This weekend marks five years since our first service of Online Worship. What started as a hurried alternative to traditional church during Covid continue to be a much valued alternative way of sharing worship for some members of our congregation.
As the restrictions introduced by the coronavirus pandemic increased churches like St John's had to suspend public worship. It kept us apart and we needed to new and innovative ways to use technology to keep in touch and share worship in a different way.
Like many churches we experimented with filming acts of worship, sharing our first service on Sunday 22 March 2020 and making them available on YouTube, Facebook and our own website and, while we all missed being able to gather in church, it helped many people to feel connected. Other churches did the same and it's estimated around three quarters of Church of England churches were offering some form of online worship.
We thought we might be filming these services for a few weeks, maybe a few months, but we never imagined that five years on we would still be sharing them.
Once church reopened, there were still some of our worshippers who had their own reasons for wanting stay at home. Some still had concerns about being out and about and running the risk of catching Covid, so we continued with Online Worship with shorter services which still continue today as we mark five years since that first service.
Since 2020...
- We have shared 255 services of Online Worship
- There have been more than 10,000 views of our Online Worship on YouTube alone, with more on Facebook
- Numerous people have told us they still enjoy having a way of catching up if they have missed visiting church in person.
Many churches have stopped sharing Online Worship but at St John's we are among the 30% which have carried on with Online Worship.
For some people it is an accessible way of 'trying out' church before we hope they will join us in person. For others it is a way of catching up if they're away on holiday. And when people are unwell, they still feel connected with us at St John's from the comfort of their own sofa.
It feels like so much has changed for us at St John's in that time. We were in the middle of a 'vacancy' without a permanent vicar when the pandemic began, a situation we found ourselves in again last year. Looking back through our services we remember the special prayers we said online following the death of the Duke of Edinburgh and later Queen Elizabeth. Many things have changed in the world.
We are now enjoying worship led by our new vicar Rev Nathanael Poole and while some things have changed, the vision for our Online Worship remains the same - we hope that whatever your reasons for watching it is a blessing to you, wherever you are.
Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to join us from home over the last five years.