How to live stream church as a family in quarantine

On "attending" a live stream worship service:

(These are tentative thoughts after only a week of doing this, with a bit of feedback.  Please offer corrections or more thoughts.)

1. Are you worshiping or watching?

This live stream format is kind of like listening to a Youtube video.  It really lowers the office of preaching below what it should be.  Each church member and viewer needs to work mentally to remind himself: your pastor has prepared prayerfully to bring you, personally, this word.  You aren't watching/scrolling a Facebook feed (even if you are!).  No, the Word of God is being served to you.  Skipping to other weblinks, talking over the pastor like it's a movie or Tedtalk, tuning in to multiple services at once and flipping back and forth, gives your family a bad example of how seriously we should take Sunday worship.  Stay committed to your local church, or wherever they are sending you for a short-term solution.

2.  Keep a Sunday morning routine

What special routines do you have on Sunday mornings?  Keep them going!  Dress up a little more than usual for your living room.  Do the usual pre-church get-up and meal routine.  If you have a set of things for little ones to do in the pew, get those out on the dinner table for them. (Dinner table might be more conducive to worship than couches in the living room!).

In our service, we kneel, stand, and raise hands at different parts of the worship service.  Continuing to do that keeps us more in the mode of worship than of watching.

3. Live stream offers some advantages to in-person worship.

 

 a. Parents can teach and correct little ones with less disruption.  The few times I got to sit with my family when my kids were little, the times I could whisper to them during the service what was going on, was precious to me.  But you have to keep that to a duller roar in worship.  Live streaming gives a bit more leeway to parent during the "service."

 b. Less focus on appearances.

There is a phenomenon of "putting-on-appearances" to others at church, that is absent when live streaming.  It's that opportunity for social hypocrisy: to appear more pious than you really are in your body language in the pew, your tone of voice when you talk to others, and so on.  NOW, what you really believe about the importance of worship is exposed.  Because your character is who you are when no one is looking.  It's a good time to focus on what really matters in your own soul, and what kind of example you want to be to your own family.

 c. Convenience

There are the obvious logistical challenges to loading everyone up in the car to get to point B by 10 a.m.  It's easier (though still takes some prep, I would argue!) to go to a link and watch.  Several churches are recording videos and posting them, which takes away the time constraint.  I think it's far better to live stream, so there is a sense that our church family is all doing this at the same time.

4. Gathering for worship is still better

These advantages do NOT out-weigh the benefits of in-person worship!  This is only a temporary fix.  Get back to corporate, physical worship as soon as it's reasonable, and the civil authorities allow.  (They may not forbid us from worshiping out of hostility to Christ, but we should follow their guidance when it is medically based and concerns ANY gathering.)