Zoom for Church

Our little English-language Methodist congregation in Berlin was just as badly hit as all of the other congregations when the Corona-induced lockdowns occurred. Since I have been experimenting with video-based instruction for over 20 years, I felt that it would be possible to do a streamed service. It is not the same thing, but better than nothing. Our pastor, Carolyn Kappauf, was quite unsure about this, but let me experiment the Sunday after Easter in 2020. It worked! And we even went to a hybrid service when the lockdown eased, and then back to online only when the next lockdown came. I've put together some of the "best practices" that we have come across, I hope they are useful for someone. 

Before I begin, let me share the motto of any online activity: Don't panic! There is always an alternative was to do things, and if you get panicky and start clicking all over the place, you will make it worse. Breathe deeply, and see if anyone can assist you with what seems to be going wrong.

Preparing the service

The first order of business is finding music.

• If our organist is available from the church, we can stream her in with an iPad stationed in church and connected to our church WiFi. The option for "original sound" must be enabled in the large collection of settings and then turned on in the iPad, otherwise it will sound horrible.
• If the organist is at home, she dials in twice, once with her computer for video (and this is muted) and once per telephone call to the local number for Zoom. She puts her mobile phone on her piano, it actually works reasonably well.
• If the organist is sick, we have to improvise. It turns out there is a lot of Christian music online that was sung in the past by choirs and the words are shown on the screen. These tend to be very useful. There are also songs without music, but we can't stream them and have the words on the side, unless you do a bit of work (see below) so that is useful only in an emergency. There are also sites with .MIDI files such as Timeless Truths that have many tunes available. When a .MIDI file can be found, a scan of the hymn from the hymnal can be put in the bulletin and then the service organizer just plays the .MIDI file with the free program VLC as often as needed. This way we can also easily just sing some of the verses.

The next thing needed before the service is the bulletin.

• We prepare the bulletin with Google Drive so that multiple people can edit. We put the hymn texts, or notes if available, on separate pages, and our OneLicense copyright notice on the last page. We link to music we find on YouTube or elsewhere, and we also put the readings and responses here as well. We send a link to this file and a link to the Zoom room for the service to all the known members a day before the service. This way, even people who have a very weak Internet connection can download the bulletin and music before hand and just call in by telephone, if necessary. They have, however, all learned how to zoom :)
• I export a PDF from this file, because I can call up the links to the YouTube files with one click as opposed to two (or more if I fumble) in Google Drive. But to save even more time, before the service I open up all of the web links in the order we will using them so that I can check if there are ads. If so, I wait until the ads are over, and then stop the playback. I use a laptop and an external screen, so I clear the laptop of open windows and have only one browser window with the open tabs for the service on the laptop. This is the screen I will be sharing.
• When sharing I always share the laptop screen, so that I know that everything I am seeing here is being seen by the congregation. I also check the boxes for transmitting sound and for optimizing video. If I forget, no problem, click on the "..." on the right side of the little black bar with the controls (this  is not seen by the rest of the congregation). Near the bottom of the drop down list you find the controls to check. I overlay the windows like this so that I can quickly switch between the PDFs and the videos. I have the bulletin on both windows, in PDF and Google Drive, just in case.

• If you must have the lyrics on the PDF because they are not on the video, format them in two columns on the PDF, then minimize the PDF window to the size of just one column. You can increase the size to 125 % and then scroll to the appropriate lyrics, and slide it over the YouTube ads.
  
  
• All the prayers and announcements should be on a PDF and shared with others running the service by email before the service starts. This will be your Plan B when everything goes wrong. You will need it sometime, I assure you. 
• All of the files I need are in one directory in my temporary directory that I name with the date in ISO format (YYYYMMDD) so that they sort by date. This puts everything you need in ONE place. And yes, even the Lord's Prayer belongs there. When your mind is dealing with all the things that could go wrong, it is quite a comfort to have everything quickly findable.

Getting Zoom ready for the service

• Set up the Zoom room. Don't make a waiting room unless it is necessary, let people talk before church. Try and be in the room 30 minutes before the service begins, so that you can deal with technical woes. Don't use the setting that makes a ding-dong when someone enters the room, that is so annoying. But do use the setting so that for audio you can use original sound. Otherwise, Zoom will optimize fovoicesr human  which is much different than music. You want as much original sound as possible.
• If you have others helping during the service, make them co-hosts so that they can jump in if necessary.
• Practice sharing your screen and running the videos. You need to check both boxes if you are showing videos, only the first one if you have live music.
  
  
  

  Don't fret if you forget - under the "..." on the sharing menu you can still turn them on if you need to.
• If you are using a Sunday School setup, then think about what breakout rooms you need and how you can enable them.

During the service

• One thing we have found about reading from paper during the service is that it rustles in the microphone and annoys the listeners. So if I am preaching, I turn off the screen sharing and read my sermon from a PDF. That also lets me look more directly into the camera, so the listeners have the illusion that I am looking at them.
• A headset microphone or a good one that is built-in is quite valuable, ones that are attached to earphones will rustle when you breathe and they scratch across cloth or necklaces. Of course, you can go all-out and purchase a Zoom microphone (same name, different company), but that will take a lot of practice to get your set-up right. I needed another 3 € thingy so that it would connect to my Mac ...

Singing in the service

• Tell your parishioners that they can sing at the top of their lungs if they mute their microphones! If they forget (they will), YOU click on their box and mute them. Or you can set the room to have everyone muted by default when they enter the room.
• If you have a MIDI with just the melody, you play it as often as you need it, otherwise, you pretty much have to sing with whatever the video is playing. If you are running a hybrid service, current restrictions forbid singing in the sanctuary, but you can project the main window of Zoom to a screen, if you have a beamer (and electricity!) and a screen in the sanctuary.

Community

• Encourage people to come to the service early to chat. It will calm your nerves as well to have people there. Lately, people zoom in at the very last minute, which can be quite unsettling. 
• Tell them that they can change their screen names. If they are attending as a couple or a family they can put both or all names on if they want to.
• If you have a second screen, you can set the Zoom view to a gallery view and you can see 25 medium-sized tiles or 49 smallish ones at a time. If more people come, you have to scroll left or right to see all of them. People with video on will be sorted towards the top of the first page. People coming in on telephones will be at the very end.
• Encourage people to turn on their videos - and you turn yours on as well to invite them in. You can even take a nice picture of your altar and use this as a background if your computer is modern enough to deal with it. Using a green screen behind you can help slower computers still cope with images. If you don't have a green screen, dig out the camping mat that you aren't using anymore for camping and roll it out on the bookshelves behind you, fastening with whatever you can find. But if you have books, that looks great anyway.
• Be willing to stay after the service and try to greet people, ask how their week has been.
• Either you or an usher should keep track of who attends so that you can record your numbers. This is a functionality sorely missing in Zoom, a list of all attendees.
• Remind the congregation that we still have to pay for heat even if we are not using the sanctuary, and show the bank account of the church. Encourage people to put that loose change they normally put in the plate into a jar and transfer that amount once a month. They'll even get a tax certificate for it now! Of course, topping up would greatly help the church, too.
• If you have a large number of parishioners, make a few breakout rooms (not too many) and let people choose where they want to go if they want to have a more private chat.
• Be prepared for "zoombombers". What can you do?
• Set up the room so that people are muted first. If someone makes a ruckus, mute them.
• Don't have general screensharing set up. Give access only as necessary.
• If people start doing stupid stuff in their camera, throw them out. Click on their tile on the upper right where the three dots are and select "Remove". They won't be let back in this session (but next week).
• If it gets really bad, you can "lock" the door after the service starts. This menu is under "Security". But that means late-comers don't get in.
• Some people have taken to not publishing the Zoom link, but only an email address that you have to write to in order to get the address. If they are targeting you, they'll use a throw-away address for this.
  

Prayer

• Prayer is such a special time, and we are used to praying facing the Cross, not each other. Let people know that it is okay for them to turn off their video if they want to.
• Have people unmute their microphones so that the congregation can pray together: liturgical responses, intercessory prayers, the Lord's Prayer.
• When leading the Lord's Prayer, pray slowly. The delay in the sound will mean that everyone will be hearing a bit of cacophony - that's all right, that is just what it sounds like in church!

Communion?

• This is a hard theological issue. For Catholics it is pretty much out, as the priest needs to be there for transforming the bread and wine into the body and blood of Jesus. But for Protestants there are possibilities, although they can be expensive:
• You can tell everyone to have some grape juice and bread near the computer and have it blessed via Zoom. If a couple or a family is together, they can first break the bread with each other.
• You can order individual communion cups on Amazon, have them blessed offline and someone deliver the cups to all the parishioners. Or you can mail them to everyone, but the postage will be tremendous.
• Someone bakes Communion Bread like my grandmother, Grace Herbison Weber, used to do for the Methodist church in Renfrew, PA:
  
  
  Communion Bread (Christian Herald)
  ¾ cup flour
  2 ½ Tbsp. butter or margarine
  Cut shortening and flour together with a fork as you would pie crust. Add milk until it is like pie crust. Divide into two equal balls and wrap in waxed paper -- place in refrigerator at least 2 hours before baking. Roll out as for pie crust and score with a serrated knife before placing in the oven. 400°. Bake for 10 minutes (until brown).