Church at Home? Three Tips for Your Family’s Online Sunday Service

By Victoria Cobb, Family Foundation President and Proud Mom of Four Kids!

While some might be part of a creative effort offered by their church to meet together in a drive-in style experience, most of us are at home on the couch trying to figure out how to replace the rich experience that takes place inside a church building each Sunday.  Here are some timely tips to help.

1)      Recognize the unique opportunity for a full-family worship experience!  Having a positive attitude is half the battle. If your church is like most, it segments the Sunday morning experience by age. Children go to “Kids Church,” teens sit together or even attend an entirely different service, and often the seniors meet separately too.  There are even Sunday school experiences when women separate from their spouses. 

This is one of those rare times when your entire family will come together for the same hour of Sunday worship. For those with little children, this will mean some distraction and interruption. Don’t forget to make some announcements in advance to limit those, such as, “I’m getting my coffee now so I don’t have to move around, everyone else needs to use the restroom and finish breakfast before the service starts.” In my house, I find that in the course of one hour, our six-year-old can find himself in 10 different positions around the room.  However, once you get past that, this experience allows for great family conversation about the same worship and sermon you’ve all just watched together.

2)      You don’t have to forsake the ‘fellowship.’  Church isn’t just about hearing a sermon or watching a music concert. It’s about sharing each other’s burdens and being united through prayer. COVID-19 didn’t eliminate the need for this.  Many small groups are gathering together on video chat.  Some platforms even allow a larger group to start a meeting together, break into multiple groups and join back together at the end. This is perfect for smaller prayer circles. Consider an app like GroupMe as a way to keep the group dialogue going on all week long. To join more intensely in prayer, my small group is using this app for daily updates on a set of parents both struggling in the hospital with COVID-19. 

3)      To sing or not to sing.  Whether or not your family sings along with the worship provided by your streamed service is entirely your call.  We have one family member who really should lead worship (not I) and many who only “make a joyful noise.”  But, even without singing along, we’ve noticed that we are paying a lot more attention to the words of the songs as they appear in the subscript on our screen. 

This prompted a great discussion about the word “diadem” during Easter’s Crown Him with Many Crowns. Consider making worship music more of a regular feature around your house so that the spirit of worship is a connecting point all week long.  We find all chores go better with music. Many wonderful Christian singers are offering simulcast worship nights so be sure to plug into their social media pages for those announcements.    

I hope these tips help build a richer family worship experience!

Until next time,

Victoria