We are just getting started… will be updating through the week. Please be patient as we build this content up.
Please feel free to forward ideas and provide feedback here.
Returning To Onsite Services
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- CDC Guidelines for Community and Faith-Based Organizations
- South Dakota Considerations for Spiritual and Religious Gatherings during COVID-19
- Iowa Department of Public Health Guidelines For Reopening
- Missouri COVID-19 Considerations for Churches and Places of Worship
- Arkansas COVID-19 Guidance for Places of Worship
- Phased Reopening Guidelines from Johns Hopkins
- Lifeway “What Your Church Must Know Before Reopening Your Building”
- Barna Research Church Crisis Toolkit
- Lifeway Church Survey
Virus Related Resources
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Federal and International Resources
- Centers for Disease Control: Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)
- The President’s Coronavirus Guidelines for America
- World Health Organization: Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak
State Resources
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EFCA and Church Related Resources
- EFCA Special Update: COVID-19 (Coronavirus)
- ReachGlobal Crisis Response has prepared guidance for churches
- CDC Guidelines for Places of Worship
- Coronavirus and the Church: Trusted Resources for Churches from Leading Experts
- Best Online Giving Platforms for Churches
- ECFA Resources on Coronavirus
- Live Streaming for Churches: Industry Standards and Best Practices
- A Concise Coronavirus Guide for Churches
Central District EFCA
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Regarding The Federal Stimulus Package(s)
Technology Helps
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Many churches in our district are looking at holding services online and keeping people out of the church building. Some are brining their worship and technical teams into the facility to conduct the service and feed it to folks over the internet, in other cases the pastor may be sitting in front of an iPhone and using Facebook Live. And a myriad of other ideas.
If you don’t already have a video production setup, we want to caution you to walk slowly… you don’t have to have a complicated multi-camera video production overnight, and you might make some big mistakes if you try. Start small and learn as you go.
Checkout this article at The Gospel Coalition’s website. You can also checkout this article from 2017 on Church Tech Today that covers the concepts well (although the screenshots might be old).
Using a smartphone, some options include:
Another option to consider, Jordon Korell’s future son-in-law, Spencer Theobald, is a videographer and looking to provide a service to video record worship services during the week for broadcast on the weekend. His website is at this link.
We expect to improve this article in coming days.
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Video meetings, or conference calls, have been a well established technology in the business world, and has become more and more available at reasonable prices in the past few years. There are literally dozens of companies that provide this kind of solution. We will list below some of these platforms. Some may work better than others for your situation, and we would recommend using free trial options when available.
We are also breaking this down into four areas as size and meeting purpose are important factors.
One-on-one meetings.
These should all be free options if you have the corresponding operating system and software required… usually no cost beyond owning a phone or computer:
Small Group Meetings
- FaceTime (free, but all participants need to be on the new multi-user capable version of FaceTime for this to work)
- Zoom (free for up to 45 minutes, paid tier meeting can by up to 24 hours)
- GoToMeeting (paid)
- Google Hangouts Meet (Part of GSuite, so there is cost per user)
- Skype (paid, although if everyone is on Microsoft Office 365, there’s no extra charge and as a non-profit you may be able to get office for free or a small monthly fee — we will have info on that soon)
- BlueJeans (paid)
- Slack (everyone needs to be using the same Slack workspace)
Large Groups (more than 20)
- Zoom (paid, up to 100 participants – big price jump to go over 100)
- GoToMeeting (paid, up to 250 participants for similar price to Zoom at 100)
Webinar Style (even larger groups, but with additional tools for feedback to keep from being overwhelmed with everyone talking)
- GoToWebinar (paid)
There are other companies like GoToWebinar, but we need to do more research on this.
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Jonathan Anderson from Christ Community Church prepared this graphic that you can share with your online attenders to ensure they are ready to worship!
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