From Tzu-Chuan Lin (林子雋) on May 17, 2020
I still remembered the last physical gathering was on March 21th before the church closed. That day, our pastor let us test on how to use Zoom in the physical gathering to discuss the Bible in case the situation would get worse. At that time, I believed possibly no one could imagine our church would close someday. Unfortunately, on March 28th, due to the increasing number of cases, the church decided to close and our fellowship had to hold our gathering online consequently. To be honest, I was very nervous on the first Saturday after our church’s lockdown because I needed to host our fellowship’s retreat online, which was unprecedented. Though our first time using Zoom to hold a retreat was a little bit awkward, I believed God still comforted us through his words no matter the form of the gathering.
After our first experience, our fellowship staff started to improve our online gathering’s timeline. For example, we restored the worship time by letting a staff lead the worship so that the congregation could praise and give thanks to the Lord remotely. And we took advantage of the Zoom breakout rooms feature to organize online board games in order to compensate for the loss of having in-person connections. Moreover, Zoom’s sharing screen feature also assisted teachers in conveying God’s word effectively in the online Sunday schools.
Today, as the church gradually reopened, our fellowship also had a physical gathering last Saturday (5/16). To my surprise, our interactions were almost the same as before, when the church did not close. It was God’s love connecting us during this tough time even if we could not meet others. I believe after this experience, our fellowship must cherish more about every minute we meet each other physically and will not take the chance to connect with others in person for granted anymore!