+ Social Dynamics Online

While meeting online means more people can join you, it also makes social dynamics considerably more challenging. It’s like trying to use a knife and fork with oven mitts on – doable, but not graceful.

Body Language

Since you can’t read body language, understanding each other and ‘reading the room’ becomes more difficult. Often you can’t even see most of their bodies – maybe you can only see the top third of their head, or they’re in bed for some reason. The normal non-verbal cues we rely on, like people leaning forward, taking a breath or nodding, are not reliable anymore.

• Tip: make sure that they can read your body language. Don’t forget to smile!! Make sure they can see your hands & shoulders, since we use them a lot for non-verbal communication.
• Tip: Lean forward ‘into’ the group rather than leaning back. Even if your sofa is tempting at the end of the day, resist the urge to lean all the way back into it!

Eye Contact

It’s almost impossible to make eye contact. That’s a killer, since it’s one of the most important social tools we have. Webcams are usually not close enough to the image on the screen so that you can ‘look’ at someone and they know you’re ‘looking’ at them. You also can’t look someone in the eye and see what their face is doing at the same time.

• Tip: once you’re happy with your own webcam view, hide it on your screen so you’re not distracted by looking at yourself (it’s oddly tempting!!).
• Tip: remember to look into the webcam, even though it means you can’t see others as well.

Keen Talkers

If you have keen talkers, hinting that they need to speak less or finish their comment is almost impossible. Hints are an extremely endangered species online – the environment is too harsh for them! So you have little choice except to cut across them.

• Tip: give people an idea of how much time you want to spend on a section or a question. If it’s prayer time, and you want it to last about 30 mins, say so at the beginning and then you can ask people to hurry up and/or summarize if need be.
• Tip: use that tried & tested radio host line with a big smile, ‘I’m sorry but I’m going to interrupt you there…’ and confidently point the conversation in another direction or ask someone else for their input.

Quiet Folks

If you have quiet folks, it’s harder to encourage them to speak since being heard online requires more confidence. This is particularly true for group catch-up times – in person, a room of 10 people can have three conversations happening at once, but that doesn’t work online. Instead people have to have the confidence and energy to command the attention of the whole group.

• Tip: try asking everyone to contribute, i.e. to answer the same question or all say how their week has been, so that quiet folks don’t have to have to force their own comment but given equal opportunity.
• Tip: remember that online there’s perpetually someone who is struggling to hear or be heard, or both. Say something quickly if you can’t hear someone rather than guess at what they’ve said!
• Tip: stay patient and communicate patience – it is supremely frustrating if you’re trying to be heard and can’t make the technology work.

'Zoom-fatigue'

Because our normal methods of listening and understanding each other aren’t available as usual, communicating online is more tiring. You might already be experiencing ‘Zoom-fatigue.’ So are we all – it’s not a sign that you’re behind the technology curve or that you’re doing something wrong. It’s like communicating in a new language, and that’s hard work.

• Tip: plan a shorter time together! Many groups are cutting down to an hour, or an hour and a half.
• Tip: split your normal activities into different sessions. Some groups are doing a social time on a Sunday and beyond the brief welcomes and hellos keeping to worship, study and prayer mid-week. More details under the Social section below.

Communicating on the phone

Studies show that we’re actually better at communicating on the phone than we are online. On the phone we’re not distracted by trying to read a face, and we can hear more non-verbal cues than you might think – as anyone who’s done a stint in a call centre will tell you, even on the phone people can tell if you’re smiling or not.

• Tip: If you haven’t already, try to call everyone in the group one to one for 15 mins to check in with them. They may well be more honest on the phone with you, and you might find it easier to get an idea how they’re doing.
• Tip: For those who aren't on Zoom, but are happy on the phone, they can call in to a Zoom meeting. To find the phone number for a Zoom meeting, follow the 'how to' guide at the bottom of this report.

+ Worship

This is one of the tricker areas! Below are the methods different groups are using. There are no perfect solutions here – just various ‘more or less good enough’ solutions.

1. Led worship with guitar or piano

One member of the group leads a song or two on guitar or piano and sings loudly and as clearly as possible. The rest of the group mutes themselves and sing along hearing only the worship leader.

The sound quality isn’t good, but live worship is special in its own right. Some groups have found worship like this really meaningful.

If you’re using Zoom, there are some audio settings you can change to improve the sound quality, particularly for whatever instrument is used. You can find a brief 'how to' guide at the bottom of this report.

2. Youtube music videos

Everyone listens to a youtube video of a worship song. The ease of this solution depends on what platform you’re using.

• Zoom: When you select 'share screen' you can tick the additional box called 'share computer sound'. Selecting this means the audio won’t play out through your computer speaker and back into Zoom, but directly through to the Zoom group.
• Skype: Skype doesn’t have a share audio function, so some are sending a link in the group’s chat function and people watch it at the same time on their respective comupters (while everyone’s muted).
• Email: including a link that people can click on and listen and/or sing along to on their own.

3. Audio only worship song

Very similar solution to the one above, but minus the video (and the usual youtube adverts!).

• Zoom: Same idea as above. Alteratively, when you 'share screen' at the top it will give you the option for 'advanced' options. One of these is 'music or computer sound only'.
• Skype: Again, Skype doesn’t have a share audio function, so the only solution I’ve heard came from the tech-whiz Stephen Rymill, who added his PC as an additional caller on the meeting and used a line-in jack to play music straight from his phone into his PC.

4. Psalm or similar

This is a music-free solution. Some groups are starting by reading a psalm together and reflecting on it, or praying something like the Daily Examen (useful explanation of it here and a guide through the prayer is here).

+ Study

After the first few weeks of adjustment and catching up with people, most groups are now settling back into the routine of Bible study, either continuing what they were already studying or starting something new.

Again, a few observations and solutions from across the groups:

Less is more when it comes to online Bible studies. Drawing together what we’ve already looked at with social dynamics, most groups are taking less time on the study section than normal – more like 30-40mins. Zoom advises cutting content by 40% when you transition online.

• Tip: You don’t need as much content as normal! You might need to slow down through what you’re studying, or simply cut some content.

People still need time to think, that hasn’t changed now that we’re online. But because communicating online is harder, people are more hesitant to offer up half-formed ideas – so it can be harder to get conversation flowing.

• Tip: Some groups are sending out the passage and/or questions beforehand, so that people can read and think before they come to the discussion. This works if people have time to do it (both send questions before and read them before) – but even if one or two people did, they’re more likely to answer quickly and you’ve got the ball rolling.

Balance is important – too much coronavirus isn’t good, but ignoring it isn’t good either. Most groups are now trying to step away from coronavirus as a central topic to focus on the study, and approach coronavirus as one way of many to apply what’s being talked about. It’s a similar dynamic that the student ministry has every year at exam term – you don’t want to talk about how awful exams are and how stressful it all is every week, but you do want to give space for people to process it as they need to.

• Tip: Unless your group specifically requests it, don’t make suffering or coronavirus material the main subject of your study. Instead, stick with what you were doing already or a new study as you would have chosen in normal circumstance and add a question along the lines of ‘is there any way this is helpful to us in this season of uncertainty?’

Lots of groups are looking for new studies in the next few weeks.

• Tip: On our main leaders’ page are some recommended studies. They were not written for use online so might need some adaption, but they have the benefit of being online material so can be sent to other members if you have multiple people leading studies (books are harder to pass around right now!).
• Tip: In the next few weeks Yanah will be releasing some new studies adapted for online use – keep your eyes open for them!

+ Prayer

Most groups are spending much more time on prayer than normal, 30-45mins. It’s the time when people tend to open up more and you have the chance to hear what’s on people’s minds. Below are some different methods groups have adopted.

1. Prayer partners or triplets

Divide the group into pairs or triplets and leave it to them to pray together that evening or over whatsapp and phone calls during the week. Keep these same prayer triplets consistently, so people get to know each other better. This works especially well for larger groups, where there are too many people to all share & pray as a whole group each week.

2.Break out rooms (with Zoom)

This is a feature on Zoom which takes a few minutes to set up but it has been working well for some groups as a way to pray in smaller groups. You need to enable your Zoom account to facilitate break out rooms, but you can do this even if you don’t have the paid subscription to Zoom. I’ve written a quick guide which you can find at the bottom of this report.

3. Prayer Chains

Each group member shares prayer requests one at a time. After someone shares, one other group member prays for them, before then sharing their prayer requests. Repeat until the whole group is prayed for (whoever started by sharing prays for the last to share). This can take a while but means everyone shares and prays.

4. Praise & Prayer Points

Each person shares one thing they’re thankful for and one thing they’d like prayer for. This is a great way to keep gratitude at the heart of things. If you get into a pattern of this, people start thinking about it before you ask.

5. Prayer walks ‘together’

Designate a time when everyone in the group can use their one walk a day to walk & pray for their neighbourhoods and for one another ‘together’ – i.e. at the same time, not in the same place!

+ Social

Finding time to relax and chat together is harder to facilitate online – eating together as many groups do normally is a natural way to do this, but it doesn’t have same effect virtually. Here are some ideas that groups have tried!

1. Sunday coffee time

Meet virtually for coffee and biscuits after the Sunday online service to just catch up and chat. This can free up your normal weekly meeting to be a bit shorter. It also means you touch base with people twice a week – and these days a week feels like a month.

2. Whatsapp

Most groups are using Whatsapp for all its worth – it’s the idea way to keep in touch with people during the week, with prayer requests, news, and random funny videos. In particular funny videos gives the group space to laugh together and keeps the conversation light-hearted.

3. A beverage at 5.30pm

This is a version of virtual pub trips – arrange for anyone who wants to have a beer or a cuppa at the end of the working day to meet online.

4. Eating together

This is still nice to do – some groups did a Maundy Thursday dinner, for example. This is especially good if you have people in your group who live alone and have less opportunities to eat with others.

5. Quizzes

You will probably have come across these already, they’re easy to adapt for online use. You can assign pairs to write a round so everyone can contribute! Each round is read while everyone’s on mute.