Brooklyn, New York
2021
To develop best practices for engaging and uniting online and in-person worshipers in formative and participative worship.
Provide a brief summary of the purpose and goal of your grant.
To establish best practices for multi-access worship with a live, in-person congregation and simultaneous remote / online congregation with real-time interactivity
What questions have you asked about worship in the past year?
- Can we be a supporting church that is engaging to congregants without our walls?
- How can we engage children in the multi-access space?
- What does it mean to be a distributed church community? - can we still retain a personal connection?
In what ways has your project engaged your congregation so that it impacts the worship life and habits of the congregation?
- Increased membership
- Increased amount of givers
- Increased participation in number of congregants active in leading worship (nearly threefold!)
What criteria have you used to evaluate your plan to foster vital worship?
- Retention of Congregants who are not in physical proximity of our physical church
- Expansion of Congregants who are remote
- Retention of Congregants in-person
- Meaningful connection between remote and in-person congregants
What issues have been your greatest challenges (or challenging opportunities)?
Continuous Covid re-directions - we've only had about 90 days of true multi-access worship to practice with, where the church is fully open, and we are engaging congregants remotely.
Managing expectations of reopening (historical events may no longer be relevant, new events may be more relevant, how to navigate eliminating non-productive precedent)
What would you like to share with other Project Directors?
Our body of work
https://first-presbyterian-church-of-brooklyn.sermoncloud.com/
Participate for a few moments some Sunday if you would like - 11AM EST - introduce yourself on the chat
https://first-presbyterian-church-of-brooklyn.sermoncloud.com/live