attendees. In an age of rampant misinformation, this some view the page as a place of reliable, fact-based advice. The site states, “This guidance is not intended to infringe on rights protected by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution or any other federal law, including the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (RFRA).”
How Professionals Can Aid Churches During COVID-19
Taken from our sister publication, Church Production Magazine, “A Tech Director's Response to COVID-19" by Josiah Way offers tangible suggestions for church architects, AV design consultants, and integrators to help their clients cope with the pandemic. Topics covered include streaming church services; using Zoom and other video platforms for two-way religious meetings and counselling sessions; and accepting church donations through the cloud. “As tech leaders, let us be creative with our technologies to ensure that even in the direst of times, the gospel can still shine through,” writes Way. “Our churches are looking to us and counting on us to deliver.”
Quick Streaming Solutions for Stressed-Out Churches
It is not useful to tell a church to stream their services during COVID-19 if they’re not technically adept or equipped to do so. The AV education site www.churchfront.com offers quick streaming fixes for both kinds of clients in the posting, "Live streaming setup for small churches." In this post, site owner Jake Gosselin offers options for churches to start streaming now, using a consumer computer (PC or Mac), a consumer camcorder or PTZ USB video camera, video and audio capture equipment, and YouTube/Facebook as a distribution platform. “While the setup I’m about to show you works great for my church, it may not work for your church,” writes Gosselin. “I think you’ll still find this article beneficial because along the way I tell you about some alternative options to what you see here.”
How to Live Stream for Newbie Church Personnel
Churchfront.com offers technical advice to church newbies with respect to streaming. Covid Church Response’s "Live Streaming for Churches: A Practical Guide’" tells newbies how to do it, right down to whipping out their smartphone and broadcasting the service with it. It also offers useful advice on using live streaming to build your at-home audience – “Your streaming times don’t have to be the same time as your normal church service times. You can choose your live streaming times based on when your audience is online” – adding chat functions to engage viewers, and dealing with music licensing issues upfront. Sending this link to clients is a good way for Church-Design readers to help their churches help themselves.
Paying the Bills During COVID-19
In a perfect world, churches would not need donations to fulfill their missions to the community. But this is the real world, and donations are a necessity to keeping churches open and their parishioners tended to. Add the fact that the devout see giving as proving their commitment to God, and enabling online donations is a virtue during the stay-at-home days of COVID-19. As recently covered by sister publication Church Production magazine, the Promethean TV online platform overlays on-screen donation buttons on top of a church’s streaming video. This platform is easy to adopt, simple for viewers to use, and helps churches stay afloat financially while physical collection plates gather dust.
Explaining COVID-19 in Theological Terms and More
Why would a loving God visit COVID-19 on humanity? The charitable site Tearfund.ca provides useful answers to such questions and other vexing dilemmas for church officials; including mitigating the risk of COVID-19 in mass gatherings, positive steps that church officials can do to protect their flocks, and even a timely prayer to God that (in part) says, “Jesus Christ, you traveled through towns and villages ‘curing every disease and illness’. At your command, the sick were made well. Come to our aid now, in the midst of the global spread of the coronavirus, that we may experience your healing love.” This is the kind of informative site that architects, AV design consultants, and integrators can send to their church clients as a sign that we’re thinking of them during these troubled times.
Helping Children Cope During COVID-19
Children are the most helpless victims of COVID-19; forced to grow up in a world of uncertainty and fears that their parents and other adults never had to experience. The ‘Children’s Ministry During COVID-19' web page offers a range of ideas for helping kids cope during the pandemic. They include ways to calm children’s fears and anxiety due to COVID-19, faith-building exercises for the family while at home, and alternatives to in-person Vacation Bible School (VBS).
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