The shake-up to churches during COVID-19 lockdown has thrown ministers and leaders into a spin, as well as causing anxiety and distress to both church members, let alone the general public!
What has this meant for us as a presbytery team? Well, it’s meant a team effort.
1. Lots of team conversation
Whereas our team of three would normally connect with each other a few times a week, now we’re in constant communication on Facebook Messenger. It has kept us more in touch with each other and also in sharing information across the presbytery and wider.
2. Communicating about communicating
Our presbytery communications team is now meeting weekly to plan. We’ve co-ordinated weekly email updates to congregations, putting fresh information on our website, organising ministers’ inductions to take place over Zoom, focusing our monthly presbytery newsletter (Newsbeat) on COVID matters, discussed our Facebook page, and are now redeveloping our Presbytery website. We also set up a presbytery Youtube Channel. I also set up a national Facebook group for regional workers to discuss the situation and share thoughts and ideas and about 100 people have joined up. This has kept us in touch with the wider church.
3. Telephone Calls
We’ve made and received lots of phone calls to/from ministry agents and other leaders. Lots. The well-being and support of leaders has been a top priority.
4. Website Advice
We decided that the presbytery website needed to be the ‘go to’ place for helpful information, since there is SO MUCH out there. So we set up a dedicated section so that people could easily find official information from the Assembly, Synod and Presbytery, as well as helpful tips about worship, finance, technology, etc and a directory of online worship services in our presbytery. We’ve linked to useful stuff that we can found online but have also tried to keep things simple. Both verbal feedback from leaders and the volume of website traffic have confirmed the value of this strategy.Continue Reading