3/16/2020 Church Guide to the Coronavirus Outbreak

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Preparing Your Church for theCoronavirus EffectMost of us now know that the Coronoavirusis going to affect our churches. Thisimpact will come probably not so muchfrom the virus itself as from the viral fearthat it is currently carrying. Perception is not

reality but it is powerful and is often what drives people’s decisions. The stockmarket this week is a perfect example. People are responding with fear,hesitation and concern and the closer it comes to our churches andcommunities the greater the reaction we’re going to see to it.

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3/16/2020 Church Guide to the Coronavirus Outbreak

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So, as ministries, how do we prepare?

First, don’t get swept away with fear. Seasons like this come and go andeach one gives us renewed opportunities to share the life and love of Christ.

Second, make sure you have ways to communicate to your church outsideof Sunday morning announcements. At some point you will need tocommunicate in response to what is happening in your local area.

Third, communicate to your church family that your church leaders are going toprayerfully make decisions that are in the best interests of the church andcommunity.

Fourth, encourage people to begin to pray that God uses this “crisis” to bringpeople to salvation and renewal.

Fifth, encourage your people to continue giving faithfully since the virus willprobably affect your church budget but will also give opportunities to minister topeople in your area through prayer, by delivering food, providing hope, etc.

The Most Likely Effect On ChurchesNow is the time to make a plan and to take steps toensure that the virus won’t hinder the effectivenessof your ministry.

The most likely effects on churches will be thefollowing:

(1) Decreased Attendance - As the virus spreads near our communities therewill be a greater hesitance for people to go to places where large groups gather.Several governors have already asked churches to cancel services, at least forthis week. And regardless of how you might respond to a request like this, atsome point the fear of the virus is going to hinder your attendance.

(2) Decreased Giving - The virus has affected the world economy and willcontinue to affect the economy in the U.S. Without a doubt, this will also affectgiving. And if your church doesn’t have online or automated giving, decreasedattendance or canceled services will cause an even greater impact on yourbudget.

(3) Effect on Spring & Summer Activities - Perception swings like a gate butscared people will be less likely to come to church on Easter. Scared parents

3/16/2020 Church Guide to the Coronavirus Outbreak

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will also be less likely to send their children and youth to summer camps andother large group activities. On the other hand, if travel is discouraged thissummer and vacation areas are still shut down, there may be moreopportunities to engage people in your community. Prayerfully consider howto best reach and teach people and don’t be afraid to “think outside thebox.”

Getting Ready(1) Take Ministry Beyond the Walls of theChurch - Make sure that your ministry is notdependent on people attending your building onSunday morning. This has been a problem in ourchurches for a long time. Now is the time todevelop ways to minister and teach beyondstanding in the pulpit once or twice a week. Ihave heard that universities are makingcontingency plans to move all classes to onlinevenues. For your church, determine how you canprovide online messages and if you don’t havethis ability, you can—it’s not even that hard.

Continue reading below and we’ll give you some suggestions. I encouragepastors to begin making quick videos throughout the week as well. Don’t limityour online teaching to once a week. Put out short, 5 to 10 minute devotionswhere you teach Bible truth and then challenge your church family to readcertain passages from Scripture. Also, avoid making videos that are driven byopinion, especially about the virus—Make videos that share truth. MakeScripture your focus, not current events.

(2) Implement Online Giving - If your church doesn’t already have onlinegiving, statistically you have been losing money for at least the last 5 years. Thebenefit of online giving is that people can automate their donations whichmeans you can avoid the “summer slump”. When you have a bad weather daywhere services are affected or cancelled, the giving the following week neverdoubles. Online giving allows your church family a way to be obedienteven when they can’t attend. Keep reading below and we’ll give you somesuggestions.

(3) Provide Sanitary Options - I received an email from my bank letting meknow that I don’t need to come into the bank for anything—everything can bedone online or through their mobile app. But if I need to come by my localbranch, they are disinfecting their bathroom counters multiple times each day

3/16/2020 Church Guide to the Coronavirus Outbreak

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and they are providing hand sanitizing stations. Let your church and communityknow how your church disinfects your preschool and children’s rooms. Disinfectyour church bathrooms several times on church days. Offer hand sanitizers andeven Clorox wipes in the bathrooms.

(4) Media is majoring on local Coronavirus news. Make the most of thisopportunity. Promote in your local newspaper, on social media and on your localnews how your church is responding—How your church is providing options forpeople to be ministered to at home, providing sanitary safety precautions forthose who attend and even a sermon series such as having hope in times offear, etc. There are many ways to use this opportunity to engage yourcommunity with the Gospel.

(5) Be ready to tell the older members of your church to stay home if thereare real risks in your community. Tell them that you will bring church to them.

(6) Create a plan for ways that you will minister to people in yourcommunity who get the virus. How do you plan to minister to the healthcareproviders and first responders in your area? Are there children who depend onschool for meals and are there ways you can minister to these families in needif their schools are closed?

(7) Lead your church in praying for our missionaries and for missions.Our family was overseas on a mission trip when the virus began to spead.Many trips have been cancelled and our missionaries have already beenaffected in a number of ways.

How to Use Video Online for FreeThere are two great ways to quickly set-up anduse online video: Facebook or YouTube.

The benefit of using Facebook is that it not onlygives you a platform for video but also forconnecting with people in your community whoare already connected to Facebook. Promoteevents, Scripture reading, stories and more. Ifyou can’t meet at church—Meet online.

The following link will help you set-up a Facebook personal account. You don’tneed to actually use this account much but you need a personal account inorder to set-up a page. The difference between these is that a personal account

3/16/2020 Church Guide to the Coronavirus Outbreak

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accepts friends, etc. An organization page doesn’t need to be managed in thisway but has open information for all. It is easy to follow and easy to share.

The following link will show you how to set-up an effective Church Page onFacebook. Outreach.com/blog/church-facebook-101.

Implement Online GivingIf your church doesn’t already have onlinegiving, statistically you have already beenlosing money. The benefit of online giving isthat people can automate their donations whichmeans you can avoid the “summer slump” andother low giving seasons.

Online giving gives your church family a way to be obedient even when theycan’t attend.

If you implement online giving, be sure to educate your church with thefollowing:

(1) Every Sunday during the offering announce that they can also give onlineand provide the link.

(2) Put the giving link in your weekly bulletin.

(3) Explain that online giving allows people to automate their giving—toautomate their obedience. This way they can continue to be obedient even ifthey go on vacation, have a month of sickness in the family or even whenthere’s a bad weather day.

(4) Explain that online giving helps the church because in our culture todaymost people don’t carry cash and checks anymore. The church is notencouraging credit card usage or debt but for people to use their bank accountsand debit cards to set-up online giving which can be set-up either as a one-timeor an on-going gift.

(5) There are many good and secure payment platforms. We recommendVanco Giving if you are a larger church and want more features. They charge amonthly fee and a transaction charge but they have many available options andgood customer service. You can learn more at Vancopayments.com.

3/16/2020 Church Guide to the Coronavirus Outbreak

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For smaller churches, we recommend setting up a free PayPal account.Although there is no monthly or annual fee, there is still a transaction fee whensomeone gives but most churches quickly learn that the increase in giving(when you have educated your church family properly) easily off-sets the fees.Our ministry uses PayPal for online giving although we do say that if someoneis going to make a large one-time donation, that we prefer to receive it bycheck.

Begin setting up your free PayPal account at www.paypal.com.

Do You Need Website?The advantage of a church website is that iscreates a one-stop place where people canfind everything they need: Information aboutyour church, announcements, links to socialmedia, a giving links, a place where they caneasily connect to online sermons, pastor’s blogs,and so much more.

Our ministry has been working with technology tohelp ministries for over 10 years and haveworked with local churches, associations, stateconventions, NAMB and the IMB. In this time of

fast change, if your church doesn’t have a website and you suddenly seethe value in having one, we can have a website ready for your church inonly a few days. We set-up everything for you. Then we will teach you how tomanage the site or we can manage it for you.

We provide a quality, affordable websites for churches of all sizes.

For more information, please contact Kolby King at (405) 326-8197 or simplyrespond to this email. Our desire is provide you with the resources you need.

Watch on YouTubeClick HERE to discover more than 100videos using creative tools to share God'sWord.

3/16/2020 Church Guide to the Coronavirus Outbreak

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Sanitary Suggestions forYour Church(1) Announce that your church will bedisinfecting bathroom counters, doorknobs, pew tops, etc., multiple times onchurch days.

(2) Provide Clorox wipes in the bathroomsfor people who might want to wipe downparts on their own.

(3) Provide hand sanitizers in multiple locations.

(4) Disinfect all the preschool and children’s toys after every church service.This actually should already be a habit of your church. Sickness spreads easilyamong young children and there is a great comfort when a church showsrespect for families by safeguarding the health of their children.

(5) Encourage people to stay home if they are feeling sick or if they have healthissues concerns. They can watch services online, give from home, etc.

(6) Be willing to respect the advice of your state and local government as theyissue news and community response suggestions. Pray as church leadersconcerning how your church should respond. We need to act prayerfully andwisely, not in a rush or from an attitude of fear.

(7) If your local government leaders request that you cancel service, you mightconsider other optional plans: Instead of cancelling all services, challengepeople to have family Sunday school at home. Provide your families with aguide and then instead of one church service, you might consider havingseveral smaller services throughout the week to lessen the risks. Keep readingbelow for resources you can use for online Sunday School.

(8) If someone attends your church and is later diagnosed with the virus,communicate this to your church family as soon as possible.

Online Sunday SchoolSuggestionsWhen most people attend to Sunday School,the children go one direction, the youth

3/16/2020 Church Guide to the Coronavirus Outbreak

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another and mom and dad go to their class.Most churches don’t provide a familyoption for Sunday School but this is thekey to a successful online Sunday School.You need to provide an option for everyone inthe family and to use this opportunity as a wayto challenge mom and dad to take spiritualleadership in the family.

In the next few days I’m sure that we’ll seemany of the major curriculum providers

offering online Sunday School options but I'm guessing that most of these willfocus on age groups, not the family as a whole--In other words, they're stillthinking inside the church and not inside the living room.

Here are a few options that we can provide:

(1) Discover 85 FAMILY DEVOTIONS online for FREE atwww.ThreeThirtyMinistries.org/family-devotions - These were written with theidea of engaging everyone in the family at the same time—from the youngestchild to the oldest adult. These are short, fun and interactive for the purposeof showing parents that they can discuss spiritual truth at home.

We are in the process of turning these devotions into interactive video sessionswhere we facilitate conversations but the true meat of what is happeningdoesn’t happen on the video but in the living room. Hopefully we’ll be ready torelease some of these in the next week or so and we’ll let you know as soon asthey are ready.

(2) Online videos - Our ministry has over a hundred videos online that willengage people of all ages. Visit the following for free video resources:Youtube.com/user/kolbyking330/videos. We will be posting family devotionvideos here as soon as they are ready.

(3) Five 12-minute Gospel presentation videos - These video share God’splan of salvation and were originally prepared for use at VBS but aims atengaging parents with the Gospel as well. - See them atThreeThirtyMinistries.org/gospel-presentation-videos/

(4) Full Children’s Camp Videos for your families to watch and discuss atThreeThirtyMinistries.org/childrens-camp-videos

(5) Interactive All-Church Worship Services for your families to watch anddiscuss at ThreeThirtyMinistries.org/worship-service-videos/

3/16/2020 Church Guide to the Coronavirus Outbreak

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Sample Article for Your LocalNewspaperSee the following for a Press Release andfeel free to make changes as needed tobetter fit your situation:

[PRESS RELEASE]

CHURCH TAKES SERIOUSLY THE CORONAVIRUS THREAT

Amid the spread of the Coronavirus, [church name] is taking safety precautionsto help safeguard their members and the people of our community. The churchhas implemented sanitary areas throughout the church, will be disinfecting doorknobs and bathrooms multiple times on church days and will be activelydisinfecting children’s and preschool toys and classrooms.

In addition to on-site safety the church is also provide ways for members andothers in our community to join them for church from home.

“We understand that the virus has a greater danger for older people or peoplewith underlying health concerns. We want these people and any others in ourcommunity to feel free to join us in worship from home,” a church leader said.

The church is also willing to have someone make a home visit to talk or praywith anyone in our community who is struggling, in fear or in need.

The church is also making preparation for how to minister to our community inthe event that people here are infected or quarantined.

You can watch worship services online at [link] and visit their website at[website].

3/16/2020 Church Guide to the Coronavirus Outbreak

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[church name] is located at [addresss]. For more information, you can contactPastor [name] at [phone].

More Resources▪ For Pastors - Click HERE.▪ For Evangelism - Click HERE.▪ For Youth Ministry - Click HERE.▪ For Children's Ministry - Click HERE.▪ For Families - Click HERE.▪ For Church Technology - Click HERE.▪ For Visual Teaching and Gospel Illusions - Click HERE.

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