Fortunately, “social distancing” need not mean “spiritual distancing.”

For several years now, our church has been talking wistfully about how nice it would be to put our services online. Well, it’s finally happened, thanks to the quarantine imposed on all of us by the COVID-19 pandemic.

So Pete and I have been faithfully “attending” church every Wednesday evening and Sunday morning in the comfort of my home office. As an added purrk (sorry, couldn’t resist it), our two cats have even been joining us for church.

Congregation members have been invited to “participate” in the service by videotaping ourselves and sending in clips, so I’ve finally followed through on a vow of my own and am learning how to use iMovie.

It’s kind of fun. Here are a couple of video clips Pete and I have created for use in our Sunday services. We made the first one for the Palm Sunday service, and the second one for Easter Sunday.

I must say I’m impressed by the ingenuity of my brothers and sisters in Christ who put together the Easter Sunday virtual service. Some talented folks in our congregation have mastered the technology for online services in amazingly short order. Others have found creative ways to help us all feel included – from the video clips of people announcing “He is risen indeed!” to the photos of congregation members taped to the pews to show that we’re all in the sanctuary in spirit even as we watch from home.

Below, you can watch this beautiful virtual service if you wish. At 33:11 minutes into the service, you can see where the “He is risen!” video clips created by congregation members were incorporated, including ours.

One of our cats seemed to want to get into the act as well. So I made another video clip for readers of this blog featuring Oley Cat:

Happy Easter, everyone!