'Our Meeting has fully embraced the concept of blended worship.' Photo: courtesy of Stocksfield Meeting
‘Our online worship is disciplined, deep and much valued.’
Trying to figure out how to blend in-person and online worship? Michael Long tells us how Stocksfield Quakers are preparing
Stocksfield Meeting, part of Northumbria Area Meeting, sits on the A695 in the Tyne Valley and is on mainline bus and rail routes between Newcastle upon Tyne and Carlisle. A former Co-op dairy, then an office, the building was gifted to the established but homeless Stocksfield Quakers some forty years ago. The building has capacity for about forty-five in worship and has a well-resourced library/children’s room, kitchen, toilet and a garden to the rear. A small Meeting, it comprises twenty-nine members and attenders, just one of whom lives in Stocksfield, the remainder travelling in from nearby villages and Hexham town. A normal Sunday Meeting for Worship might attract up to twelve Friends. Pre-Covid the Meeting house hosted weekly ‘Friendly Fridays’ for isolated and elderly villagers, a monthly ‘Friends on Fridays’ – a social gathering with an invited speaker – and had three established weekly lettings to other community groups. There is a close relationship with Churches Together in Stocksfield.
From the first Sunday following lockdown, Stocksfield Quakers offered online Meeting for Worship on Zoom using a paid-for subscription shared with Area Meeting and trustees. Opening Zoom doors from 10.30am, from 11.00am a forty-minute Meeting for Worship is followed by ‘afterthoughts’ and notices. A short time is left at the end for sharing our week with each other. There are two social gatherings enabled, on a Wednesday afternoon and Friday evening. Attendance at Sunday worship has peaked at twenty-five Friends and has now settled at anything from fifteen to twenty Friends. Online worship has enabled several elderly or disabled Friends who were infrequent attenders in person to join worship regularly from their homes. Timings enabled others with busy family Sundays to join the worship without the time challenge of travelling to and from the Meeting house. Friends from other Meetings have joined our worship – and also worshippers from France and the Ukraine. Our online worship is disciplined, deep and much valued by Friends who gather. It is a significant marker in their lives under isolation, lockdown or social distancing.
We have yet to hold a blended Meeting for Worship, where Friends can meet in person or online. But we are now fully equipped to offer such a Meeting once we have reopened, which could possibly be this month. Our Meeting has fully embraced the concept of blended worship and our direction of travel was agreed at a Meeting for Worship for Business. A number of Friends have said it will be the only way they can join worship for the foreseeable future. One Friend, Averil Armstrong, was asked to lead our move to blended worship.
Another Friend in the Meeting, Tim Thompson, is a handyman extraordinaire. He offered to conceptualise, plan, purchase, install and test-drive our blended set-up. Several years ago Tim had completely remodelled the interior of the Meeting house and recently moved a doorway nine inches to the left, installing a disabled lift between the Meeting room and kitchen. What Tim does not know he researches thoroughly, and, following a brief learning period, Tim was confident enough to identify a suitable technical solution and design and build a corner-cabinet to hold our new equipment. Following the new installation of a telephone line and broadband Tim put the new equipment in place and tested it with a number of Friends Zooming in on a wet Wednesday morning in early August 2020.
The Logitech ‘Group’ videoconferencing kit produces excellent sound reproduction and broadcasts clean crisp images from its camera, which has an excellent range of zoom capacity. Wiring is stowed away in the bespoke cabinet and when the system is in use only two cable connections run from the laptop to the cabinet. The ‘control pod’ wiring is in a custom groove under the carpeting and can be disconnected and stored in the cabinet when not in use. The cabinet has a blind which can be lowered when kit is not in use and to screen from the outside. Users can operate the kit with the control pod – placed on the Meeting room table – or by remote control. The TV, too, has a remote control. Friends test-driving the set-up from home reported clear visuals, excellent sound reproduction and a sure sense of being in the Meeting room. Camera zoom enables close-ups of Friends in Meeting, particularly when ministering. The TV monitor is not intrusive – chairs can be arranged to include the monitor as part of a circle, or set outside of a circle. Friends can also join the Meeting from laptops in the garden or from the library/children’s room. The kit is suitable for a small- to medium-sized room. Bigger Meeting rooms will need rather larger kit, microphone and speakers and TV monitor. Our new system, and cost of installation, was almost completely funded by two anonymous and generous donations from Friends in the Meeting.
Stocksfield Quakers believe the new facility will support Friends unable to journey to Meeting physically, or unwilling out of concern for infection from Covid-19. It will enhance the usefulness of the Meeting house to local community and business groups, or to villagers without IT access to friends and family in other parts of the country or abroad. Being ‘blended’ has opened up a new chapter in the story of our Meeting and we look forward to testing its value to our worship, our sense of oneness as a Meeting and our value as a genuine community resource.
Equipment:
• Logitech ‘Group’ videoconference kit, including microphone, control pod, camera, mini-hub, and remote control (£1,100)
• A laptop (Lenovo Idea Pad 5) for connecting to the internet, the videoconference kit, and the TV (£549)
• Bitdefender security software (£25 per year)
• A broadband internet router and contract (we use The Phone Coop, at £20 per month)
• A TV/monitor with USB and HDMI connections (ours was from United TV; 32 inches was most suitable for us; £129)
