Rev. Bob Janis-Dillon continued his work in the new role of ‘Congregational Connections Lead Officer’ by bringing together a small group of Unitarians from across the UK to talk about what online worship has given our movement, and what we can do next. It’s interesting to note that despite the considerable differences between our UK Unitarian congregations we mostly had similar experiences or concerns. All present agreed that lessons learned from the past year included how Zoom can enable people to connect and have better discussions compared to “sitting in a church hall with pews”, that we feel there is more of a sense of a national movement, and that we were pleasantly surprised at how a movement sometimes felt to be stuck in the past was willing to figure out new ways of doing things (Zoom Flower Communions!) when the circumstances called for us to rise to a challenge.

And we all had similar concerns: how do we keep the benefits of online worship, such as people being able to ‘visit’ without having to make a physical journey when we move back into our buildings for online worship? If we’re going to have hybrid worship, with some attendees online and some there in the building, how do we make sure both groups feel part of the occasion? How do we ensure that we continue to meet the spiritual needs of people who, for a variety of reasons, prefer not to be (or cannot be) online? We might not have solved all these problems, but having the discussion and naming the issues helped us feel less alone when trying to solve them. Thanks to Bob Janis-Dillon for organising this!

Louise Reeve