"At the beginning of this year if someone had said that all church gatherings would be banned we would have thought our society had been overturned and the world was going mad. In the space of a month however, we have moved from concerns about the COVID-19 pandemic to being asked to remain at home with all gatherings of two or more people banned. This has thrown all of us into quick action to try and work out how to be church when we cannot gather." Pastor David Wanstall of Encounter Baptist Church said.

Encounter Baptist Church sits in the south-east suburb of Chadstone. It started six years ago as a church plant, looking to intentionally engage with discipleship and mission in the local community. Pastor David is the senior pastor of the church and describes how this church community has responded.

“We recognised quickly that as church we needed to develop light-weight ways to make sure people felt cared for, connected into community and spiritually encouraged.”

Encounter Baptist did not just want to stream services on-line but are seeking to have their members actively engaged with others in the church as well as their neighbours around them.

Pastor David identified “The challenge is to not be in a holding pattern during this time, but to continue to see people actively encounter God, encourage each other and engage with the community and neighbourhood around them. This can be difficult with social distancing rules but with some creative thinking, it is not impossible.”

Encounter Baptist has placed every person connected with the church in a home church. The home churches have approximately 10-12 people in each group with leaders identified for each home church. On Sunday morning the church uses a Zoom webinar to provide 30-40 minutes of gathered time that includes worship, prayer, notices, a kids spot and a short reflection time. Following the gathered time, each home group is encourage to connect together through their own Zoom accounts for worship, bible study, prayer, sharing and support. Home churches shape this time depending on who is in their group. A major part of the ministry team’s time is now focused on supporting and resourcing the home church leaders.

The church also has online gatherings during the week in running parenting courses, praying together, training missional leaders and connecting kids and youth together.

“In the first chapters of Acts the church met in large groups in the temple courts and smaller groups in people’s homes. We see this season at Encounter, where our gathered Sunday option is on hold, as an opportunity to strength our ability to gather together in smaller groups. In our case this is through online home churches. We don’t just want our church to survive this time but we want our church to thrive. We have seen home churches draw in people who have not previously been part of church. It is exciting.”

Source: BUV News

At the beginning of this year if someone had said that all church gatherings would be banned we would have thought our society had been overturned and the world was going mad. In the space of a month however, we have moved from concerns about the Covid-19 illness to being asked to remain at home with all gatherings of two or more people banned. This has thrown all of us into quick action to try and work out how to be church when we cannot gather.

Encounter Baptist Church sits in the south-east suburb of Chadstone. It started six years ago as a church plant, looking to intentionally engage with discipleship and mission in the local community. Ps David Wanstall is the senior pastor of the church and describes how this church community has responded.

“We recognised quickly that as church we needed to develop light-weight ways to make sure people felt cared for, connected into community and spiritually encouraged.”

Encounter Baptist did not just want to stream services on-line but are seeking to have their members actively engaged with others in the church as well as their neighbours around them.

David identified “The challenge is to not be in a holding pattern during this time, but to continue to see people actively encounter God, encourage each other and engage with the community and neighbourhood around them. This can be difficult with social distancing rules but with some creative thinking, it is not impossible.”

Encounter Baptist has placed every person connected with the church in a home church. The home churches have approximately 10-12 people in each group with leaders identified for each home church. On Sunday morning the church uses a Zoom webinar to provide 30-40 minutes of gathered time that includes worship, prayer, notices, a kids spot and a short reflection time. Following the gathered time, each home group is encourage to connect together through their own Zoom accounts for worship, bible study, prayer, sharing and support. Home churches shape this time depending on who is in their group. A major part of the ministry team’s time is now focused on supporting and resourcing the home church leaders.

The church also has online gatherings during the week in running parenting courses, praying together, training missional leaders and connecting kids and youth together.

“In the first chapters of Acts the church met in large groups in the temple courts and smaller groups in people’s homes. We see this season at Encounter, where our gathered Sunday option is on hold, as an opportunity to strength our ability to gather together in smaller groups. In our case this is through online home churches. We don’t just want our church to survive this time but we want our church to thrive. We have seen home churches draw in people who have not previously been part of church. It is exciting.”

Source: BUV News

Luke Williams, the lead pastor at Follow Baptist Church in Officer, went live on Facebook in his neighbourhood park on the 20th March. His house is neatly situated adjacent to the park and playground – a great common area where neighbours gather. He confesses that as a family, they are connected to their immediate neighbours, but not so much with the wider neighbourhood.

With a desire to connect, and an acknowledgement of the danger some people face in becoming even more isolated than before, Luke and his family set to work, creating neighbourhood packages to be dropped on each doorstep. And in this unique crisis, a nicely wrapped toilet roll and a chocolate bar holds more currency than ever before. Each package carried with it an invitation to join a new private Facebook group – one that is unique to the neighbours that overlook the park. 

Seven days later, 17 neighbours had joined the private Facebook group – all people who had been previously unknown to Luke and his family. And now there are ideas bubbling for a Post Pandemic Pancake Party at the Park. 

Luke encouraged those tuning in to the live feed to find the ‘us' in the virus, and to find creative ways of connecting with neighbours.

"What if, during this time of social distancing, we actually become more connected with people around us?"

"We might see it as a toilet roll or a chocolate bar, but I see this as a seed of love, a seed of kindness, and hopefully a seed of compassion. Who knows what is going to happen? On the other side of the pandemic, we might come out with a new normal." One neighbour who received a toilet roll burst into tears as they were down to their last roll!

For this small neighbourhood group, a new way of connecting has begun. For Luke and his family, new ideas are flourishing. A week later, their neighbours have received a “Neighbourhood Stimulus Package,” which included two melting moments “to grab a moment with someone you love”, a card, envelope and stamp to send some old-fashioned letters, and "a pack of seeds to plant which remind us that new things grow from the darkness.” It also had some chocolates, a colouring competition for the group, some links for kids activities online and some tissues for “when things get too much”.

"When you sow a seed, you are not quite sure what is going to grow, or if anything is going to. But what I do know is that if you keep sowing seeds, something will grow! And hopefully it is friendship and kindness, and even faith in a time like this."

Source: BUV News

While the whole world is rapidly changing before our eyes it almost seems out-of-tune to talk about the bushfires that affected the Victorian communities earlier this year.  However, for those impacted by the bushfires, COVID-19 comes as something of a double-hit.  The last thing they need is to be forgotten. Whilst we are all struggling with our own new realities, many of those who are bushfire-affected are having to do so within a different new reality they were forced into just weeks ago.

We will continue to update you on the stories from these areas for two reasons:

1. Your generous donations have and are still continuing to make a significant difference for lives in these affected areas. 
2. We need to be praying even more for those affected and also for our local pastors and churches who are working out how to continue their support and work within the changing parameters of our current world crisis.

It seems very odd, based on our new way of living with social restrictions, that just a couple of weeks ago I, (Andrew Naylor, BUV Partnership Development Pastor) along with Chris Piper (Bushfire Recovery Advisor) were out visiting the affected areas of Corryong and East Gippsland.  However, these were fruitful trips where we met with local pastors and those who have been engaging out in community as well as community members themselves.

In our Gippsland trip (and we will update you on Corryong next time) we gathered the pastors and workers together from Bairnsdale and Lakes Entrance Baptist Churches where we shared ideas and heard stories from the local areas (photo attached). We also talked about the next stages and best long-term strategies that we believe are emerging (which are of course changing and adapting in light of COVID-19).

We also visited some of those impacted by the fires. Local Lakes Entrance Pastor, Michael Carlisle, himself a local firefighter, told stories and introduced us to locals just out of Lakes Entrance in Wairewa, where 11 out of 23 homes were destroyed.  A couple who lived in this area told us how they had defended their house for a while then decided to leave.  They returned two hours after the fires had swept through and were fortunate to see their house still standing while all around them houses, cars, sheds and other property had been decimated.  The water they had left in buckets inside their house was still too hot to put their hands in, two hours after the fires had been!  This showed how fierce the fires and their consequent ambient heat had been.

Another couple we visited who were in their 70’s had also been fortunate to not lose their house, but everything else had been wiped out.  Tragically this included generations’ old tools (grandfather’s chisels etc), specialised wood and wood working machines for a specific hobby. Not only was the story heartbreaking, but seeing the complexities and difficulties involved in working out insurances became evident.  Another couple we visited had lost everything, after nearly completing the (self) building of their house.  Seeing and hearing these stories was difficult, but it was great to see our local teams on the ground having such a tremendous impact on the lives of so many community members.

It is clear that although many people are doing their best to be philosophical as well as courageous, the realities of what lies ahead sit just beneath the surface and that there is still a long road to be negotiated.  Just like the trees and grass that, after years of brown drought and then the fires, has so rapidly regenerated, what lies just beneath is a harsh reality and the road to recovery is long.

Baptist Family, thank you again for your amazing generosity.  Because of this we’ve been able to help with many immediate needs, whilst still keeping our eye on what it is that we alone can offer that others may struggle with.  This is clearly a relational and situational long-term approach.  Where many agencies come in and help with specific things and then leave, our churches and teams are situated and geared toward long-term relationship which can include any number of things from pastoral care to advocacy, both of which will be needed during and after our current COVID-19 pandemic.

Please continue to pray for our amazing teams on the ground.  They have been working tirelessly and will continue to do so now, in adapted ways, to serve the community around them.  Pray also for those who have been affected who now have to negotiate another trauma with the COVID-19 impact.

We’ll keep you updated.

Andrew Naylor
BUV, Relationship Development Pastor

Source: BUV News

Kylie Butler from New Peninsula Baptist arrived home from South Africa two weeks ago to a Federal Government imposed quarantine at home. She had sought out an earlier flight home, sensing that things were escalating. But the climate into which she arrived was unexpected. “Once I landed, everything started to go haywire.” On the flight from Sydney to Melbourne, Kylie created a neighbourhood WhatsApp group, in a bid to support one another in whatever the future would hold. 

Once home, and in self-quarantine with her family, Kylie wrote letters and organised their distribution to the street’s houses through a neighbour. The letter invited everyone to join the Street Support WhatsApp group and gave instructions on how to download the app and join the group. She encouraged people to call if they needed help getting it set up. 

To date there are 16 people in the group, with four new connections to Kylie and her family. One new connection is a delivery driver who shared that he didn’t have any hand sanitiser (which was needed for him to do his work). Another neighbour responded that she had two bottles and dropped them off. Excess rhubarb has been shared from a garden, others are taking requests when they head to the shops on behalf of the street.

Through the group, it has become evident that three people lost their jobs last week and another neighbour is new to the street.  One neighbour has a nine day old baby. All of them are connected. Some neighbours have even joined one another for drinks from their own driveways (with the width of the street providing the physical distancing). “We would never have had this connection before,” says Kylie – an almost incongruous comment from someone still completing two weeks of quarantine. “Community is starting to happen. Even the grumpiest man in the street requested to join the group!” 

Source: BUV News

Last Sunday, almost 20 Baptist Churches in Victoria live-streamed their services. A month ago, there was very few. The last four weeks have brought with them progressively tighter government restrictions on gatherings all across Australia. These have presented a gargantuan challenge to the church, which intuitively recognises the deep need we all have to "not give up on meeting together” (Hebrews 10:25). With social gatherings now limited to two, and physical distancing in place, all traditional ways of thinking about community and communal worship need to be radically changed. In this challenge, leaders have been extended and have needed to work well outside their natural abilities in order to achieve the great feat of gathering online. 

And, as with all healthy families, the lessons are being shared, and support is being offered between churches. Essendon Baptist has graciously written a blog post of their journey from ‘zero to go’ with the lessons in their steep learning curve. Their hope is that it will provide practical information and encourage others who are hoping to launch online with little lead time. The family is in this together, and growing together. Several church leaders from around Victoria have offered us their reflections on this sudden swerve into digitalisation. 

Mark Nidenko, Associate Pastor of Heathmont Baptist Church, comments on the explosion of changes in the last two weeks: “We have been greatly encouraged by the grace our congregation has shown us as we have worked out our response. We are enjoying the challenge of integrating a mix of technologies into our services and exploring the way that they allow us to run programs we thought would need to close (eg. Playgroup). We have been streaming our services and youth groups over YouTube and using zoom for our lifegroups and as our welcome cafe.”

Many pastors in the last two weeks have expanded their everyday vernacular to include "Youtube Channel, Facebook Live, Teleprompter, live-stream, Google Meet, Vimeo, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Zoom …” They have learned the varying capacities and the pros and cons for each offering for their own setting, and are now seeing their faces on those platforms. Grace Munro can attest to the weight of this work for church leadership: "Pastor Jun Tan at Balwyn Baptist has been VERY busy making the adjustment to online services, and we are definitely getting there, and it is good to get together even while not being together.”

In some churches, this new challenge has brought with it surprises and latent abilities. Kathryn Vaughan, Co-ordinator of Pastoral Administration at Camberwell Baptist Church says, “At the beginning, when it was hard to imagine how we could possibly transition our service online in a week, a few people surfaced unexpectedly from within our congregation with the willingness and the gifts to enable this to happen.”

Pastor Aaron Wardle of Wangaratta Baptist is fortunate to learn quickly with software. Even so, he admits, “It has taken a bit of effort to get it all set up!” In Wangaratta Baptists’ first stream, they used both Facebook Live and Youtube, wanting to achieve maximum reach. The online.church platform was utilised where those gathering can chat, share a heart, and share a live prayer request with the service hosts. Camberwell Baptist has chosen to use Zoom, which helps the congregation to connect with one another via text and allows people see each other on screen. 

Each church is approaching the challenge differently, bringing their unique culture to their gathered worship, and choosing the technical options that will serve their church and its surrounding community. Pastor Adam Hince of Essendon Baptist summarises perfectly, "I don't think anyone at Essendon is pretending this is church as we'd really like it – but we are making it work, and doing our best to connect with each other and not just with the screen while we do so. We're also doing our best to keep it like our normal church services – so it's not as polished as others, but it is ours.”

Our Churches in the Union have responded with agility and creativity to the COVID-19 crisis as it has unfolded into a pandemic. We have brought the good news in the midst of the vulnerability of the human condition, and sought to bring us into contact with one another under extraordinary circumstances.

Let us continue to show unprecedented love through these unprecedented times.

If your church needs support in your work to meet online, please head to our COVID-19 Church Resources and COVID-19 Advice Page. Both are being updated regularly to help you understand how to navigate the new challenges and gather your church online. Crossover is also providing practical help to churches entering the online space. You can check out their resources here.

Thank you to the teams at Balwyn, Camberwell, Essendon, Heathmont and Wangaratta Baptist Churches for sharing their insights in moving church services online. 

Source: BUV News