by Tim Isbell
In-person meetings are more difficult now because of hectic schedules and long commute times. Adding today's social-distancing requirements triggered me to increase my video conferencing capability. After some research, we decided on the Zoom platform, which is especially well suited for meetings, seminars, and webinars. And, most people are familiar with it.
As a first step, we started a Lifegroup Online based out of our local church.
For details on our Tuesday night group, click on Lifegroup Online - overview 2.0.
A midweek online lifegroup serves multiple needs. It fits children's workers who miss the adult parts of weekend worship and Sunday School. It serves parishioners who can’t get to the usual weekend services consistently. It accommodates senior adults who are uncomfortable driving at night and engages shut-ins with access to the internet. For people with contagious illnesses, or needing to social-distance for health reasons, a midweek lifegroup is the only option. Zoom also functions passively through a simple browser for people who want to view the meeting but not participate. And people can even connect through an ordinary telephone.
Start times can range from 7 to 9:15pm. You can target for after dinner, or for after parents put the kids to bed. Of course, this concept works at any time or day of the week.
The lifegroup concept works at a small attendee size of 3-4 people and scales almost without limit. If the meeting grows too large, you can use Zoom’s breakout-group function to right-size subgroups for part of the discussions. Over time, some participants are sure to decide to start new lifegroups, which is an even more powerful scaling strategy.
Blessings, Tim