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Got the sense that since work from home started, people were having a harder time setting boundaries between work and personal life. So, we wanted for an hour to carve out time to just be together as a community, even though we can’t be physically together. - Teresa Cariño, faith formation director at St. Ignatius
March 30, 2020
Nicholas Wolfram Smith
In the initial aftermath of the shelter-in-place orders issued throughout the Bay Area, Father Larry Goode’s busy parish of St. Francis of Assisi felt like a ghost town.
“The whole week we were wandering around,” said Father Goode, pastor of the East Palo Alto parish. “This is a busy place with meetings every single night of the week, and all of a sudden nothing.”
A parishioner who volunteered to set up livestreaming equipment has helped the priests broadcast Mass online. Father Goode said the parishioners’ response had been successful and he “couldn’t believe how well it’s going,” with people tuning in from as far away as Argentina.
“It’s just amazing to see it work, to be able to connect with people,” he said.
That connection is important, as the parish has been cancelling or delaying important communal activities like weddings, baptisms and quinceañeras. Putting the brakes on so many events, Father Goode said, has been “a daunting task,” but people had been understanding.
“I was afraid they would be upset, but people realize the seriousness of what’s going on,” he said.
The ministries that met at St. Francis are also trying to resume some sense of normalcy. The scheduled weekly meetings for Legion of Mary, the parish prayer group and other organizations have been moved online, and a representative from each ministry will host a meeting using the parish’s live streaming equipment.
“We’ve never been through this before and so not knowing exactly what to do, it’s a big job,” Father Goode said.
While most parishes have had to rapidly scale up their live streaming capability, communicating digitally has been another challenge. Without the parish bulletin, the traditional standby of parish communications, pastors have increasingly turned to platforms like Flocknote, an email and texting tool for churches to reach parishioners.
Father William Brown, pastor of St. Hilary in Tiburon, has been using Flocknote for a few years and called the service “a real godsend – no pun intended.”
The parish has about 800 names on its list, with an open rate of about 50%, which is a very high rate in email communications.
Before shelter-in-place, he said, they had used it for communicating with parishioners or members of a parish ministry on short notice. Since the parish cannot put out a bulletin and no one comes to church, Father Brown said, they have been using it more frequently. In the past weeks, Father Brown told parishioners about the suspension of public Masses, closing the church entirely, and livestreaming Mass.
“And given the fact we have no collections, I’ve used it to encourage online giving through our website,” he said.
In the past week, the service proved handy in squashing a scam in which parishioners were being asked to buy iTunes gift cards for Father Brown. “I sent out a note as soon as I heard,” he said.
Another upside for him is cutting postage and printing costs, and the waste associated with bulletins.
“The only downside is it can’t reach people who don’t have email and we can’t include too much or people will get sick of it,” he said.
At St. Ignatius, parish staff have been creative in coming up with ways the parish can carry on its communal life in a virtual space. One, the “Sacred Space” project, started as a way to build some peace into people’s lives.
Teresa Cariño, faith formation director at St. Ignatius, said the parish “got the sense that since work from home started, people were having a harder time setting boundaries between work and personal life. So, we wanted for an hour to carve out time to just be together as a community, even though we can’t be physically together.”
Led by a parish staff member, the meeting starts with people sharing how they are doing and then leads to prayer and faith-sharing. Cariño said it started as a Zoom meeting room but they will retool it to be on Facebook, with people interacting through comments.
The parish also live streams a Sunday Mass at 10 a.m. and then hosts a virtual coffee hour afterward where people can discuss the readings and talk about their faith. Each weekend the parish also releases a children’s liturgy of the word video.
Cariño said becoming a digital parish has turned her home office into a production studio, with parish staff also releasing “visio divina,” a visual version of lectio divina, a recorded Stations of the Cross, and a podcast featuring her, worship coordinator Maggie Warner, and Jesuit Father Travis Russell, associate pastor at St. Ignatius.
The theme of the podcast, “displacement,” which was chosen before shelter-in-place orders were issued, turned out to be “pretty prophetic,” Cariño said, as hosts discuss how they have seen displacement in their lives and in social issues.
The first episode, released last week, saw about 50 downloads and appreciative parishioner feedback, Cariño said.
“It’s very fruitful to have these very spiritual conversations, and for me doing it there’s a real groundedness and real sacredness that happens in the midst of our conversation,” she said.