Moving churches online

Sharing experiences of how Zoom can be used to keep parishes connected

Tuesday 24 March, 7 pm
By webinar

Any member of a parish wanting to initiate or develop ability to conduct digital gatherings/meetings via Zoom is invited to join this webinar. You might be someone who has used Zoom a lot and can help others. You might have had a bit of a look at Zoom and started to mess around with it. Or you might be the person in your parish who everyone assumes knows more about digital stuff than everyone else and you got landed with solving the problem! Ideally you’re not going to be the person in front of the camera — you’re the one behind it. 

For most of us online church gathering and communication wasn’t something that was on our radar a few weeks (or even a few days) ago.  Today it seems to be an essential tool. For many of us we find ourselves on some VERY steep terrain. When the terrain is steep, we need to encourage one another. If you feel like you are at the bottom of a very big hill, or if you feel like you have things under control, we are putting together an online forum so Anglicans in Southern Queensland can help each other.  This forum will be oriented toward Zoom, an online meeting platform used by corporations, small and medium enterprises, not-for-profits, education institutes, and other organisations. It provides a way to digitally connect when being physically together isn’t possible. 

This event isn’t being run by Zoom experts and it’s not delivering super-advanced subject matter. We won’t be able to answer all your questions. In fact we are hoping that there might be others on the forum who might be able to give us some ideas too! This is an opportunity to share what we know and what we don’t know, and to help each other through an incredibly challenging time for many of our parishes. 

Your host
Dave Gover is a member of North Pine Anglican Church (NPAC) in Petrie. He has (at the time of writing) a grand total of three fairly intense days of experience with Zoom. With the help of others in the Parish, NPAC went from no Zoom subscription, to running an online service in the space of 48 hours and at a cost of $20. Dave says that says more about how easy the software is than it does about his IT skills. Dave is now looking at opportunities to use Zoom for parish meetings, small and medium group meetings, prayer meetings, and the possibility of a digital drop-in space where anyone can come to talk. 

The program

• Introductions and where we are at.
• Introducing Zoom, a flexible online meeting space.
  – What hardware do you need to get started.
  – Getting started with Zoom – making it easy for parishioners to connect.
  – Functions in Zoom.
  – Some initial thoughts about how Zoom could be used in Anglican parishes.
• Q&A and possibly some online break out spaces depending on interests.
• Other options, what have people found useful. 

Preparation
To join the webinar, you will need an internet connected device (laptop highly preferred, tablet OK, phone probably too small) with a camera, speakers, and microphone.  You will need to install Zoom on your device and are encouraged to set up a free account (this is pretty straightforward to do, go to https://zoom.us/signup)

Registration and enquiries
Spaces are limited to 100. To sign up, e-mail [email protected]. You will be sent a link to a Zoom test meeting to make sure that you can connect, and a link to the webinar on Tuesday evening.