A Message from Father Rick...
If you’ve been tuning to St Mark’s services from home, you’ve probably noticed that we’ve changed up a few things in our streaming.
Probably the most noticeable thing we have multiple camera angles now… because we have multiple cameras! We have a camera up front on the right. We have a camera right on the center of the balcony. And we have another camera about midway back on the left.
One of the comments I’ve heard over and over again since we reopened our doors after lockdown in June of 2020, is that the people at home missed seeing the people who were in church.
These camera angles are designed to help do just that—as well as, of course, seeing what’s going on up around the Altar area.
One of the other comments I’ve heard a lot of in the past few months, is from people who absolutely don’t want to see us stop broadcasting the services. And, so, I’ll just say it—we’re NEVER going to stop broadcasting.
We know that on any given Sunday morning we have people here, sitting in the pews, and we have people at home watching in. AND we know that while some of those who are watching online are nearby, some of them aren’t.
Our congregation now has regularly attending worshippers who don’t live in New Jersey! We are never, ever, going to pull the plug on them. In fact, we will only continue to fine-tune the at-home experience to try and make it better and better.
The last thing I want to point out is that, for the foreseeable future, we are not going to do away with the online bulletin.
Obviously, this is how anyone sitting at home would be able to follow along. But, even for people who are sitting right here, we’re going to continue to offer the online—mobile-devise-optimized bulletin.
We’re doing this for a few reasons. First, it’s cheaper. In fact, it’s basically free. We spend a lot on printing—or at least we used to. We are still under a lease agreement on our office printer, but eventually we’d like to get out from under that, and get something with less bells-and-whistles. I’d like to get us out of the print-shop business.
Second, it’s SO much friendlier to the environment. We’re not printing a bunch of thick bulletins, only to throw them out an hour or so later when the service is over.
And, the online bulletin is also easier on the eyes, as your mobile device always allows you to pump up the size of the font to whatever is easiest for you.
You can set a bookmark on your phone or tablet. You can use the QR codes that are posted in the back of the church. You can also use the NFC chips that are built right into the signs—you just bump your phone to “NFC” and it comes up.
For those who don’t have a mobile device, or who prefer not to use them during church, we ARE printing a simple bulletin which points you to the page numbers of the Prayer Books and Hymnals in the pew racks.
So, while we’re JUST about “back to normal” here at St Mark’s, there are somethings that we’ve learned over the past 18 months, and those things will help us shape the “new normal.”
Rick+