The speed with which many churches started to use social media and online meeting tools is phenomenal. The common technical annoyance across all these tools is that are not suitable for church use. They are designed more for “fun” use – chatting and taking photos etc. Problems begin when a few of us start down the screen for a long stretch of time – it seems for visual participating we need a prominent ‘presence’ within the screen so that others see us, and we see all of them. This ‘wall of webcams’ phenomenon is a new way of doing church, at least temporarily.
This preeminent use of webcam characterises many if not all these tools. There must be a "barrier" for people to be seen on Facebook sharing a prayer, leading a song etc. Within a few days, hundreds if not thousands of people in many countries did their first online Bible Reading, children story, or sermon.
Think back to that change-over: from persistently distancing ourselves from use of Facebook and such like, to the hours you put in rehearsing and then re-running a recording of a video session. We know of many success stories, as you can now see them online; many more are failures, or indecision whether to proceed.
Such as the annoyance here. This is a technical barrier of insurmountable scale.
- It could be my laptop does not have a webcam.
- Or the computer that I thought I have, now shows an error message when turned on.
- Perhaps my poor broadband service takes a long time for to transfer files, let alone recording video online.
- Or I have a laptop I can borrow, and I can go to this place that is free of clutter so I can record myself, but there’s going to be endless amount of arrangement only to secure an afternoon in a week, it’s simply not do-able on a week-on-week basis.
It’s one thing to say there are solutions to any of these, it’s quite another to realise social distancing means solutions take a lot longer to come. In the grand scheme of things, spending so much time and energy for this purpose might be an overkill. The point is that this initial step can be so costly in time and resources. Many of us have tried and not got off the ground.
Spare a thought for those who are in this position. We should find ways to help each other more. In your church or network of churches that you can help in this way, perhaps think of what specific ways you can assist those in the front line having to start their first video. Helping this way could be so rewarding for all.
