Streaming, Skyping & Zooming Church!

When we received the first instructions that we were not to hold congregational services in church, but churches could be open for private prayer, we had a team meeting at St. George’s to work out how we could achieve it all. The result was the streamed service last Sunday morning for Mothering Sunday, which I know that many people enjoyed. My part was minimal in the extreme, basically to watch James’s phone which was used for the streaming to make sure that we didn’t lose transmission. There was personal excitement before that however as I rang the single bell 10 times to tell everyone that we were starting, a new experience for me as I’m usually used to playing handbells, not big bells!
By last Tuesday we were in lockdown so our team meeting was held by Skype, another new experience as I tried to hold my tablet so that it didn’t look as if I had multiple double chins. We shared out the jobs that we needed to do to put the building into a state of lockdown, things like reseting the heating clock so that it wasn’t coming on for nonexistent services, changing the message on the answer phone, collecting the linen for washing, emptying the recycling, cleaning out the fridge and checking the mousetraps. Yes, you did read that correctly, we have had mice in the vestry that have taken a liking to the choir surplices.
So I went in to carry out my share of the tasks and am delighted to report that the mice must all be in lockdown too as the traps were empty, sorting the recycling was easy but changing the answerphone message required either a PhD in electronics or a handbook and as I had neither the last desperate action was to switch it off. Hopefully now the building is secure and we will all continue to support each other in a variety of ways until we can all meet again at a service. Oliver Passant has described the choir meeting together using zoom software. I couldn’t get that right either and my picture appeared upside down, hanging from the ceiling. Perhaps I’d better enrol now for a course in electronics!
Stay safe as we continue to pray for each other.
Hazel Jenkins