Christian Coffee House - Prayer/Chat thread. No rubbish church coffee allowed.

[Madhairday]

With the latest prayer thread coming to an end, we thought we would create a new thread for prayer and general chat too - we had chat threads running for years alongside prayer threads, and we thought it would be great to combine them. I try and collate some of the prayer requests from the last thread in the next few days. In the meantime, dive in! Lurkers/newbies - you are welcome to post. Feel free to start any chat subject about Christianity, church, worship etc, and do share any prayer needs.
Would love to hear from those who were on previous threads and haven't been around for a while, too. Come and let us know how you are.

Never heard of a phone church.
Am puzzling how it works.

It's effectively (I think) a conference call - done at local rates (often your phone package will cover it).

You ring a number, enter a code and are joined to all of the others. It was surprisingly effective - Both the priest and I had been thinking we might be worshipping alone, but it was well received, especially for the first time. I think a few of them stayed on after the worship to have a chat! (I certainly heard a bit of news being swapped in the 5 minutes I held on afterwards)

If you might be interested, I'll e-mail her and ask how she went about setting it up. She had heard about it from a priest friend in Yorkshire who has being doing it for several weeks.

As it's a service of the word, it means it can also be lead by a Reader (or churchwarden, I imagine) giving the priest a week off occassionally - I know our rev has been run ragged pastorally since lockdown, and has been putting worship on Facebook each week, too (though one of the other readers and I have been helping re" homilies). It was just lovely to take part in a service and hear other voices, and know that people were well.

Thank you. Yes, I am interested.

I'd heard of phone masses, but haven't actually used one.

We've started a post mass zoom coffee meeting. I suppose if I'm going to do that I might need to start actually getting dressed to watch the live stream.

I was just getting used to lounging about on the sofa with a cup of tea while watching mass. Actual physical masses are going to be a bit of a shock when they start up again.

Our church Zoom refreshments is our most popular thing since March, including with the vicar! We all love it. Chat, hold up yr object of the week and get picked to say why, quizzes, polls related to the sermon content, and Breakout rooms for small group chats.

Polls re sermon content, as in eg 'Which way do you most easily connect with God at the moment?', not 'How many marks out of 10 do you give the preacher?'

Sounds great.

The way our group of churches is doing things, is boring.
Better than nothing, and an online Bible study group is about to begin too, but the Sunday stuff lacks anything group related.

I will have a think about telling them there may be more interesting ways to do things!

Ours is definitely developing as it goes on. Started with prerecorded videos and zoom 'Wednesday Word'. Then a couple of other zoom things got added, then livestreaming. The kids stuff is still pre-recorded.

Lol at 'how many marks out of 10 do you give the preacher?' Mind you if they start giving quizzes about homily content I'm doomed. I tend to get distracted by a point being made or a line from the readings and my thoughts wander off. Being able to rewind/rewatch has been quite useful.

We had such a wonderful Candlemass service. It is streamed from the rectory, so the rector’s wife and their two little boys (2.5 and 7 months) attend as well. The baby fell asleep during the service, but the toddler climbed on the table and managed to light a match before anybody could catch him. Obviously quickly extinguished, but funny all the same.
We got the story from the rector after the service, first time we had Zoom coffee time. I am very fortunate that I am in a bubble with a friend a few minutes’ walk away and able to celebrate the Eucharist with her and sometimes her daughter.

@lightand

Thank you. Yes, I am interested.

I've e-mailed her lightand - I'll post the details the I get them from her.

Thanks for the welcome and the FB group tip. I will DM when I get a chance - usually using the app and it doesn’t have the DM feature! So will have to log in on desktop.

@SchadenfreudePersonified we tried a phone service in the first lockdown to make services accessible to people without internet. It was used by precisely nobody 😆 so DH has stopped with that one and we just livestream now.

I’m really missing any sort of momentum or liveliness in worship right now too. Livestreaming from the vicarage doesn’t exactly help me feel the Spirit! Unfortunately, it's partly on me to generate a bit more life in the worship, as the only congregant (except when DS is there, then I'm concentrating on keeping him relatively quiet!) but I can't quite summon up the energy for it. The PCC requested we go back to livestreaming from the vicarage as the sound is better, but the mood was definitely better when we livestreamed from church. 😕

Oh - sorry to hear that Brandysnapzzz - that must have been s disheartening for you both.

I know what you mean about the momentum- it was this that made the phone service so invigorating. Of course, this is early days - we'll see if it keeps up. We're hoping word will get round and there will be more next week. We shall see.

Brandysnappzz so do you have to sit in front of yr DH with wrapt attention whilst he leads the service?! That sounds ermmm... quite hard!

We record everything in bits and when the vicar or curate are introducing etc, but not preaching, their families are with them on the sofa.

Haha not quite! I join in, and lead bits of the service where I can, but given that we're filming from his study with an ipad, the atmosphere isn’t exactly thrilling. (Sadly he’s not the sort of person to do a service from the sofa!) And also we are pretty high church so it's full vestments CW Holy Communion, which gives less scope to be creative. I miss services in church, so very, very much. I ache to be back with the rest of the congregation, worshipping and sharing communion together!

I’ve been trying to find ways we can livestream in a more collaborative way (so far we have recordings of the readings from whoever is on the rota, and sometimes the choir puts together a recording from their various homes but that is pretty hard work for them) but with a toddler and my own job, it isn’t easy finding the time to come up with creative ideas!

Oh I know just what you mean Brandy. I so miss church in person, although I've also seen so many upsides to online church this year as someone who often can't get to church for weeks or months at a time. First year ever I've attended church every (or most) weeks! So that's been wonderful. But I want to belt out songs with the congregation. I can't wait for that day - I know it will be so emotional. We're also streaming from the vicarage, it works ok because we plug in video content ie the worship, readings, prayers and often the talk as well, so it's more engaging that way not just to be looking at DHs face all the time 🤣

The phone in sounds good. At the moment we do our main service on FB live, then add it to YouTube after for those who struggle with FB. Dh also takes around dvd copies for those who don't do the internet. So most get included in some way.

@Madhairday ok I think when I finally get round to PMing you I need to talk about service broadcasting as well as vicar's-wifeing! 😆

And yes, getting back to church is going to be super emotional. We have been back in during summer etc and the choir joined us too so there was some music, but it isn’t the same despite everyone's best efforts (and there were so many people trying really hard to make it feel like normal).

I agree about the online worship allowing people to join in when they can’t regularly attend - we have disabled and housebound congregation who attend weekly now, and also we’ve picked up people from quite a distance away as new congregation, plus former regulars who have moved away. It's been lovely "seeing" old faces! But gosh I cannot wait until I can share the peace with everyone again.

@lightand

Just had an e-mail from our priest re:phone church. Here's what she said.

It's really easy! The provider is an online company by the name of WHYPAY. Register and you get your 'conference room' for free. That's it. Then it's just about sorting out a liturgy and doing the advertising.

Hope this is of help to you. We're expanding to to the other two churches she has responsibility for this week.

We livestream zoom to youtube for our morning services. That way, people can take part in their own homes, doing the readings and prayers, or crafts etc for a all together service. It works well - as long as poeple remember to unmute themselves before they speak!

ooh, thank you very much @SchadenfreudePersonified!

Hi everyone, please can I ask you for prayers for my dsis. I have asked for prayers for her before, but she is in a bad way again, and I am emotionally drained and cannot see a way forward for her and for the whole family. Please also pray for the professionals involved in her care, and that they see through the act she can put on. It’s all a mess in every way.

I’m praying for your sister Donhill and for you and your family. And praying that the professionals caring for your sister will find ways to help her.

Adding my prayers for your sister Donhill. When it has been going for such a long time, it is hard to know what to do or say, just praying that she may feel God’s presence close by

@Donhill. Praying for you all.

Thank you all. I am very grateful.