Home The Methodist Church of New Zealand
Conf Samoan choir

Whakapono

Resources

Online Worship Links

Covid helped many of us to develop online worship resources. We've collected some of them on this page. If you have other online resources that can be shared across the Connexion, please let us know about them. 

Weekly Online Worship Links

Occasion Worship Links

  • Celebrating Holy Communion - Virtual Communion
    Rev Ian Boddy shares

    At our Covenant service I led this "Virtual Communion".

    I had just one crust of bread on the paten and a chalice (which was actually empty), and during the 'on the night he was betrayed' liturgy I broke the bread and held up the cup.

    Then there is no sharing except at the next time you eat and drink at home...

    Virtual Communion Liturgy

  • Celebrating Holy Communion differently in a Covid-World (examples, comments, ideas)
    • 3 congregations – 2 small congregations are minimally disrupted but the larger one may be challenged with distancing. Dressed with mask and gloves to serve communion makes people uncomfortable. The issue divides people which is not the point of it.
    • Picnic communion – people are served at the beginning and hold it until blessed.
    • At a uniting church, communion was taken to people at their seats and everyone waits until everyone is served (reflect until the blessing) and eat together
    • People may bring their own elements, with elements supplied to people had forgotten.
    • To keep people safe we aren’t having communion
    • We have tried as a spaced stream to keep people moving, people sanitise their hands as they came forward, two people distribute the elements (tongs for bread, clean hands, sanitized between groups, limit the people standing and waiting)
    • We don’t stand at the altar, two people serving, bread served into their hands, move to the wine (ready on a tray), move again to eat and drink, move to your seat. Thereby only one person at a time at each station.
    • One pair of sanitised hands to serve is safer than everyones’ hands
    • Have used tongs which amused people (change!), have stopped offering bread as a form of trying to be safer
    • Safety is of the essence, sometimes it will be safer not to have communion.
    • Are gloves safer than sanitised hands? Gloves won’t be sanitized as often as hands can be.
    • Is the ability to accept change which keeps us safe, age related (older people want to be safer)
    • Prepare the bread in small plastic bags, the glasses are spread on a tray, people can come and collect the elements and move to the pews. Everyone prays together before partaking of the elements. People join on Zoom with their own elements.
    • Reminder people to have their elements prepared if you are joining by Zoom, then the presbyter conducts the service as if everyone is there. One person at home serves everyone in the family - reflects what might happen at an in-person service
    • Congregation decided not to meet face to face but didn’t want to miss out on celebrating communion! It is a communal celebration – a bubble is a community of faith. On screen together makes it an event! First thing to reflect on is that they are all part of a community of faith. It is an experience for the one person who is serving their family.
    • Reminder people to have their elements prepared if you are joining by Zoom, then the presbyter conducts the service as if everyone is there. One person at home serves everyone in the family - reflects what might happen at an in-person service
    • Congregation decided not to meet face to face but didn’t want to miss out on celebrating communion! It is a communal celebration – a bubble is a community of faith. On screen together makes it an event! First thing to reflect on is that they are all part of a community of faith. It is an experience for the one person who is serving their family.
    • People are taking their time to come back face-to face. And that is OK.
    • Communion on Zoom. Everything is on powerpoint so people can join. I break the bread on screen and everyone can see. Everyone likes face to face but it is difficult at the moment
    • At a uniting parish, the elements are blessed and then served to people in their seats, and then we can eat together. The concern was of the potential touch spots between server, elements and recipient hands, and the server continuing their own communion and the serving of individual glasses of wine.
    • We can only take all reasonable steps.
    • It started as a practical problem which then caused reflection on the theological aspects of the celebration.

     

Other Worship Links