his year has been a busy one for communications at First Free. In March of 2020, the pandemic began and we quickly switched from being an in-person church to an online church. Within a week of being required to cease in-person worship, we were up and running with pre-recorded worship and sermons online. (Thank you Scott Halver for your extraordinary efforts to make this happen.) Soon after, we switched to streaming services on Facebook, then on YouTube. When we were able to return to worship temporarily in the fall, we switched to a hybrid format involving streaming online while a few were able to meet in person. Scott Halver, tech team lead, played a huge role in this process and the rest of the tech team worked hard to make many of these moves happen and to keep worship services accessible all year.
Changes in church activities required changes to the first free website and a change in frequency of regular emails to the congregation. The website was updated to point visitors to online worship. We implemented sign-ups for in-person worship in order to adhere to attendance limitations and social distancing requirements. The weekly, printed church bulletin was abandoned and replaced with weekly emails of announcements. Del Shimandle produced encouragement and devotional emails for the congregation.
We learned how to do Ministry Community Meetings by Video and conduct votes online (Thanks Tim Wilkin). We held Zoom classes (Thank you Jeff Cebulski) and conducted question and answer sessions virtually. At Pastor Jason’s urging, we joined instagram and began posting weekly devotionals and the occasional update there.
We are continuing to get lots of likes, views, and follows online. In the coming year, as we continue to develop and maintain our online presence, it will be important not to get caught up in promoting First Free, but to keep our eyes on Jesus and “proclaiming the gospel in word and deed.”
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