Mary Frances, Author at The FaithX Project

May 21 2020

Keeping Congregations Connected: Online Fellowship and Small Groups

by Mary Frances, FaithX Senior Consultant
Online Small Groups

This post is part of a blog series on
“Keeping Congregations Connected in the Face of COVID-19”
Click here for the previous post

I was chatting with a good friend the other day. She’s a pastor; retired for about a year now after serving a very long pastorate. In her retirement, she has been trying to find her way in a new congregation…as a participant, as a member. Of course, she’d been at this new church for several months before the pandemic, but that is not even a drop in the bucket compared to the majority of members who have been there for decades—many, many decades. And now the congregation is not only holding worship online but also the highly-revered small group, “coffee hour.” Everyone comes to Zoom with their own home brew and pastry and the fellowship begins. Or does it?

If you have ever been a visitor at a church and wanted to bolt for the door during coffee hour, you may have an idea what I am talking about. Bad coffee, too much sugary food, and too many cliques—lots and lots of cliques. Often, the longer people have been at a church the more they feel entitled to tune out visitors and use Sunday morning to catch up with their friends, and now we have moved this online. Putting everyone in your church into one big Zoom call and letting the conversation rip is not going to feel inclusive, considerate, or welcoming. Even for the most experienced Zoom users, Zoom can lend a sense of awkwardness to a conversation. Only one person can speak at a time while everyone else watches. People often hesitate in response because they aren’t sure if it’s their turn, so the chance to chime in is lost if you are at all meek. If the group is large, then most people are watching just a few people have a conversation. What happens to the introverts? Will they even show up for this virtual fellowship? How will visitors navigate this? Is this an improvement on our in-person fellowship? I am afraid not.

So then what is an online congregation and an online small group to do? How do we help people engage in fellowship in this modern COVID-19 world? Do not lose hope, there are two things that can help:

Zoom rooms and online small groups.

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May 07 2020

Keeping Congregations Connected: Creating Neighborhood Community in the Context of COVID-19

by Mary Frances, FaithX Senior Consultant
Creating Neighborhood Community

The post is part of our “Keeping Congregations Connected in the Face of COVID-19” blog series.

Click here for the previous post.

What opportunities for connection, joy, support, love, collaboration, and ministry in your neighborhood are just waiting to be noticed, named, and nurtured?

This strange time we are living in seems to be a time of dichotomy. Social distance but stay connected. Protect yourself for the sake of others. Find unity in the diaspora. Celebrate life while we sadly count the deaths. Yet the church was created for a time such as this. Today the most pressing question in the church is how do we stay connected while we are all at least 6 feet apart? How do we go about creating neighborhood community from behind our computer screens?

I think we find the answer in shifting from our well-worn model of large group gatherings to something smaller and closer to home: house churches, neighborhood groups, small groups, or fractals. Call them what you will, but small groups of people gathering around the gospel are the very foundation of the church. We find examples of them in the New Testament and more recently in the growing Christian church in China as well as the house church movement all around the world. In 1950 the Christian church in China was close to 4 million people. Today the church in China boasts over 67 million people. And yet the church is still often underground, persecuted and unable to meet in groups of more than 10 people. Ten people. That number sounds so familiar. It’s the number many states are using when they talk about lifting restrictions and allowing small groups to gather again with social distancing. More dichotomies…gather at a distance!

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May 06 2020

New Paradigms: Figuring Out What Comes Next

by Mary Frances, FaithX Senior Consultant
What Comes Next

Here and there in the world
and now and then in ourselves is a New Creation,
usually hidden, but sometimes manifest,
and certainly manifest in Jesus who is called the Christ.”

Paul Tillich

Paradigm: a typical example of something or model

The Oxford Dictionary

These are certainly some strange times we are living in. I admit that on some days I wake up and think to myself, “I can’t believe we are living through this.” And it gets worse by the day. Six weeks ago the clergy who I coach were busy trying to figure out how to do online worship. Today those same people are trying to figure out how to lead an online funeral or how to console the weary and grieving in their community from afar. These are awful times, indeed. Yet in the dark there is light, in the storm there is quiet and in crisis, opportunity. So, what comes next?

For decades the Church has been in decline and while there have been many who claimed to know how to reverse that trend, change has come hard for the Church. Since the Church is at its core a gathering of human beings and human beings are inherently resistant to change, righting the ship has been more than difficult. We haven’t known how to connect with our communities, we haven’t known how to innovate and bring people along with us, and we have often been more interested in the days gone by than the days yet to come.

Cue the Covid-19 pandemic.

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Apr 16 2020

After the In-Reach, Time for Outreach…

By Mary Frances
Time for Outreach

Keeping Congregations Connected is a series on strategies and tools for helping congregations survive and thrive in the face of the COVID crisis.
Click here for the previous post.

It wouldn’t be an understatement to say that just about everything you learned about how to do church has been turned upside down in the last several weeks. You have led your congregations through change that may have taken decades previously, you have turned on a dime to offer virtual worship, online bible study, and calling teams for pastoral care.

And to all of that I say, well done!

And now that you have all of that (AND Easter) under your belt, is it now time for outreach? How do we make sure that the people outside of our communities can access what we are doing online? How do we continue to invite, connect, and serve? I realize that this may seem a bit extreme to some, yet I think about the disciples, in the upper room after the resurrection, scared for their lives. And what did they do? With the blessing and breath of Jesus upon them, they went out into a very scary world and told about what they had seen and experienced. It’s our turn to tell about what we have seen and experienced. Perhaps we can’t go out physically, but we can still connect and invite. The time for outreach is now.

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