 Allow me to make a few introductions. My name is Tim Morrison and I am the Minister of Music at Custer Road United Methodist Church and in about a week I will be celebrating my 35th year with this family here at this church and I am truly blessed by it. But I recognize that we are in a chaotic time in terms of COVID. I was mentioning in some emails with the bishop and asking questions about how he felt that singing would be affected in the church and I got a great deal of encouragement with him about this moment right here that he recommended that we get together as people who are interested in trying to do what's best for people for the physical health and their emotional health as well as of course their spiritual health and to keep that all in balance. So you and your various congregations have been given a wonderful and mighty task and that is trying to interpret the things that we are learning from the coral and scientific community and trying to figure out what does that mean for your people and so blessings upon you as you seek for that discernment. The purpose I hope is obvious. The purpose today is to glean from some of this stuff that we've heard from ACDA and other organizations and other people that I'm putting out information about the effects of singing and the potential spread of the coronavirus and we're trying to keep that in balance with what it means to be in worship and now and then in the future. So if your information today we will be dealing with four questions and the four established questions are basically these in a little bit of summary. The first question is what is your understanding of the information that's been shared with us from ACDA and then the second question is going to be what have you been doing since that outbreak in terms of since that moment what have you been doing to share this with your congregations what have you been doing in the quarantined worship situation and then talking about pastoral care and how we are dealing with people emotionally and spiritually and then finally what are we going to be doing when we get back together? I need to introduce you to a few people. First of all Tracy Everson she is on with us she is going to be our administrative assistant today she's going to be making sure that we can hear the ones that we can hear and that we don't hear those of you that we can't really hear at this moment. She's going to administrate us and then in addition I want to introduce you to the panel. They represent all of the four districts within our conference they do represent also the United Methodist Church. Some of them have been working for a long time and as they answer questions I'm going to ask them to give more details about who they are. Dr. Jason Bishop he is at Christ and I Methodist Church Plano. Dr. Brock Johnson he is at Wesley and Greenville. Monica Logan at St. Luke and Dallas. Mike Lightfoot first Richardson. Karen Kraska at Treach over there in Flower Mound area and Kristin Gossett who is at First Wichita Falls. Dana Effler at First Dallas and Taylor Davis at St. Andrew. That's the team of folks who I have asked to impart their wisdom. If you have questions which are not being lifted up in this context please feel free to add that to the chat area. That's your little button right there at the bottom of the screen and you can add any specific questions that you would like to ask as we go along and then good old Tracy she's going to help me keep track of those to make sure we address the ones that are lifted up in that capacity. Okay so first of all let's just begin with the word of prayer. Wonderful and awesome God I pray for your wisdom and discernment upon us as we try to make sense of what we're learning about this great gift in the voice and how you would ask us to be leaders corally and congregational singing for the churches in which we serve. So bless us dear Lord with your discernment and your wisdom as we fleeing from each other's experience and creativity in Jesus name. Amen. All right. Thank you. Now let's begin. I'm going to start with you brother Taylor if you would please unmute yourself. Taylor please talk about how long you have been serving St. Andrew and I would ask you sir if you would kind of go ahead and address and summarize as best you can trying to not assume that everyone has heard what's the information we're receiving from ACDA and others about the effect of the voice singing and Corona. Taylor. So my name is Taylor. I've been at St. Andrew and Plano for I'm in my fifth year right now. Taylor I'm not hearing you bud. I see I don't think that you're muted. Are the rest of you hearing Taylor thumbs up or thumbs down? You got it. Continue. Great. So I'm in my fifth year at St. Andrew and Plano and I've been in North Texas since 2011 when I was at originally at First Methodist in Fort Worth. I'm going to share a link with everybody in the event that you have not seen the ACDA summary. It's not an official summary. So I don't know that ACDA has put one out but it is a nice capture of everything that was said. If you haven't seen the video there are parts of it that are sobering. There are parts of it that are maybe hyper conservative and feel a little maybe not blown out of proportion but could be taken as such. There are certainly parts that could be packaged as sleep aid and sent out into your local pharmacy. It's just a little dry. And so as such I have not I mean I've shared the link to the video with our pastors at St. Andrew but mostly I've just driven them to the link that I shared with you because it just takes everything and distills it. So if you click on that you'll see that there are some major bullet points essentially saying that there's no space solution to eliminate the risk as we know it right now. And to put that in perspective in order for the Westminster choir to do their thing we would need to put them in a football stadium in order to have them spaced appropriately. From what we know right now masks are not a safe method of singing or don't mitigate the risks of singing. Singing being something between speaking loudly and sneezing as far as the release of aerosols. With rapid testing which is not even immediately available. We still don't feel confident. And we are probably a ways away from a vaccine. So essentially the ACDA report just goes on to say that we don't know enough right now to say that singing should be a thing for us. And when I initially sent this out to our pastors some questions were raised about congregational singing. And I was just very quick to point out that it ACDA nor Nats who joined in on this said anything about what kind of singing it's not limited to classical singing it's not limited to traditional music it's all singing as we know it right now. And additionally some questions have been raised I've seen in various other forums about humming and what that possibility is. And I don't think anybody has studied that because when in the history of church music have we ever been about humming. So basically everything that we have known is up in the air. I will say that somewhere out there is a study from Germany that is a little more promising. And yet if you went halfway down the middle and took the more promising study and merged it with the ACDA study and just went 50% of the way. We still don't know enough to say what is safe what isn't and putting our choirs congregations at risk seems to be something that we should take into consideration when deciding what we're going to do when we quote come back. So I hope you'll click on the link it's incredibly informative and distilled in a way that I think most people even those who have not studied the voice tremendously would benefit from Tim does that sum it up for him. Yeah thank you very much Taylor and of course we're not looking for some kind of definitive answer. We're just looking on information. I really appreciate sharing that link that everyone can go and see that for themselves. I'd like to get an additional perspective on the findings. I'm Dr. Brock Johnson. If you would unmute yourself. I haven't looked around to see if you are there as of yet. Brock is also a professor of voice at Texas A&M Commerce. Brock are you there. Yes I am. Okay. Brock I know that you've also involved with some committee work and even in terms of teaching and the voice what would you add to what Taylor had to say in terms of what you've been learning. You pretty much said it all. I mean there's really no safe answer yet to all of this but the things that are being pursued right now is the space in which the singing happens or the number of singers in a space and also the time that the singers are singing. So if you have a large space with very few singers for a sort of amount of time there's a lot less risk than if you have a full or choir in the space for a longer period of time. So if you just go in like sing one song and run out the door and suck in the fresh air I think you'll be fine. Okay. That's a technical word suck in a fresh air. That's awesome Brock. Thank you. I look to hear from both of you even as we continue to some of the answers of some of the other questions that are coming up. I'm very interested what you're doing in both of your congregations. But let's now move on after we've kind of set the table and we kind of have an understanding of what is before us. Let's figure out what some people have been doing up to this point. So since the word came out and since we have been quarantined I know that many of you are doing some very creative things in terms of how to lead in music and worship. And so I would like to go first to Manja Logan. Manja I wish that you would share with us some of the stuff that you have been doing with both your choir and your church. And please include some of the viral stuff that you've been doing. Some of the spacing issues you've been doing with your singing and your worship services. Manja would you please unmute and share with us. Good afternoon. I am Manja and I serve at St. Luke Community United Methodist Church. And on tomorrow I will celebrate my 29th anniversary. So it's like okay. So some of the things we're doing. I usually use four singers. That's all that our stage can accommodate. And we try to at least be six feet apart. At the very beginning we used to hold the mics. And now we put the mics on the stand. So therefore they're singing. We're going to the mic and singing forward. We've done that every Sunday since March 15th. I had had the four singers. And then two Sundays ago we premiered our first virtual choir. With about nine women in the women's ensemble. And then today we premiered our SATB choir with 24 singers. So everybody was excited about it. It's a lot of work. Let me say to do the virtual choir because I have to have an editor who goes in and edits the video and also with the audio. And so she's using the Adobe premiere for editing the video. And also there's an audio component in Adobe. But we also use audacity to just kind of clean up the audio too. And then put it together. The challenging part for us. First we have the band to record the track. Then I sing each part for the choir members. Then I email it out. Ask them to they have to have two devices. A computer and a phone. They can choose which one they're going to record on. But they listen to me sing it. And they sing with me. But they are recording. All I want to hear is their voice. And they're recording what they're singing. And then we send it to my editor. And then she puts this together. We have to tell them to count one, two, three. So we can make sure we can line it up. And give them what we call a song map of telling them how long the intro is. And then how many times you will sing this part and things like that. And so far it has worked well for some people. It has been a little challenging just because a lot of them did not use their camera to actually do videoing. And so but they're doing well with it now. And so every Sunday we meet and just talk about our next song that we're going to be doing. And then we send it out and ask them to return it to us. Now they get a deadline. They return it at their deadline. And then we will share it on Sunday morning. Interestingly enough the congregation asked about whether or not they could sing virtually. And so my next project is actually to send out a hymn. And then just invite the congregation to send an audio. And if they send an audio just send a picture. But actually to video themselves singing the hymn. And then we will have the congregation singing virtually. Monya I want to say thank you so much. And I've heard the choir that you know with the the women's group that you sent to me. And I thought it was just awesome. Monya I'm going to say something. I please hope that you and your sweet ladies are not offended. I was noticing that the potential age of some of your participants in the choir were of a state where I would thought oh my goodness good for you for giving it a shot. So I just wanted to disarm everyone in terms of some of the people that you had that that came along with the technology and were not overwhelmed by it. And I think that's important for even the smallest churches among us on this chat on this video right here. To recognize that there is some technology which is available. Monya we're doing the same thing as you and I'm trying to put my first one out this week. And I know it's a big deal especially the editing part but I really want to disarm how complicated it is and our people's ability to do it. Do you have anything else you want to add to that virtual experience? Not. I mean I would like to say once Sunday we actually had a guest saxophonist and so actually we had him to virtually he actually worshiped with us through a video. And so I'm just anyway I can get the music to the congregation and you know in our worship experience we are doing it. And I know during the week also sent a song to the choir so you know just keeping us engaged. Okay thank you Monya very much. Let's get let's get some more ideas. Mike Lightfoot at 1st Richardson. And Mike I kind of want to put you on the spot and I'd like for you to talk about what it is that you have been doing in terms of chorally. But if you can also kind of lean across the desk and talk about what your contemporary groups are doing as well. I know that there are some folks on this this web who would like to hear that answer. Mike. Thanks Tim. Hello everyone. I'm Mike Lightfoot. I'm Director of Music at 1st United Methodist Church Richardson. Of course we're continuing to provide worship music every week. We began by doing live services at the very beginning of this and then we discovered we could do a much cleaner service if it was all pre-recorded. So now I'm going in on Tuesday afternoons and we're recording the music on Tuesdays and the sermons are recorded on Thursdays and we're able to it's very much a streamlined service. Now they're doing a great job with that and by doing that we're able to sing four weeks of hymns in one session. We work a lot of hymns up and we're able to pre-record those and the same with with anthems. And I've been using soloists and quartets and I even had a sex-tet this last week. That's as large as we've gone with those live recordings. But Mondia, we have also done the virtual. I was never going to do a virtual video. I said I don't ever want to get into that. That just seems like too much. I asked one of my singers if he would sing that one Sunday several weeks ago and he said he's staying at home but he would love to produce a virtual. I thought this is our chance. So I'll let you know Eric Jukowski, Tim. Yes sir. I'll let Eric get his hands into that and he is amazing and this turned out so well. We had 14 singers on that. We now have three virtual videos being done as we speak. Those will be coming out in the next couple weeks and the instrumental virtual videos I think are a bit easier. Mary can lay down the piano send it off and her combo adds their instrumental parts and it's done vocally. A little more time consuming and we too are doing a 24 voice ensemble and I've even got a staff ensemble. We have some of our pastors participating in the music team and some of the modern worship and that's one thing that we've got Tim. This is an opportunity for us to combine children, youth, chancel choir and modern worship all together. We couldn't we couldn't have done things like that because we're generally worshiping at the same time as modern worship. So now Eric is able to we're creating things where we have modern worship and and our traditional worship going together and creating things and that's that's a unique experience. I think we've talked about our online worship. Clayton mentioned that it's probably 10 years ahead of where it should be. This is where we dreamed we would be in 10 years and now we're forced to be there. Not an ideal situation. We're missing all of the the gatherings the large gatherings of the choirs and the choral singing and all that goes with that choir family but making making a good situation out of this I think we're we're really learning a lot through this. Again Eric Chukowski with the modern worship they're producing videos every week and and they they have they've been down this road before so it's not a new game to them. So the learning curve was not as great for them but they're doing a wonderful job with that and their their services again are very streamlined. Okay so um Mike in particular in terms of the things you've been doing I kind of want to ask you but also it opened to any of the panelists out there. Mike you and and Mania and I are blessed with some AV teams that really can provide a lot of stuff for us. Can you use some imagination about some places that are maybe doing Facebook live or they don't have the access to the same kinds of people that have the technological input that we do. Can anyone give us some input in terms of how you are singing without all the forces of being able to do virtual choirs. I'll open that up and if no one jumps in I'll go ahead and pick on a few folks. Anybody want to jump in? Okay Brock you're picked on. So Dr. Brock Johnson in particular I know you know you at Wesley you got all that kind of cool stuff going on there in spite of doing some prerecorded stuff which I know you're doing recently but prior to that you were doing stuff in the moment like how many singers were you using you have like a quartet or four folks that were up front and you were doing your hymns like at once and that was on a Sunday morning how have you been living into this recently. Well recently we've been making recordings of them we've never had any of the choir members as well I've had like one person who plays a piano and sings to do an anthem that's been something new and I've been thinking as we've talked about the easy things to do virtual choirs there's an app called acapella I believe and so you can have one piano accompaniment recorded and you can put that in a nine or twelve square kind of thing you could and then you can send it to each person who wants to do that all they have to do plug their phone in and then sing to what they hear and then it eliminates the whole adobe pro of organizing a virtual choir in that sense. So I don't know if anyone else has experimented with that I see some head shakes. Okay thank you Brock and now then I would like to go back to Taylor. Taylor we have been thinking mostly in terms over discussing mostly in terms of worship but we've been having to do things in terms of Wednesday nights and I know you and I have kind of even had a little bit of a conversation about how are you dealing with your people in terms of zoom or other technology what have you been doing up to this point to continue a music teaching or inspiration? I'll admit that I probably very foolishly kept thinking well I'm not going to dig too deep into what I can do virtually because surely this is going to relent at some point. I sort of found myself in this state of paralysis where I kept waiting for the good news to come and that I'm not sure when that broke it hasn't been that long. So I jotted down all these things a couple weeks ago that we could start doing and we're beginning some. I this whole time have been keeping up with the choir doing joys and concerns for a while. A few days a week I was sending recordings YouTube recordings of just various pieces of really great choral literature stuff that we've maybe done stuff that we were going to do stuff that's just well beyond what we would do in any normal setting with kind of a devotional attached to it and people have really loved that. When on the other side of my realization that this isn't going away anytime soon I began thinking about how we could connect. So one of my one of the things I'm working on right now is just a series of getting to know you emails and so the first one is going to be taking the 14 married couples who sing in the choir together and talking about their story and how it centers perhaps around the fact that they sing together so they're sending me their wedding photos and the song that maybe they dance to or that captures their dating and then we're sending out just that blurb and maybe a link to that song but hopefully and maybe more importantly why they continue the the Wednesday night you know rehearsal the Sunday morning rhythm when it returns. So just some getting to know you stuff that otherwise I would never have thought oh I should point out that we have 14 married couples singing in the choir so I think just being really strategic about using this this moment where nobody has anything better to do than learn about these 14 couples but on the other side of that I'm already formulating what what it means for us to have music theory classes music history classes church music classes where people can whether this is something that we do online or something that we do in person but things that we can do that are not singing related but keep the energy and music alive within our congregation and that as Mike was saying that also maybe chip away at the idea of traditional singing versus contemporary singing and just recognizing that if no singing is happening at all that surely there's a way for us to rally together and learn about various things that could help us in the next time we are able to sing together. So I'm working on things like that in addition to these getting to know you platforms as well. Thank you Taylor I want to tell you that you motivated me brother you were talking about teaching theory and some other things so last week I I use zoom you know and I did share an attachment which is relatively easy to do and I showed videos of cameras going down people's throat so they were singing it grossed everyone out and entertained me all the more to watch their faith but there are so many things that we can do right now in the midst of our separation which are just right at everybody's fingertips that we can do to keep everybody connected and moving forward. Taylor you had a nice segue so I do want to move on to Karen Kraska right now and Karen you were the one who brought up with me you know dealing with everyone where they are emotionally and pastoral care and Taylor talked about how we keep people connected would you please talk about our responsibilities as people within the church for their mental and spiritual health as well and how you see those challenges. Absolutely I'm Karen Kraska I serve at Treach in Flower Mound I've been there for time in my 22nd year and I like Taylor kept thinking okay this is going to end soon this is going to end soon but it looks like it's not going to end real soon and so one of the things that I've seen with congregants and in the choir members is a real sense of despair when I think we were two weeks in and one of my well a lot of choir members said can't we just meet in the parking lot and sing I miss everyone you know those kinds of things and as it's drug on it's gotten worse especially for those that live alone folks that are older that have really really taken shelter at home and really not gone anywhere so we've tried to reach out so much we do a weekly zoom meeting with the choir and I would be lying if I said we had um overwhelming participation but there are those that every single week are there and we do share joys and concerns through email every week typically we would do that on Wednesday night in our choir rehearsals in our bell rehearsals we've had zoom bell meetings each week as well and we do share joys and concerns on those zoom meetings and those that can't join for whatever reason or choose not to email our choir president our handbell leader and those get on the weekly emails with permission to share those so we continue to pray for each other and stay connected virtually during this time Karen I am looking at our chat room and we have several people who have been asking questions about handbells and you are kind enough to bring them up you know it's being in close proximity with each other do you have any kind of thought to address some of the questions that we're singing about whether or not it would be safe for handbell choirs to be together that puts you on the spot Karen but do you have a feeling about that we have not come together just because we've just now gotten back in our building and right now we're just staff in the building unless you're a staff member you're not allowed in the building and so that's been a moot point for us and doing it via zoom would not be feasible very you know if i stood out in the parking lot and gave everybody their bell and sent a track i i don't think i've got some folks in my bell choir that are like i don't even want to do the zoom because i'm just not into the technology so that for us wouldn't work i saw some of the chatting earlier with distancing bells bells are you know you're sharing bells and you're close in proximity i have not tried a virtual bell choir it's there is a way to make it work absolutely with a click track and all of that if your ringers are up to snuff it could work we have not done that we have stayed connected and we we send out devotionals and the same thing that taylor saying videos and inspiration inspirational you know means and jokes and just trying to connect in whatever ways we can sharing you know sharing highs and lows and all those kinds of things have i feel like we've stayed connected but it's not the same thank you karen so now then i'm just a point of privilege i recognize as i look on here that much to my surprise my dad has joined us he is bob morrison if you see his face around there somewhere the reason why i bring this up is because my dad and i have been talking a lot about smaller churches and what smaller churches can do in this time frame and i'm seeing a lot of that activity that's going on over there in the chat to the side and what i've learned about my dad who is retired in in the missouri conference and retired for quite some time but it's been called back to service he has a two little point charge after he has been retired for being a district superintendent for a really long time and so for my dad and my attempt to get with bob that's the man's name and try to help him do facebook live and to get on there and i have been so proud of how he has been jumping into technology but also not afraid to sing him people can sing in their homes and just not being afraid of doing whatever we can do whatever our context is to lead people in worship it's it's the absence from being involved in people's lives that i think is what we need to try and avoid and to step in within our context and do whatever it is we can so i hope that you two are inspired and comforted by knowing that you are perfect for whoever you are to bring a perfect message of god's love and music to whoever it is needs to hear it from you now i'm christin gossett i'm going to come to you right now at this point you are not at a small church out there but you do kind of have at least a unique window you you and brocker now being given some opportunities by the bishop to begin considering to open up in the near future not saying that you are but i would like for you to speak to us anything about what you're doing in terms of what you have been doing and what you see is coming down the road in the outlying districts christin well i we have the email connection we do it on wednesdays and sundays if anyone is missing from performance or from rehearsals we are in constant contact and i send weekly performances out of youtube videos or past audios performances from our choir of our upcoming anthems and i was continuing to do that when it's on a week to week basis or twice weekly where it's relevant to current events for inspiration or relevant to the sermon for the week i have asked we are a unique situation well not unique but we already were in tv ministry for over 20 years but we have antiquated digital recording tv system so we are recording live every sunday morning we are not able to splice in we've tried to but our equipment hopefully will be updated in the next few months but it's not now so we are live i have asked different groups i have had children that their parents have said they're comfortable with their children singing we of course social distance i've had small groups i've tried to have different people within my music ministry and everybody's just amazed they say we saw them up there week to week or in the children's choir or the youth choir we didn't realize they could do that today i had a mom and two daughters sing and we've also had instrumental where keo plays the organ and i played the piano and we've had professional floutist and things like that so i've just tried to be created with anthems that had an easy instrumental part or that i can convert to two part three part we occasionally have done four part and we social distance um what is happening june 7th is that uh we are going to continue online well online we are going to encourage at home worship through august because in july we are going to have no air conditioning in our sanctuary and but we have told them that if they want to come on june 7th if they feel like they have to be a part of the sanctuary then we will have 25 only we will have no hymnals we will have no cushions wooden pews they will have to wear a mask the entire time we won't pass anything and they will have to sanitize when they come in the building and encourage them again to wait till we can have normal excellent worship unless they actually feel absolutely feel like they have to be present in the sanctuary and then they will come so um that's thank you very much you you're again providing a good segue for us because in a minute we're going to get to what i think is most of what people want to hear about and that is how are we going to get back together um the impetus to this point has been to define the situation we find ourselves and to figure out what people are doing in this middle time until we get back together um i have been taking a few notes from others and i'm going to lift up some other creative things for you to think about just to add to the box of creativity in your thinking um one an idea that i caught from someone else what we enjoyed here we had some recordings of the chance of choir in the past but not good video so we decided to take every chance of choir picture and to print it out on a copier and to put their pictures on their chairs in the choir loft and then to just to play the recording and then to have those pictures there and kind of scan across for everyone to see the faces of the people that would have been singing um this morning it was funny because it was a soloist chris that we zoomed in on and they zoomed in on the congas when that part came it was just an interesting way of not having a bank of video from the past but having audio and kind of doing something new with a visual thing to go along with it um i really was inspired um mike by some of the things that you said about how we can combine elements and if some of our services have become all traditional or all contemporary we can use the talent from our children and our youth to all get together in one space i know that next week for us we're trying to look at how to lift up the senior class you know as you mentioned with the graduations that aren't happening and and how can we lift them up and they're going to be providing some singing i think in terms of leading the worship i think for many of us the question is boiling down to aerosol we can do a lot in terms of singing in our churches by prefer hiding small groups up front and keeping them six feet apart from each other but how many of us have the distance and the amount of space to get people you know 30 feet apart from each other in terms of the aerosol and so it's like what is this what is this that we've learned and to what extent are we going to help people be safe when we get back together and how that's going to look so now i want to kind of turn well you know what i'm going to take a pause because maybe someone on the panel has more thoughts about what you're doing now that you would like to share that would be creative to offer for people to have before we step into what's next do i have anyone on the panel that would like to jump in with a creative thought that we haven't considered yet i've got one go hey hi dana you're next on the list great woohoo um hi everybody i'm dana effler i'm at first methodist dallas um and i don't know if uh we we just have a bunch of hams or what at our church but so when all this happened uh tim and i were uh taking a little break down in fredericksburg tim tim has in your husband yeah tim oh sorry not tim morrison sorry that's i'm sure it would have been fun tim but it but we you know we thought a lot about you but it was my husband okay anyway so i took my ukulele along and uh we i had a friend of mine also with us and i was like what are we going to do because we just went on a lockdown and uh i thought oh no and so being in a little bit of a playful mood i decided to get my friend to videotape i was playing ukulele if you can picture it uh and tim was singing and so we created a game of music video tag so it was a it was just the little fun song you know that kermit sings uh what is it uh um oh rainbow connection yeah it was rainbow connection whatever we just sang it and then we tagged the next choir member and then they created their video and so i've been sending out the videos on both remind and our facebook page and it's still going y'all we've still and so everybody is really interacting and they're excited to see the next thing and and a lot of it kind of devolved into um parody and spoof on covid you know changing changing words to songs you know to be relevant but we've had a blast with it and it's something that's a little lighter you know i think we've got a ton of heavy going on right now we've got about all the heavy we can take and so it's it's really been something that i think has lightened the mood a little bit so if you have a bunch of hams in your choir and also the good thing was i found out i had some soloist i didn't know i had i was like oh write that down we're coming back to them so anyway that's the thing thank you very much dana so anybody else have any other things create any other hams out there him yes go mike i want to brag on my uh children's choir director my youth choir director they have really been thinking outside the box this entire time creating videos every week keeping in touch with the kids uh ian our youth choir director challenged the kids to do random acts of kindness around the house and gave awards out to kids that really stepped up and did that so he had him coming in i've cleaned the creek behind the house i'm i'm taking the garbage out it just went over and above so it got the kids involved my children's choir director does a weekly video and uh last week it was about the organ so she interviewed my wife matter of fact the kids from the children's choir asked the questions to mary and mary took him on a journey through the organ chamber and told them all about the organ this not only it's it's there's some humor in it but it's not only beneficial for the kids this is really good a lot of the adults were watching this and got so much out of it so if you've got things behind the scenes things that in your church that you can think of take the kids on a journey through that it really is is very effective thank you mike that's awesome we'll do that buddy i'll take you up on that anyone have anything else to add all right so now then let's transition between um what has been and what might become in terms of getting down the road i know some of us may have worship services that are going to be starting up quickly in terms of in person some of us may be getting a lot of pressure for that and i think all of us are wondering now what is that going to look like and i think really um i'm interested now and um dealing with some of your questions over here in the chat about the use of face mass and about congregational singing and so let's kind of dip into the what might be coming down the road realizing that we're all in different camps and right now i'm going to jump over to uh dr jason bishop where are you jason and if you might just say what are you guys talking about in terms of what might happen in your um neck of the woods when things start opening up jason yeah well uh so hi i'm jason bishop um director of music at christ united in plano um i have it's a position i have been in for just shy of six months um i began in january i had about six weeks with my choir and then they were gone um and so we we have been trying to really continue building our very new relationship with each other on zoom and through other methods um and so it's it's been it's it's been uh awkward but also um it has caused us to be creative i think in making sure that we prioritize as all of you are talking about ways of staying connected with each other um we we have been talking of course like all churches i'm sure about when we will reopen and how we will reopen and what that will look like and i will say for starters that we've not set a date yet for when we plan to return to live worship we're we've had a lot of conversations about it we're we're looking at what some potential dates might be that would make sense um but i will say one thing that was very helpful for us we did a churchwide survey um a couple of weeks ago and asked a number of questions of our church members on this topic if we return uh you know next month what uh what are your concerns what would you expect to see when we return to live worship how comfortable would you personally feel uh with returning to live worship now uh six months from now etc um we were expecting because i think someone just mentioned um pressure uh expecting that we there might be some pressure to to get back to live worship as soon as possible that really didn't bear out um the majority of our people i mean it was not it was maybe 60 percent or so the people who responded to the survey um said that they were happy with the online offerings that we are providing right now with all of the time and energy and effort we're putting into that and that they were happy to continue attending church virtually uh for the time being we did not there were a few people who said yes we'd like to be back as soon as possible but it surprised us that they were in the minority um and so that i think that took a little bit of of weight off our shoulders in a sense not because we we would love to be back in in person worship as soon as possible of course but i think we were assuming that um we that many people may want to do that before we could guarantee that it was safe and um and that didn't bear out in the survey results uh anyway so we're talking now about we're continuing to talk about what that's going to look like we are putting together guidelines um for um uh which have not been released uh to our congregation yet but they've been released to our staff our offices will be reopening tomorrow um senior staff have been in the church um for the last you know i mean we've been in the church often on the whole time but we'll be reopening the offices to all of the staff starting tomorrow staff will be required to wear masks when they're in the offices we have um as we're putting together our guidelines for reopening it's pretty clear to us that we're going to include a requirement for wearing masks um that we're going to do pre-registration because we've measured our sanctuary and in terms of you know figuring out how many people can we fit in here if they are spaced six feet apart we've literally gone through all of the pews and measured with tape measure and and markings and all of that and figured out how we can do that so we now have an idea of how many people would fit if they were um socially distanced so we plan to put together a system for registering attendance so that we know when we've met capacity um we're talking about all that right now but the the million dollar question is we haven't decided when that's actually going to begin um we're just trying to get ready for it uh whenever whenever it does um we have decided to in you know in consistent with the bishop's recommendation of remaining online uh at least for churches in our district in the Metroplex through June we're definitely doing that um and we intend to reevaluate um as we approach the end of June about whether or not we'll begin to phase in small groups um in in-person worship in some way in July so that's where we are cool thank you Jason Dana I did want to come back over to you and talk about what First Dallas is looking at and Dana as I'm reading some of the chat if I could throw some things into you to consider if you can if they're applicable um I'm seeing some things over here about cleaning supplies and about how to protect musicians and about some practical things about coming back together but you can take this anywhere you like go ahead Dana well I mean I thought at first you were going to say would you please go over and clean some churches and I can certainly do that if you'd like if you um I I actually did read a whole article about how to clean wood pews it's uh so if you google it you can find it but uh anyway so Tim you want you want me to talk about uh what are you with masks oh no just anything in terms of coming back what has your church been deciding about when we come back this is where we will kind of live do you have any of that as First Dallas has been exploring well you know what I I don't know if any of y'all have done this I I've done it and I just want to go ahead and own it um when we came back from Fredericksburg I immediately got busy with okay well here's how it's going to look when we come back and so I'm going to go ahead and get all my planning done for lessons and carols and I'm going to blah blah blah blah and and just as soon as I made all those plans I had to tear them up and throw them in the trash can right after the ACDA report came out so I was real excited about that um anything that I could say to you right now about our coming back would be purely speculation um because I don't know um I do know that currently like many of you um we have a robust uh media ministry um like Jason said uh I I've surveyed my choir because I said to them anyone who wants to sing I'm going to make a way for you to sing um and uh I would like to start off with you know when we're in in person worship small groups of singers and um I do know this considering the aerosols and how they travel um any number of singers in our choir loft would put our ministers at risk because I if y'all know how first Dallas is it's the choir loft is right behind the dais and it's raked pretty significantly I mean I would feel okay about having a quartet maybe a sextet but more than that I'm putting the ministers at risk I mean if somebody's sick you know but we don't know until we get testing right so um we're blessed in that we have side balconies that we use from time to time and so I anybody bigger than probably six or eight max would go in in a side balcony um and I would think that would be later as far as uh getting the congregation in um how we're going to do that uh are we going to have singing congregational singing um we haven't discussed it so I just I need to be honest about that we're uh being as robust as we can with our um online presence um and connections uh via zoom and via streaming and all of that but I anything I would say to you at this point would be purely speculation okay sorry no Dana that's great and I know that we all live in different places I mean that literally you know where my dad serves they haven't had any cases of coveted in the county um and so for them you know it kind of feels differently than getting together than those of us who live in the metroplex and that's why the bishop's kind of in articulating differently to us I would like to ask anyone now on the panel who has had discussions with their congregations about what coming back looks like if you would like to kind of share some of that creativity for everyone else to glean from who would like to go I um I'll follow up with what Dana said we have not had any significant um like policy discussion I guess is how I would couch it um but we have talked about what would happen if we got back together perhaps in July uh or as early as July let me say like that um and if and when we do what it means to have a spoken word service that scratches the itch for those people who desire to be present and together um but recognizing that that doesn't include any music and then having on at another time um and more filled out liturgical service so the spoken word thing um would and we would advertise that and say we want you to come we desire for you to be here if you want to be here but treating it basically like a very large Sunday school class and then um still pre-recording these musical pieces that we do at a different time in part because um I think as Jason maybe was saying a minute ago uh the people that want to come back are in a pretty sufficient minority and so how do you how do you um stay good to the people that are in the majority who want to worship online um and I think the only way to achieve that is to um to continue to do the the stuff that we've actually gotten reasonably good at so our our immediate path forward and I would say this will last if I if I had a guess and like Dana's saying it's speculative but um I would guess that through the summer and probably approaching labor day just conservatively we're going to be in this mode of doing a spoken word service for the live folks and an online service for those people who who need that music experience and uh if it lasts past that then fine uh and if it if we can figure out a way before then also good um but I think we're probably talking about two different church services for the time being so Taylor just for clarity but don't go away from me brother um and that is um when you say spoken words so everyone understands you're talking about a service in which there is no congregational singing of any kind that is really just a word that's projected from one person probably not even any corporate praying or saying an affirmation of faith by a congregation yeah I realize now that um spoken word service sounds like a rat battle or something it's not that yes so a chance to be together um not in any kind of like prayers of the people but prayer time maybe affirmations call to worship I can see those things going well a chance for the sermon to be delivered live maybe there's a way to have a q and a session like in a large Sunday school class um I'm not sure the parameters of that I'm what I'm more sure of is the parameters of not involving any music and not putting those people at risk because then of course somebody says well why can't we have a soloist well I guess we could but are we saying to the soloist then you will unmask yourself while literally everybody else in the facility is masked and that doesn't feel like being a good steward uh at all so uh I think we are truly talking about anything that could be spoken in a service and then anything that could be spoken and the music to go along with that spoken word in another service did I answer your questions then yes sir thank you um Taylor you raised a couple issues and I would like to kind of lift up an issue and see if anyone would like to deal with this one directly let's deal with the topic of mask Taylor you alluded that singing with a mask that's been coming up in the chat room is um not easily done is there anyone that would like to speak to that and to whether or not you have musicians that will be masked or not no one wants to tackle that one okay personally Tim would rather stay online and robust online than to come uh ask any singer to be masked I just I don't even know I know uh that's not I don't I don't see that as a very natural thing I don't see that as a very effective thing I see it as an enormous uh inhibitor both just technically and then it's just so awkward looking that I can't see um that that would be very uplifting so no that's not happening in our our spot I would rather remove them put them in the rear balcony if I have to you know right but no masks cool Dana I have a question for you so if you're putting your singers in the rear balcony and side balconies how do you make that accessible for uh TV recording we have cameras in the balcony okay and your sound you you're able to get it all over the when your fingers 10 feet apart and in every place in the building you're able to use sound effectively that way yes okay but how does putting that in the side balconies in the rear balcony solve the aerosol problem because the studies show that it hangs in the air for a considerable amount of time regardless of where those people are in the building yeah I I I know what you're saying um it's also spread is also number of singers over an amount of time in a cons in a confined space so if I have um four to eight singers spaced fairly widely um in a side balcony that's probably 40 feet you know probably closer to 30 feet above any worshiper and it's one song that's maybe a maximum of three minutes I'm I'm comfortable with that now others may not be but I'm I'm fairly comfortable with that um but having said that we haven't done it right with our soft opening we're online so yeah with our soft opening on June 7th our singers everyone in the chancel any singing and all the pastors will be masked except when they are speaking or except when they are singing the congregation any congregation that deems to come will be masked the entire time yeah so I think with all of this speculation I appreciate that we're all stepping into the realm of what if and so no one's holding anybody's feet to the fire no one's going to quote anybody out there and so thank you for your vulnerability about how you're considering the future I know one of the things that we are considering and that is um how much can we clean if we have two services and if we had one service at 8 30 with an hour and a half before an 11 o'clock in between can we satisfactorily clean because we're considering that the people who very much want to be around others with face masks that one service would be a required face mask service and then all of those who um don't feel like that really lives into who and how they want to contribute in the world I see it when I walk in Kroger the number of people who don't wear masks that we would have potentially have a later service that would be um masks are encouraged um it's just a way to kind of figure out how to deal with it I know everybody's trying to figure out that as well uh I know and I'm going to make a guess that most of you when it comes out you're going to remove the things that people would touch um in common for example we've already taken out our hymnals and our bibles and we're not going to be passing the plate anymore we're already putting boxes in the back to take offerings um we're leaving doors open when people come in so that people aren't touching door handles we have people that are going to walk around with um the various sprays and clean and white down services I guess that I'm saying things similar to you all that we're not going to be when we open up starting with children and or youth programs we're not going to be putting kids in those kinds of spaces that some kind of coming back will be um incremental and we'll kind of figure out as we grow um Taylor you were the one who alluded to us that you know that whole thing about taking registrations um I would like to know if anyone else in in the panel has any advice about what you are considering about how it may open up in a soft capacity or in increments do you have any more advice about what your churches are preparing for as we spread the wealth of creativity I will just add as we were talking about um of course pre-registration we also were trying to think of sort of a variety of built-in ways maybe that we could control capacity for example starting with small Sunbase school classes creating um perhaps some type of schedule whereby when we do begin to start doing soft reopening and small numbers we have a Sunday when certain Sunday school classes cannot can come to have Sunday school class and then attend life worship and we create a schedule that way because those are just already kind of built-in small group rosters within the life of the church um so that is that's one thing that we're possibility that we're exploring we have had we had a couple of people also on our survey suggest um was definitely more than a few who suggested that we set up closed uh circuit uh televisions um in Sunday school rooms around the church where they could watch the uh recorded or they could watch live stream worship from the sanctuary which sort of led us to wonder I mean I think that's just perhaps an expression of how much people want to be in community with each other because we're thinking why is that any different from watching it from the comfort of your living room um but uh at the same time um we're not sure uh we're I mean we've been batting that around but there have been people who have expressed a desire for us to at least explore that the one part of it of course is we've been doing pre-recorded worship and installments and so we're wondering if they really want to see what it's like which is we are trying to record something with three takes or four takes and we stop and we redo it again if they really want to be a live studio audience or if they want to see the thing from start to finish um but those are some of the things we've been talking about thank you Jason oh my apologies to both you and Taylor because it was you that brought up you know I'm coming out you know in terms of registration and not Taylor and I'm just old and I forgot um so sorry about that brother um I would like to lift up a few things that I have been learning about how people may consider coming back together um register having people register has been one but another opportunity that I think Custer Road is looking at is how do you invite a small group of people to come and to be in a space and that that doesn't feel so much like and we're excluding others but that's pretty much the gist of it how do we keep out the people that might be most vulnerable and for example on the weekend when we would have had VBS we're considering asking or inviting um when we open up that only the families with children would come and they would come claim a pew and every other pew is six feet across and the children and families would come in and there would be again at no congregational singing but we would play VBS songs the kids would dance and we would have a service that would be geared towards children and hopefully keep out a population that is a little bit more vulnerable realizing of course that children are vulnerable another Sunday we're considering is the youth who would not be going on mission trip have just youth and their families come in a youth family grabs a pew and then invite a specific group saying you guys are missing out on opportunity we want you to come into this space another third proposal is to have people who are um first responders and or military families um come in just to acknowledge you know that they provide something special in terms of our community at this time on police and everything that's going on as well as um fire and hospitals to invite a specific demographic of people as a way of saying thank you but it helps us test the waters and keep limited people in the space the last idea that we're working with is um something that i'm calling a progressive dinner um type thing and as weird as that is but having people get um up and when it's time for worship they get in their cars and they go to some place that has green space and there is a prayer that's led there for there and their families about creation um it could be a park it could be a creek and then the second location is there to drive to um some kind of drop off this is a Sunday morning activity um any parking lot where they can give away clothes or shoes or items anywhere or food the third location is go to a hospital parking lot and there will be a set of prayers um and a song that will be for the people that are serving within that capacity the last place is they will go um this could all be done on their phone and they will go and listen to a message um by the pastor while they sit at sonic or at a donut shop and then the soft opening is and then anybody can come in at that time and can come in and find a spot and a clergy will have a prayer which is them and their family in the sanctuary and that's the way to spread out the timing of the way that people would enter maybe they would never even sit down but it's a soft way to kind of get people in the door and not be exclusive each one kind of having a progressive way of how do we include and then once we do include anyone who wants to come then that's also limiting the time and the spaces that they are in of course we're considering not opening up our whole building for cleaning purposes but um you know I think jason as you remember you know mentioned Sunday school classes and their desire to get together uh we are taking our largest rooms I'm sure like everyone else is and trying to figure out all right now what's six feet of cross and how big is a bible study can we manage in that space and then that's it um and then that would be kind of opening will open up to those kind of groups as we come around now that's way beyond um our goal here today in terms of music in particular but I felt like that maybe if we just touch base with the conversations that are happening among our congregations on how we might open that that might help everyone's creativity all right I have been looking some over here to the side um and looking at you know the chat and so I want to have a minute to kind of look over that and also to come to um our administrator to see if there's something she would like to bring to our attention but I would like to open this up now to anyone on the panel that you would like to offer either your own question your own creativity or your own thoughts about it I just like to open it all up any one of you go ahead and unmute yourself and share I'll jump in um I I think we're probably all thinking in terms of what the next few months hold recognizing that soon enough we would all start the process of like Dana said a lessons in Carol's service those things are not we know that those things are not one off they don't just happen in a vacuum it takes months of preparation and I have I have gone down the road of thinking you know what if we do A and then what if we do B and then just sort of saying to myself I can't I can't allow that thought process so I've replaced that thought process with a few just random ideas that this is from this list that I created previously but here's just a few of them I've thought about having a commissioning competition and putting it out there for riders young riders and putting some serious limitations on what that means so maybe riders under the age of 25 having a prize maybe asking a choir member to help underwrite that or a few choir members to underwrite that but essentially having something for when we are able to get back together and having it be a piece of art that's created specifically for this time and recognizing that for this time doesn't necessarily mean social distancing but present it also means the social justice stuff that's all around us so I've thought about doing that I thought about having a hymn writing contest not even a contest just submissions within the congregation laying out we've had these moments and worship services in the past where we've talked about what the meter of a poem is and how we can set those things to music relatively easily if we line out where we breathe and so opening that up so that everybody is setting the same standard meter or everybody we choose a hymn tune and then everybody writes to that and having those things submitted and either we create this cool way to sing new hymns that are written by our people for this time or we mesh all those things together and we create sort of like a super hymn for the moment so I thought about that and then just flat out commissioning perhaps a piece of music for this time I will say as a writer and on behalf of writers the the unnerving thing is not even that people aren't buying music right now but what the ramifications are for not buying music and what happens when whole editorial staffs are laid off at your favorite publisher so engaging in these opportunities that are maybe a little bit outside the box and giving your people some claim in that I mean even with the idea of having a competition where maybe the prize for a writer under the age of 25 is a thousand dollars or something like that how cool it would be if you have a youth choir to get them engaged and let them be a part of the voting for such a thing giving every choir a chance to engage in some way I think it's super important right now and and preventing us from having to answer questions like well what are we doing for Christmas or what does it mean for X because because I don't know the answer here is a new answer we're going to have a contest so I would just encourage folks to start thinking about some things that we can do rather than lulling ourselves with the things that that we can't and that we have no business answering right now and and that is the absolute truth we just simply don't have any business making claims about what the future holds because we don't we don't know enough thank you taylor karen i know your dog has something to say do you want to say something to karen you're muted or maybe your dog muted sorry i was trying to mute for you wouldn't hear my dog um one thing that we've created is a google drive doc that our worship team and staff we just dump outrageous preposterous creative you know ideas into no matter how wacky and we just keep track of that and like you guys we are watching what other churches are doing other denominations are doing today i went to first baptist church lewisville they had a drive-up worship service their band was on the roof and and uh it was so cool and we were in our cars and tuned to a radio station i mean just really trying to think outside the box now that's something that i don't want to do in august you know it's 100 degrees uh but it was really interesting and so trying to you know know that whatever we do and we are talking about coming back together in june or uh the first week of july we have a whole task force and we did the survey and all of that as well so um we're just what can we do to fill those those spaces that would have been for congregational singing and you know just popcorning all kinds of ideas some crazy and i'm sure we'll try most of them or a lot of them um anything that will help us honor god and worship fully using our our our whole being because we're just worried of standing and just talking in the space will um i don't know not be as um we're worried about the the level of energy and keeping that keeping that going so we have a lot of conversations when we are back what will our the energy of our worship be thank you karen does anyone else on the on the panel have something to suggest so karen over here in the in the chat there has been some discussion of outside services and of course you raised a a bad this one that is unique and wonderful um but i also would like to lift up that i guess what we've learned is that airflow is important in terms of like the air that can come around us and help distribute the aerosol and get it away so so therefore outdoor is a much better option in terms of disbursement from what i'm understanding and what i have been reading so for those of you in which an outdoor service is possible um i think that is something definitely to consider i know that people have been doing everything from drive-up communion to who knows what to kind of um have a community and yet not be together i also would like to now um jump to another topic and um this would be the last one that i think that will lift up today and i would like for some creativity for smaller churches um about what a smaller church might do somewhere um that doesn't have the reinforcements in terms of tech and or even in terms of sizes of choirs um what they may or may not do or what they're going to say to their people let alone um about congregational singing so if i am to make an assumption um i think that it is fair to say that um we have heard from acda and um and that's in terms of concluding with them that um there is something about singing in particular vowels which does produce an aerosol which travels farther than the spoken word which tends to fall within six feet and this singing is a particular issue and a congregation of singing people is something that we need to be careful of and we need to protect our people from that um i don't think this would be a big deal if the people who were sick knew they were sick it is the ones who come in who don't know that they carry the virus and then find out oops two days later and then we have entire congregations that are affected and none of us want to be you know that congregation none of us want to be on the news and none of us want to visit but not visit people in the hospital because of it so we do have responsibility so how can we um inspire and and how can we have a sense of community and not sing together as a group um and i think the text of our hymns are still profound and they still can be spoken like poetry and they can still be lifted inside of you know our hearts and i think no matter how big our church is we do have the ability to play a recording of some hymn that might um apply and can be in our spaces and can allow people's hearts to soar i i don't want us to think or to get the thing that we're now cutting out everything that we are for me as a person who has invested my whole life in terms of congregational song there are still new and creative avenues to participate that and to offer it to our people and we just have to figure out what that is in our context i think i'm also making an assumption that when some kind of vaccine comes around you know that we will have a new day and new opportunities i myself am wondering will things ever look the same as i remember them a year ago what will it be like when we gather i think we're all certainly going to be more involved in technology i think we're going to still be looking for creative ways to get together and to worship i just want to in this time of oh my goodness we can't to have a time together of so what can what can we do we all have limitations we all have budgets to consider um we all are bound by something um but yet we are also freed by something and that is to keep articulating you know the love of jesus christ in some unique and creative way i know that we have pressure from outside forces people on our staffs or people in our churches who should um who feel strongly about the way it should be or this way or that way and i just want to be empathetic with you and your environment and in your church home that um my goodness you are the one you're the one who has been called for this task and this assignment of leading your people in this covid time and continue to inspire on them so i want all of you to um feel empowered and energized and more than anything to feel inspired by the people and the faces you see around you we have had up to about 92 of us or so well there's one heck of a lot of good thinking going around just on the screens right here and you have heard from um eight of the voices in the metroplex and beyond call on them um and check in with dana and see how she's doing this crazy thing you know where she's challenging her people and and and check in you know with people who are doing virtual things like mania and i'm sure i'll speak for you sister mania that to help you out and will help you get started and will help you think of creative ways that you can keep living in the ministry we are here to support and encourage and to be with one another so with that in mind um i would like to end with another prayer as we started but i want to just take a step back and see if anyone has anything um that they would like to lift up at this time i see a lot of good advice i hope you're looking in the chat about university park and everything else but um anyone else have something for the good of us all i just put in the chat my email address and if i could be a helpful creative unbiased uh thinker with you i'd be happy to sit on a zoom call like this um i think one of the things that um probably an outside voice can give is just a sense of clarity and and bouncing random ideas off of them certainly doesn't hurt so um use me if you'd like i'd be happy to help in any way thank you very much i see mania has contributed yours and um i think of course that is why i am here and as well as others to help out in any way that we can please feel free to um contact us and allow us to uh to encourage one another is it my anything else yes i would just like to say thank you tim for gathering us here together and i'd like to thank um just glad to see everyone and just know that we have a family here and a community here so please uh say let's stay in touch uh and i pray god blessings upon each of you and on your ministries thank you very much mania i appreciate that word anything else okay let us close with this word of prayer dear god thank you for this time together it is amazing thing together in this kind of form format dear lord but i know this you have blessed each and every one of us on this you have touched our hearts and there was some point that music lifted us up and it communicated with you in a way that the spoken word never did thank you dear lord for the blessings now dear lord with the challenges that set before us give us wisdom and strength and give us courage dear lord to speak into the places that are difficult and dear lord with the power of your holy spirit guide us and direct us for you have called us to guide and direct a flock of people who look to us to protect them and to inspire them so use us to our fullest potential to be your witness in this time throughout COVID-19 to be a witness of your love and grace to all who will hear we give you thanks for the opportunity to serve you to sing for you and to be blessed by you we give our lives and our service in Jesus name amen my thanks to everyone including uh tracy who's kept us all going god bless let's remain in contact and thank you all very much i do believe that tracy has recorded this if you have anyone that you feel like needs to be hearing bits and pieces of this i appreciate the 90 minutes that you've given take care god bless goodbye everyone