Daniel Wang, in his recent post “Engaging Seekers and Reaching the Unchurched“, talks about the opportunities that have arisen during this lockdown and encourages others to do the same.
As Fr James shared during this week’s webinar, some parishes are rising to the current crisis and have done extraordinary things, shifting their ministries and approaches to evangelisation in ways they never thought possible before the coronavirus hit their shores. Other parishes have struggled to take a step forwards, paralysed by a lack of database, online ministry, skills or infrastructure. The crisis has exposed where we are, as communities no less than individual persons and families.
Daniel Wang, 17th May 2020
Some of the concrete examples that Wang gives includes using Social Media as way to go ‘beyond the parish bulletin’ which is just a one-way form of communication.
He also acknowledges that, while streaming services is not a full replacement of the ‘real thing’, they are definitely a useful tool to help reach out to people who are not already in our pews, as part of the evangelising mission.
Social Media tends to be more personal, and more active rather than the top-down, passive approach to online information.
He concludes the article by posing a big question – What if?”
With many suggestions, he encourages all of us to try imagine a different world post-COVID19, and to ‘put out into the deep’.