Prayer & Worship During Coronavirus

While public acts of worship are suspended, personal prayer and worship should - indeed must - continue. To that end, the resources below may be helpful to you (thanks to Guildford Diocese for sharing their ideas with us).

Don't do digital? Don't worry, there's still plenty you can do - check out this handy guide from our friends in Guildford Diocese

Churches that are live streaming worship or prayer

We're compiling a list of all churches that are live streaming Sunday worship and other prayer and worship events. So far, we have:

St George's Deal - streaming Sunday services via Twitch, later available on their Youtube channel
Kingsdown & Creekside - streaming Sunday services on their Facebook page and Youtube channel
Stour Downs - Morning Prayer on Monday at 9am & Wednesday - Saturday at 9:15am and Evening Prayer at 6pm every day on their Facebook page. Conference call worship 9:30am on Sundays - find out more here
St. John’s Parish Church, Jersey - live streaming Sunday service, 9.30am, on their Facebook page
St Peter's Boughton Monchelsea - live streaming Sunday service, 5pm, on their Facebook profile
All Saints Canterbury - live streaming Sunday service, 9:30am on their Facebook page, pre-recorded Youtube worship at 11am on Sundays, with dedicated children's service
Canterbury Cathedral - live streaming of Eucharist (12pm) and Evensong (5:30pm) Monday to Friday and Morning Prayer (9:30am), Eucharist (12pm) and Evensong (3:15pm) Saturday and Sunday via their Youtube channel
St Mary Bredin, Canterbury - live streaming Sunday service from 10.30am, available on their Youtube channel

If there's a church that we're missing, please get in touch to let us know.

Help & advice for streaming your services...

Church of England guidance on Spiritual Communion
If you are planning to live stream any of your services, please ensure that you hold the appropriate copyright licence to cover your use of music and copyrighted materials. CCLI has created a special streaming licence for churches - find out more here.
AChurchNearYou.com now lists hundreds of churches offering livestreams of services from across the country. Churches need to add the 'Livestream' tag to their services and events that will be broadcast. Remember to add into the description how people can watch this. You add a link to the platform you're using to stream, such as your Facebook Page or YouTube Channel. Find out more about live streaming services and events.
A beginner’s guide to going live with your service or event for free
Sign up for a free webinar on live streaming and other digital skills here
Youtube live tutorial
Facebook live turorial
Google Hangout - premium version new available free until July
The most affordable live streaming cameras for churches
Recording, streaming and podcasting your services (CCLI)
How to Livestream Your Church Service: A Practical Guide (Gospel Coalition)
How to stream your Church service on Facebook Live (CBN)
Songs in the public domain (CCLI)
Best practices for going Live from a Facebook Page

Sung worship

For those people will miss sung worship you can create worship playlists. The aim here is to equip people with songs to listen to and sing along to, that help them in their worship and could play a useful part in their rhythm of worship.

Prayer

It's our usual practice at Diocesan House for staff to meet at 9:30am every day to pray, even if there's only one or two of us. From 23 March, we'll be posting our prayers online as a video every day at 9:30am so that our parishes and schools can see that they're being prayed for. You'll be able to view them on our Facebook and Twitter accounts, as well as on our Youtube channel. If you would like us to include you or a situation or person close to your heart in these prayers, please email us (please remember to get permission from others before naming them in your request).

Resources & Apps for Prayer

Diocesan Seasonal Prayer Card
Dicoesan Calendar of Prayer
Finding a rhythm of prayer
Collective Worship at home
The Church of England has created some dedicated prayer & liturgy for use during this time - find them here
The Church of England's Going for Growth website has a wide range resources for supporting worship and faith conversations in the home - download them for free here
Illustrated Ministries is supporting local congregations and families by providing free, weekly, faith formation resources for all ages - sign up to receive them for free
Church of England apps – apps with daily readings, prayer, and reflections on the psalms, to name a few.
Archbishop Justin’s video bible studies
The Ignatian Pray-as-you-go App - for a daily 10 min prayer/guided meditation.
YouVersion – a bible app with an abundance of reading plans and verses for the day. You can invite people to join you using a reading plan.
Bible App for Kids
Children’s resources from the LifeKids team
Bible lens – transforms your everyday photos into profound, Biblically-based artistic shareable images.
Prayer for the Day

Small groups & church meetings

Google Hangouts, Zoom and group chats on Facebook can mean that small groups can still meet, talk together and see each other using their smartphone or computer. Community is so important, especially where larger gatherings are not possible, so do encourage your groups to make use of technology to continue connecting with their community. This can be especially useful if one or more of the group has self-isolated, or if your group would be happier connecting digitally. Discussions, prayer, encouragement and fun can still happen during this time and are all the more important. Some useful tools: