Bringing Life to Our Virtual Meetinghouse

Zoom fatigue is real.  If you spend all day on a screen, it’s not likely that you’ll be enthusiastic about logging into one more meeting for Sunday morning worship. Sabbath is intended to be life-giving, not life-draining.

During the season of Lent, we’re focusing on reclaiming life in spaces that aren’t typically life-giving. The pandemic won’t allow us to abandon distanced-worship just yet, but the pandemic doesn’t have to be an impediment to life-giving space. So…we’re reclaiming the Zoom grid as a space for life-giving energy.

Congregants have been encouraged to wear bright, pastel colors, and to use Zoom backgrounds and filters that will bring cheer to their neighbors. 

Since members can’t sit in our physical space, an introductory video simulates a welcome from our usher, and shares the sights and sounds of sitting in our meetinghouse: piano keys, coins in the offering plate, even the Keurig dripping coffee.

Worship displays including masks and crosses, are gradually moving from darker to lighter colors. And our roadside cross, typically adorned in purple, will be clad with more than 20 different patterns to remind passersby of the life and vitality of every season. #CrossOfManyColors

We’re halfway through Lent, and we’ve already been greeted with a half-dozen tie-dyed t-shirts, images of daffodils in bloom, pink filters, and party hats.  Isn’t that a lot more life-giving than a Thursday afternoon conference call?

What’s your congregation doing to invite life and vitality into virtual spaces?