Archive

Local church ‘goes online’ in wake of COVID-19 pandemic

April 3, 2020   ·   0 Comments

By Constance Scrafield

“In this little community here, everybody is so locked down: we’re all saying, ‘This is what we have to do – so, we’ll just do it -’” 

What ensued was a conversation about a small community with solutions for the much broader community 

The comment came from Rev. Candice Bist, United Church minister in Shelburne and Primrose. As a co-production with her husband Bruce Ley, well-known musical marvel, has created a Sunday service Podcast, not just for her own congregants but for any and all who would like to listen.

Bruce Ley has a multi-decade musical career, including recording his own music and the music of others in his in-home recording studio. He has been, in the last several years, touring with Leisa Way in her several concerts. Mr. Ley has been the arranger, music director and performing for all the twelve shows, created and written by Leisa Way. The latest of these is Early Morning Rain, a concert of Gordon Lightfoot’s music and life stories. Theatre Orangeville produced the premier of this concert in February of this year.

Before we arrived to the details of the podcast, Rev. Bist told the Citizen, in a telephone interview. “I did something the other day that was so fun – I called the local supermarket and asked them to leave a bucket of tulips in the back and I picked them up and went to all the mail boxes I could with this bucket of tulips and I drop them off to all my shut ins.”

Dealing with the problems of all of us being shut in, but especially those who are disabled or elderly and really dare not go out at all, even to shop, she explained her version of spreading out the solution, “I divided congregants in groups of ten, to keep in touch with people. People are finding ways to work around the problems.

“A friend called to say, ‘I’m going to make a trip – do you need anything?’ It saves the number of people in the stores if we help each other.”

Many rural people, in a more meaningful way than usual, struggle with how limited online communication is, in country neighbourhoods. This has been a problem for Rev. Bist, living in the country, running all her church business online. 

“We closed the churches because we thought we had to, even before it was mandatory. they have been deemed as non essential but the LCBO is essential. What’s interesting is that AA meetings are held in churches… 

“I’m busier than we were before for two reasons: a lot of cross-country meetings [to discuss how to serve our parishioners.] A lot of churches don’t have the technology – especially, the smaller churches. We don’t have streaming – we don’t have the technology.

“Before this [pandemic], a minister could just go into churches – they could just go into long-term homes; by the 13th, we couldn’t go into the nursing homes and then we couldn’t go to the hospitals.

“Now, we have to know where everybody is and we don’t want anybody to fall through the cracks and, all of sudden, we couldn’t do things the way we’re used to do doing them.”

Back to technology, “We didn’t have Zoom set up. “Everybody’s got a TV. The bigger churches can have streaming equipment but we don’t have all that. 

Not for the first a parent was told, “My [adult] children have been telling me I should have a podcast. It is very modern. I’m all about the sharing thing but I did feel that I wanted to send something out to my people.”

She said, “I do send out mail chimps. That’s a platform and it tells them what’s happening on Sunday. Then I thought, ok that’ s helpful – you can put anything you want on them.”

Definitely, she explained, “A podcast is audio thing; a mail chimp is a email. The reason I wanted to do a podcast-” she interrupted herself to say, “Bruce wanted to do a video. I did television for years; I know to do that stuff but other people are already doing that and they’re doing it well. People can see that; I don’t want to compete.” 

She continued, “I love a podcast because it’s very intimate – we have a studio so we can do this. The podcast is lovely because Bruce and I have been together for 40 years and we have a large store of our original music.

“And, because Bruce is such a gifted musician, I want to break out and do something original.With Near the Cross, I asked him, ‘can you do this in a bluesy version of it?’ 

“We can do things in our studio.”

As a movement, Rev. Bist believes, “We’re already trying to re-invent the church.

“This Easter,” she speculated, “I imagine ministers will be offering something beautiful available online.”

More broadly, “I see Christianity as having an amazing gift to offer the community; it has amazing spirituality but the packaging’s not the only thing. In my world, with all that’s going on, we’re coming into the world of spirituality. Spirituality exists in different faiths and poetry, art, walking on the Bruce trail.

“To my way of thinking, it’s a lovely conversation.

“The reason we ran into trouble is when we said ‘we were the only way.’ Now, people take the Bible and make something different of it – it’s not science or history.”

She is sure, “I think that all the churches will do whatever they can do – they will do the very, very best to look after how people are doing things on line and that’s the secondary problem.” Remembering, “Not everybody is on line.” 

Ergo, “We’ve a still got the pastoral problem, so, we’re on the phone a lot . In some ways, it’s re-establishing – it’s reminding us that we are not up to speed in our pastoral work and now we see we have to be.

“The edge between what’s church and what’s community is changing because the world is church and now that’s right. On my road where I live, of of sudden, an email came though: ‘Everybody needs milk, bread, butter – who’s doing a run?’ Everybody’s starting to look out for each other. The community has separated out the church and now, it doesn’t matter. This is enormously important – it’s the only way we’re going to solve the environmental problem because we have come to realize, we’re all in this together.”

Westminster United Church secretary, Wendy Sheedy told the Citizen, “They are producing a Sunday service each week via YouTube. 

“[Minister] Sandra [McLaughlin Abuja] taped the last one for YouTube by herself at the church but they don’t want anyone in the church now. Various people are doing elements. There are shots of Nancy [Sicsic, music director] playing two weeks ago and then members of the church doing some songs and they put all this altogether and it looks pretty good. 

“It’s interesting,” she commented, “it’s kind of opened up the way to get this out there. Anyone can go to the home page of the website: www.westminsterorangeville.ca.

She said, “This is good for people who are shut-ins. The church has a YouTube channel, which you can upload on Facebook and website. The services are on Sunday morning”

To listen to the Podcast from Rev. Candice Bist and Bruce Ley, anytime, here is the link:

https://myanchorhold.com/sundaysatshelburneprimrose-1

Readers Comments (0)