When Church is Closed...
Ideas for worship at home, outdoors and online
Like you, we’re pondering how to keep engaging with God when our churches can’t meet, and folks are confined to their homes. We believe that these difficult times also offer opportunities to go deeper with God as individuals and families, and therefore shine brighter in God's world. Here are a bunch of ideas - feel free to add your own or any feedback in the comments.
See specific ideas for Easter and Holy Week here.
For Families
From Monday the 23rd of March (the first day in the UK when all the schools were required to stay closed), we have been out a daily devotional resource for families called Engage At Home. It has a simple prayer or worship activity which families can engage with together, using movement, interaction, craft, play and more. We will be varying the themes and types of engagement with God, and we are sure that you’ll be able to adapt the ideas to suit your family. Visit the page or search #EngageAtHome on social media.
Streaming and Sharing
We do not require you to have any special licence or pay any additional fee to use our material this season. Our prayers, PowerPoints, videos and more are freely available to use in live-streaming, social media sharing or whatever way you are planning to keep worship going (as long as you aren't selling our stuff). Just credit us appropriately, and if possible provide a link to our site.
Some resources that you might find particularly helpful are our visual resources. Why not send around a PowerPoint or video of a Psalm to reflect on. Or ask everyone to watch the same video at the same time with a WhatsApp group or email thread open for written prayers or reflections from the group.
Something else that you might find useful to share with your church while you can’t meet is our PAUSE/PRAY podcasts. These are 4-10 minute long contemplative style Bible and prayer reflections that you can play on any device. We particularly recommend the “Peace be with you” reflection at this time. There are currently ten of these available, perhaps as a leader you may want to listen ahead and ask your church or youth group to listen to the same one in an evening and then feedback thoughts and reflections through your communication channels.
This also seems like a good time for churches to engage with our “Worship in the Wilderness” material. It is written for Lent - and we know that many of you are in the middle of using this material already - but you can also just dip into it at any time. The themes of how to worship God during difficult circumstances may be just what you need to explore right now, and the book of personal devotions, centring around prayer in times of dryness and sorrow, may well be a helpful resource for the members of your congregation. This material is available both as physical products and as downloads.
Take it outdoors
Although we are encouraged to not gather in groups right now, there are currently no rules in the UK about going for walks or enjoying nature. At engageworship we are strong believers in creation being “the second book of God”, able to reveal the creator and his ways to us if we pay attention. We also know from psychological research that engagement with nature helps our mental health, something we should all take seriously right now. So, do make use of all of our outdoor worship ideas at this time, including our Outdoor Worship book which is now available as a downloadable PDF.
We’ve also just added a prayer walk which you can use just about anywhere in nature (so long as it has a few paths and some shade!) based on a prayer by Thomas Merton. Feel free to encourage your church to use this if appropriate, or use it as inspiration to write your own specific walk for your church in your area.
Dealing with grief
During this season we will suffer losses - big and small, life-changing and seemingly mundane. As churches we often avoid the difficult emotions of sadness, anger and fear in our lives together. But those in the know tell us that suppressing those emotions also suppresses our desired emotions of joy and excitement and often leads to depression and anxiety. It is healthy to feel sadness, anger and fear, offer those emotion to God and move on. Here are some resources that may help you in this:
- Song for grieving
- Lamentations 3 video reading
- Lament song based on Psalm 88
- Introduction to lament
- Hallelujah reflection
- A dedication and sending prayer for a broken world
We pray for God’s grace and peace to be tangible to all our friends, known and unknown, at this time, and may the Church of Christ rise up to love a broken world at this time.
Comments
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God bless
Mike
Thank you so much!!!
Now we can learn it for our Advent services by following the music as well as the video.
Gill