At the February 23, 2023 meeting of the Worship Team, it was decided to cease providing recorded worship services online. During the pandemic, they were instrumental to continuing the sense of community through worshiping together. However, now that we are fully back to in-person worship, very few are viewing the services, and it still takes a large effort to make them happen. Therefore, after the May 21, 2023 service, after three years of this program, we are no longer recording all services.
Many thanks go to Matthew Hendrickson, who has been recording the services since March 2020! In the early days of the pandemic with full social distancing, Matthew made the recordings using an iPad positioned on a small table in the sanctuary center aisle. He later acquired a high-quality video camera with tall tripod that could be set up further back in the sanctuary, which also was more convenient when we returned (slowly) to in-person worship.
Also, many thanks to David Tuttle, who uploaded the videos to YouTube for the first year or so. This was done before he had high-speed internet service, so it would often take over 12 hours for the video to load to YouTube.
In addition to Pastor Patrick, Pastor Linda, and Trish Catalano, who led most of the videos during the pandemic, many other people in our church community contributed as lectors, worship leaders, and musicians. Since returning to in-person worship, the videos are now able to include all attendees.
Going forward, we will still be able to record selected services and events (and post them online). In general, however, we encourage all to join in the services in person, if at all possible, because of the better sense of engagement attendees experience.
By the numbers
- 62: Highest number of video views for a service (for April 5, 2020, Palm Sunday)
- 168: worship services videos will have been recorded between March 25, 2020 and May 21, 2023
- 263: Pieces of recorded music used in the online worship service posts created between March 2020 and July 2021
In the video below, Matthew shares highlights of his experiences recording the worship service videos.
Closed captioning is available when “CC” appears in white at the bottom of the video panel. Click the CC to see the text.