Websites and Live Streaming from Martin Sykes

Websites have been a lifeline for many of us...

During Covid 19, many any of us have found we’ve been using the internet more than we ever have done in their lives before.

Ordering food online, worshipping, meeting friends and families, joining meetings be they for church, business or organization’s we belong and Quiz’s of course.

We will be forever indebted to Jessica, who, long before Covid 19 entered our world and vocabulary, completely rebuilt, and redesigned our Church Website, which means she is our Webmaster.

She is the one who keeps everything on the Website current, fresh, UpToDate and informative and of course it has the Blog that carries articles from you and also worship information and services and so much more.

Our website has never been viewed and used so much.

Many other churches in our circuit also have websites that carry a varying degree of information relevant to their churches.

We do also have a Circuit website, that Jono Graham (among so many other things) is with Colin Firbank (Local Preacher) the joint circuit Webmasters.

We are all conscious of the importance of all websites, including those that cover our Churches and Circuit.

Jono, Colin, Gill, and Martin are meeting virtually via Zoom on Wednesday 8th July with all our Circuit Churches Webmasters to consider a way to spread the load of keeping our Circuit Website fresh and up to date.

At that meeting, we will consider the appearance and content of our Circuit Website.

In addition, Jono will give each Church Webmaster access to their churches section of our Circuit Website so that they will be able to take responsibility for keeping their churches information up to date.

Live Streaming

There is another issue that is currently uppermost at the moment, is that before Lockdown, circa 4% of the UK population were attending worship - since Lockdown this figure has risen considerably to circa 25%+.

A serious concern is that when the day eventually comes when we are physically worshipping in our churches again, what happens to all those people who have been worshipping online who are not regular church goers, who have been touched by the love of Jesus.

There is also the issue of those who may be those who are nervous, even frightened about returning to church post Covid 19.

Many of our Nottingham Trent Valley Circuit Churches, have been proactive in creating virtual services of worship online that we don’t want to lose sight of.

Bearing this I mind, all of our Circuit Churches, Audio Visual Technicians, who in normal times, work to display service information on our in-church screens Sunday by Sunday are meeting, via Zoom on Thursday 9th July @ 8pm to discuss what we can do to maintain our online worship whilst worshipping physically in Church.

Its always good for like-minded techy people to get together to share knowledge and information.

Keith Fox has been doing a great deal of research into “Live Streaming” and at our meeting we will share his ideas and other options open to us.

Jenny Weir, our Circuit Safeguarding Officer will be joining us, because Live Streaming does create safeguarding issues.

Kingswood Methodist Church Audio Visual sound desk with a Camcorder plugged into their laptop so service can be live streamed.

View from Camcorder on the sound desk to the front of Church

Martin Sykes