I didn’t go to church on Sunday. The elders asked me to stay away.
I wish it was because my preaching is just too radical, but it was because I have been coming off the tail-end of a probably-not-Covid-19 cold and had been left with a cough. I raised the question about what I should do because, despite feeling fine, I had a suspicion that seeing the preacher cough and splutter his way through the sermon might cause some anxiety for those who are trying to be sensible and avoid exposure to infection.
Oh, that’s right – I was due to preach. So we made a decision to embrace the future, and I prerecorded my sermon as a video on Friday, to be played back in my absence on Sunday. I quite enjoyed the experience of preaching being closed doors. I thought it would be awkward, but there was something quite liberating about it being just me, God and my message.
By all accounts, it was well received, probably because it was edited by someone who knew what he was doing. I’m sure it looks very professional (at least up to the bit where I open my mouth) and I will pluck up the courage to check it out soon.
Speaking of which, this is the direction we’ll be going in as a church for the moment. We’ve decided to cancel all of our services for the foreseeable future, but the plan is to offer some video material every Sunday morning. The ideal would be to offer a variety of tools, and not just a sermon. It might take some time for us to get this up and running, but it seems like time is what we have.
I wrote a blog post ages ago about how constraints can be good for our creativity. This is certainly the case now. When I was back at Spurgeon’s I was thinking about church and the internet, and wondering if it was still possible to be church if you take away the act of physically meeting together. Well, now we can find out. We are being forced to think about what it means to be church, and how we can still love, support and teach one another without the ability to sit down face-to-face.
And, of course, the challenge is also how we – as followers of Jesus – ensure that we continue to bring the gospel to a world that continues to need as much support as it can get. Self-isolation does not have to mean that we turn all our efforts inward. It will require some deep thought and prayer to figure out how to best be the church during these coming weeks, but it reminds me of a familiar John Bunyan quote: “I have often thought that the best Christians are found in the worst of times.”
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I’m due to preach at my church in a couple of weeks, but I’m (mostly) self-isolating due to the diabetes. I haven’t heard anything from my vicar yet, but I suspect I might be asked to pre-record something, too. How did you go about recording yourself (e.g. what hard/software?).
Also, I don’t believe I’ve ever heard you preach, apart from maybe a talk or two at the old KCLCU. Any chance you could share a link to this sermon you mention. I want to learn from the master!
We just used a phone. Provided you get decent lighting and speak clearly enough the quality on most phones is pretty good. I didn’t do the editing, so I don’t know what software was used. The problem we had was that the phone split the file into two parts (due to its size I guess) so they needed to be edited together.
There might be a link to the sermon available at some point I suppose – at the moment I think it’s just available to the church.
I shall just have to imagine you preaching. In a tiara and tutu. You, that is; not me.