Pandemic Religion: A Digital Archive

Church @ Home

We didn't realize it at the time, but apparently a few of us at St. Peter's Lutheran were preparing to do church during a pandemic. During the last few years we have shifted to a giving resource called Tithe.ly that allows for easy digital online give. We also began streaming one of our church services. Both of these resources were sort of utilized by the congregation, but now they are being heavily utilized. We began a service called Church @ Home, where church and lay leaders contribute to the service from their homes. Every Sunday morning one of our rooms turns into a recording studio with lights, microphone, web camera, and projection streaming software. We've been doing a mixture of live and pre-recorded video and audio. We've been supplementing these streams with zoom small group gatherings. We are 7 Sundays in and I feel a longing from my congregation to be incarnational...to somehow see each other in person. People are putting on a brave face, but the longing is creeping up in different ways. We are an affluent congregation, and so the number one question I hear is, "What can I do? How can I help?" We are creating a relief fund based on donations to help people in financial need. The fund will first help church members, but I foresee it being used for the greater community. As we are trying to tend to the present, the leadership is attempting to look into the future and imagine how life at church can be...given that it needs to be different from before.

April 12, 2020

St. Peter's Evangelical Lutheran Church

Lutheran

Pennsylvania

St. Peter's

Lutheran (ELCA)