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ABC NE has a New Corporate Zoom Account: Churches have access to create meetings

ABC NE has a New Corporate Zoom Account: Churches have access to create meetings

Fresh Expressions Offers Three Things Churches Can Do to be Stronger Amid and Post Pandemic

• Patiently listen to the others
• Pray for peace and healing
• Read scripture and guide basic conversations around the text
• Bring a few people together to serve the needs of their neighbors
• Gather small groups of people in safe settings

Five Ways to Start Distributing Your Church

• Teach about the shift towards de-professionalization and empowerment, focusing on texts such as Acts 6.
• Celebrate publicly the work of individuals who are already gathering people safely, loving and serving their neighbors, discipling new believers and caring for the needy. 
• Identify pioneering leaders who can experiment with fresh expressions initiatives that safely gather church members as well as non-Christians.
• Encourage people to gather in safe ways by geography or affinity. Provide tools for simple liturgies or service projects.
• Commission those who have a proven capacity for roles such as teachers, counselors, and organizers of tasks to pursue these opportunities officially. In turn, paid leaders should focus on empowering these newly commissioned leaders to grow in their roles.

First, churches need to “show up” on the internet. A church’s digital presence is the 21st century equivalent of having a legible sign and your name in the phone book. Churches who show up on the internet need a:

• Simple website with the basic information (who, what, where, why and when) and basic SEO so that it can be found when searched for on Google. 
• Pages on Yelp & Google Map
• Facebook Page and other social media accounts

Of course, there is much more that the church needs to do in order to take advantage of online tools. However attractive and accurate webpage and accounts are, the first step is to show up where people are looking.

Five Ways to Integrate Your Church into the Digital Era

• Ensure your church “shows up online” with a good website, SEO and basic social media.
• Develop two digital pathways for introducing people to your church, one for Christians looking for a church home and one for those exploring the Christian faith.
• Explore how you can tell stories about who your church is and what you do on social media.
• Follow your church members online, and, when interacting in person, mention things they posted.
• Teach about how to act like Jesus on line.

Churches that thrive during and after the pandemic will love and serve their literal neighbors. This includes those who live next door to a church building and those who live next door to the members of your pre-pandemic congregation. 

Churches who love and serve now will be recognized for being a Jesus-like presence at a time when hope was desperately needed. People, inside and outside your church, will want to know what you are doing and why. Neighbors may even want to [join you in your neighborhood ministries].

However, it’s doubtful that churches who turn inward during the pandemic will be able to turn outward afterward. When vaccines are readily available and a new normal develops, some churches will be remembered for loving their neighbors. Other churches won’t be remembered at all.
 

Five Ways to Listen to, Love and Serve Your Neighborhood

• Meet your neighbors. Knock on doors. Leave notes. Chat from a safe social distance.
• Ask questions. Find out what people need and don’t need during the pandemic.
• Serve those who serve. Identify essential workers who need childcare. Throw drive-by parties celebrating doctors and nurses.
• Use your parking lot. Throw a socially-distant party. Become a drive-in theater. Offer outdoor karaoke. Just don’t be invisible.
• Start a dinner church or Table Life ministry. Feed the hungry people in your neighborhood or find a neighborhood with hungry people.

ABC USA Office of General Secretary in search of AGS of Mission Resource Development

Associate General Secretary for Mission Resource Development

A Guide to Re-Opening

New research from Barna showed that many practicing Christians aren’t participating much online.

Their data revealed that one in three Christians are still and only attending their pre-COVID church, with 53% streaming their regular church online and 34% engaging in “digital church hopping” by streaming other church services. And then there’s the 32% who are doing neither.

Numbers like these might make you want to push the conversation about reopening the church building forward faster, but while you weigh your options, we wanted to lend some practical help.

A Guide to Re-Opening Updated document from Church Fuel.

This guide helps you recognize the questions you should ask about when to reopen, best practices to consider when it’s time to answer how your church will reopen, and ideas to explore for communicating to your congregation, implementing safety and sanitation measures, and more.

As the pandemic progresses, best practices change and new needs have emerged.

Here are a few sections Church Fuel updated to the guide we shared  in May and June:

• Developing newly-needed staff and volunteer roles
• Clear and creative reopening communication
• Navigating different opinions about reopening
• New policies and procedures for reopening
• Ideas for maintaining safe building capacity