Church Blog

What would you like to keep from lockdown?

Thursday 25th June 2020 15:05

St Lawrence’s church is now open for private prayer and there is some light at the end of the tunnel. So what would you like to keep from lockdown?

Last month I wrote about kindness and I have been very encouraged to see new posters from the Canal and River Trust encouraging us to be kind.

Another suggestion I liked was when one of our members said they had decided to have a lockdown day each week, a day when they didn’t rush about as we usually do. I think that is a brilliant idea and if our family could make the same day as their lockdown day then we would see each other more which would be good too!

It has been really encouraging to hear that global CO2 levels have fallen by 17% and so we have also decided not to drive to Banbury to see our architect again. We have been having fortnightly zoom meetings and it has been really effective because we know that we have to have completed our actions before the next meeting and things are moving much more smoothly. So is there something similar that you could do? For example could you save driving a lot of miles by simply going to the office two days a week to meet your team and working from home a little more?

We have also been very encouraged to see our audience almost double during the lockdown and it is not just us - 84% of churches have gone online and almost all of them have grown. What happens on a typical Sunday is that our usual 60 – 70 people watch us live and then over the rest of the week about 120 people watch us on catch up.  In fact the largest church in the Church of England which used to be 5,000 strong now typically has 10,000 people view their service online. So we have decided that we would like to stay online. We know this will bring new challenges but we want to care for our viewers.

So now is the time to decide, What would you like to keep from lockdown? and I would love to hear what you decide.