WCC NEWS: Combining digital with non-digital, United Church of Canada strives to reach wider array of people

With many people in Canada living far apart from each other, and the COVID-19 pandemic forcing many churches to go online, reaching church members has become a creative process that combines digital and non-digital efforts. Four United Church of Canada congregations, up to 1100 km apart, celebrate communion together as the churches navigate new ways of connecting during the Covid pandemic in 2020, Photo: RuralConnect 12 October 2021   In May and June 2021, the United Church of Canada invited congregations to a 3-part workshop entitled “The Church has left the building: how will we combine online and in-person church?“ More than 500 people joined in the workshop, expressing a common worry that leadership teams were tired out by the many new processes and procedures with which they were confronted. All this happened while they face dwindling and aging church membership, which means fewer volunteers contributing to the life of the church. In a summary of responses aggregated from 151 congregations from across Canada, many comments focused on the fact that older people were not able to participate in the life of the congregation. To reach members, some churches used non-digital means of communication, including phone, mail, and over-the-fence visits. Trinity United Church in Winnipeg set up a system whereby people could access the Sunday sermon by phone. Also, for pastoral care and general prayer practices, the phone was the dominant means of communication. Comox United Church, located in a remote community on Vancouver Island, British Columbia (western Canada) used the opportunity of online communication tools to partner with Topsail United Church in Newfoundland. Church leaders found that enabling community among people living in remote areas of the country helped bridge the loneliness. Linda Buchanan, lay preacher from Westminster United Church in The Pas, Manitoba illustrated her situation. The congregation has about 100 members. About 40-60 tune into the Sunday service when their wifi reception allows. Between 8-10 members are not able to join due to lack of broadband access or technical ability. "A small team printed the service or at least the sermon and mailed the documents,” explained Buchanan. "Also, especially senior members, when in need of pastoral care, preferred phone calls, instead of social media interaction.” The United Church of Canada study also showed that congregations were able to connect with new and former members who were not able to join the in-person life of the congregation, for mobility or geographical reasons. Katja Brittain, one of the workshop’s organizers summarized: “For them, online communication meant a new lifeline to a community that they formerly had to give up.” As Rev. Andria Irwin from Highland United Church in Vancouver, British Columbia explained: “A digital congregant who depends on physical distancing from other people finds meaning by actively contributing to the life of the worshipping community. S/he prepares the weekly prayer of the people among other tasks that can be done remotely.” United Church of Canada leaders also said that the challenge for all of the congregations with new members will be how to integrate digital and non-digital versions of church life, without excluding one or the other, once the pandemic lockdown is over. “Multisite-worship” is a solution that enables rural congregations with limited access to volunteers and technology resources to celebrate worship in a larger community. Multiple congregations are set up with one being the hub church and the others becoming satellite churches. Participating congregations access a fully interactive, live worship service. “The technology is controlled in the hub—or host—church while the others operate a box with all the equipment fully configured,” explained Randy Boyd from Rural Connect. "Access to the internet is not required.” If possible, each congregation gathers in their building to worship with a screen showing the entire service, she said. “With the use of a video camera, individual parts for the service are filmed and transmitted to the hub to then be included for all on everyone’s screen, and each congregation provides leadership for different parts of the service.” explained Boyd.” This setup also allows the congregation to livestream for those members who cannot join the service in-person.   Digital Symposium - Communication for Social Justice in a Digital Age Digital symposium case study See more about "The Church has left the building"   See more

The World Council of Churches promotes Christian unity in faith, witness and service for a just and peaceful world. An ecumenical fellowship of churches founded in 1948, today the WCC brings together 350 Protestant, Orthodox, Anglican and other churches representing more than 550 million Christians in over 120 countries, and works cooperatively with the Roman Catholic Church. The WCC interim general secretary is Rev. Prof. Dr Ioan Sauca, from the Orthodox Church in Romania. Media contact: +41 79 507 6363; www.oikoumene.org/press Our visiting address is: World Council of Churches 150 route de Ferney Geneve 2 1211 Switzerland

Welcome to ‘phygital’ worship

CHURCH IN THE DIGITAL AGE

The challenge of blending physical and digital worlds is real

By Richard Hong | Presbyterians Today

As many churches navigate the both/and world of hybrid ministry, where in-person and online worship coexist, there’s a word to keep in mind: “phygital.” I didn’t invent it. It was coined in 2013 to describe creating a seamless experience that is the best of both the digital and physical realms. And there lies the goal — and the challenge — for our churches, that of creating hybrid worship where two intrinsically different environments come together seamlessly.

During the pandemic, many churches changed their order of worship to accommodate the digital venue. For example, at my church we used to have up to five pieces of music at an in-person service. That is too much for an online service, so we have limited the music to just two pieces. Another interesting development over the past year is that online we encourage people to engage with one another using the chat function. We would never encourage people to chat in their seats during in-person worship. While we had been livestreaming our worship since 2017, before the COVID-19 pandemic, our livestream made no provision for church school. During the pandemic, though, our online church school has been one of our strongest features.

As we return to in-person services, our main question is: How can we provide an optimal experience for both our online and in-person congregants? I believe that many churches are placing too much emphasis on providing simultaneous, identical experiences, rather than tailoring the experiences to their respective environments.

In a hybrid worship experience, a single event is created that is simultaneously provided to both in-person and online attendees. The drawback to the hybrid approach is that it causes churches to include only those things that can be provided in both environments. People have different expectations in the different environments, and we need to try to meet those needs. Educators have told us that hybrid classrooms, where a single teacher tries to teach in-person and online students at the same time, are not working well. But the other extreme of creating separate online and in-person worship services is also unsatisfactory. This presents the risk of creating such divergent experiences that people are unable to move seamlessly between them from week to week.

When thinking through such challenges, I often turn to professional sporting events as one of my “thought models.” The in-person and home experiences of a sporting event are simultaneous but different. Announcers and camera angles aid the home experience. The ambience of the in-person experience is wonderful, even if you can barely see the players on the field. We like both options, yet our expectations of each are different. Some 60 years ago, when sports were first being broadcast, team owners feared that broadcasting games would kill ticket sales. The opposite happened. Broadcasting games enlarged the fan base and ticket sales soared along with viewership. I believe that vibrant online worship will eventually increase in-person attendance.

As we look toward our post-COVID-19 worship, we need to ask: What is the optimal online worship experience? What is the optimal in-person worship experience? Which aspects must be or can be shared, and which must be provided separately? In my ministry context, the most important common aspect of our worship is the Prayers of the People. Right now, people text in their prayer concerns, which are read aloud and prayed for. Our church school probably needs to be offered separately in a context-specific format. The sermon for the online service might be live from the worship space, or it might be prerecorded. We’re still working through the complexities of providing quality worship experiences that are accessed in person and online.

It is important to remember that I am not claiming that either online or in-person is a superior experience. I believe that most people will appreciate both. Our ultimate goal is for people to connect with God through worship as often as possible, using the means that works best for them in any given week. I don’t think any of us has all the right answers, nor is there one right answer for everyone. But this is an opportunity to rethink our worship services. My encouragement is simply for you to step back, think about the most effective way to reach more people more of the time, and tailor your worship to suit each mode in order to best nurture the relationship of the people with Jesus Christ.

Richard Hong is the pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Englewood, New Jersey. If you have suggestions for future columns, contact him at rich@englewoodpres.org.