Melbourne City Adventist Church has been live-streaming Sabbath services on Youtube since April 2014 but due to the lockdown we have also implemented other digital ministries.
After the live-stream of the sermon, we meet on zoom to check-in, celebrate birthdays and share announcements. Then we divide into breakout rooms to share and pray together to foster community. Families with children have a morning Sabbath School class through Zoom, which has been really good as each child gets to participate.
They also join our Wednesday prayer meetings on zoom, our online Live More Happy program, and our WhatsApp Bible studies. We have utilised Zoom bible studies, Zoom prayer meetings and WhatsApp groups before, but not having the face-to-face meetings to supplement have challenged us to make extra effort to intentionally connect with each other.
So we had a few online socials, where we played online games together on jackbox.tv and zoom.
One thing we’ve noticed about our online church experience during this pandemic has been that people who used to worship with us but then moved interstate or even to another country are choosing to join us for our worship and sharing time to reconnect with our community. It’s wonderful to stay in touch with them this way; it reminds us that we are truly a global family and that church really is about the people and not the building.