COVID19: March 15, 2020 - Online Worship

The strangeness of this time continues. Today, churches all over the country met for worship over the internet while their buildings, usually full of music, laughter, and heartfelt greetings on Sunday mornings, stood empty and silent. I never could have imagined such a Sunday morning. Now I wonder how long it will take before we’re together again.

I fear this may go on beyond Easter, and I’ve already decided that if we miss celebrating Resurrection Sunday together, the first time we’re back at full strength for worship, we’re doing the full Easter liturgy – complete with choirs, brass, Handel’s “Hallelujah” chorus and the Easter bunny hop in the center aisle.

Our Facebook LIVE worship was highly imperfect, as I expected. But it was actually fun. Because I wasn’t preaching today, we did it in two segments. First, I had a brief worship with folks. Then, our intern, Cassie Hartnett, had a live feed of her own with the sermon. Each of us did it in our own homes. 

I have a couple of take-aways from the experience. One is that, the next time, I need to lock Father Guido Sarducci, my cat, in another room. He made several cameo appearances running up and down the hallway behind me, and at one point he was up on the table, rubbing up against my laptop while I was trying to read the entire fourth chapter of John's gospel. Not good.

I really enjoyed worshiping with people I know from all over the country, including former parishioners, colleagues and family—something that could never happen on a typical Sunday morning. It also allowed some folks who normally have other commitments or constraints to be with us. To be honest, I’m wondering why we don’t offer an online worship experience every week, alongside our face-to-face worship services. I’m starting to realize how many people a required physical presence excludes. Of course, this is something I’ve thought about before now, but it’s suddenly become so obvious to me that I don’t know if I’ll be able to go back to excluding those people again, after this is over.

Another thing I appreciated about Facbook LIVE is the way it allowed people to comment and interact during our time together. I especially enjoyed the like button. We Lutherans don’t usually offer a lot of feedback during worship and I’ve always been envious of preachers who have congregations encouraging them on with their Amens. The floating thumbs ups and hearts felt that way to me today. Maybe when we return to worshiping live and in person, we could give people little sticks they can hold up during worship that have thumbs ups and hearts on them. Okay, maybe the laughing faces, too, or even the surprised and sad ones. But let’s forego the angry faces, please.

Things are so stressful right now that I decided people might need to gather online more than once a week. Tomorrow I’m trying an online check-in & prayer group for people on Zoom. It'll be good to see their faces and hear their voices, something we weren’t able to do today. The internet may well become integral toward preserving our humanity in the days ahead. Imagine that.