Under a Stay-At-Home Order? Here are 3 Ways to Stay Connected
By Victoria Cobb, Family Foundation President and Proud Mom of Four Kids!
1) Don’t relinquish the Bible’s encouragement to fellowship together—keep it up through video! I know this can be tough for those of us partial to in-person gatherings. But with many states’ shelter-in-place order slated to last months, we’ll need to start thinking about “fellowship” a little differently.
After all, while most can “attend” worship services online, we still have the biblical command to live in fellowship, which means investing in the lives of each other and carrying one another’s burdens. How can we continue that? It’s time to gather your small group—or start a new ‘virtual’ one— using one of the many conferencing tools like Zoom or Google Hangouts. Set a regular meeting time, send out a link through the web tool and you have the blessing of seeing each other’s faces, praying and talking through video in person. One blessing of this new format is that you can include friends who have moved. Last night, my normal prayer group invited a friend to rejoin who had moved away within the last year. What an unexpected blessing that technology turned out to be! Finally, don’t forget, if you’re using the free version of Zoom, you are limited to 40 minutes, so either keep watch of your time or prepare everyone to jump back on a new link after the 40 minutes expires!
2) Your children still need forms of fellowship and recreation. While my children always have a sibling available to play, that’s not true for a lot of others. And even those with siblings may still miss dedicated time with specific friends. One option available, even for younger kids with parents in the room, would be to use a web tool like Facetime to play a game with their pals. For example, the classic game of Battleship is particularly well-suited for this context. For older children and adults, chess can function in the same way. Because chess has a system of annotation, each player can set up a chess board and then verbally announce their moves—no need to ever see another’s board. If one does not know the system of chess annotation, it’s a very quick study here.
3) Find creative ways to fellowship with neighbors. It’s truly wonderful to see more of my neighbors lately. Our yards will look the best they’ve ever looked with all this time spent gardening and mulching! Yet, due to social distancing, connections don’t happen without intentionality. Hopefully, you’ve created a group text with your neighbors already, but if not, consider doing that or connecting through neighborhood apps like Nextdoor.
Our street just agreed to designate Sunday nights as “Eat Together” nights. How, you ask? Last Sunday, we had one person order pizza at a local restaurant owned by a family we wanted to support. One car picked up the order for the neighborhood. We paid the family who picked up the food digitally through Venmo. With Clorox and hand sanitizer in tow, we then handed out pizza boxes with all the families spread out around the cul-de-sac, each family sitting six or more feet apart.
I hope these simple tips spur your thinking about creative ways to help your whole family stay connected with brothers-and sisters-in Christ, as well as shine the light of Jesus in your own neighborhood! “And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.” Hebrews 10:24-25
