Online Worship - the Beaker Guide

Of the Streaming of Services there is no end. It's a great thing - if you're furloughed it gives your day structure to attend the Daily Services, or the Offices, or whatever it is you are suddenly doing when previously you were writing sarcastic emails about Simon from Accounts. And online congregations, if added together, are now greater than the population of the World, due to people legging it from one service to another. But what are some of the technical terms and hazards we are encountering in these new online worship days?

1/r⁴ The rate at which the ability to consecrate bread and wine decays with distance. Explaining why you can consecrate bread on the table, but not in Ipswich. Unless you, the bread and the table are in Ipswich, in which case crack on. Or if you're someone who's decided it does work to consecrate remotely. Let the Twitter Heresy Trials continue.

Bonfire of the Vanities - When you've set up your rustic table in the one perfectly trimmed corner of the garden for streaming a service, and your neighbour starts burning tyres.

Buffering - A time for silent reflection.

Canterbration - Trying to work out whether what the Archbishop has said is a command, an instruction, a suggestion or a random musing.

Disavisibility - Realising we should have been doing more of this all along.

Felis Culpa - The cat's knocking things off the communion table while the priest's talking to camera.

Incarteration - When the organist starts playing "Lord of the Dance" and there's nothing you can do to stop them.

Furlongregation - When your lunchtime Mass is suddenly attended by all the people who are normally at work.

Megaphone - A device for holding remote church meetings if the members have never really "done" the Internet.

Mowertification - When your neighbour, having stopped burning tyres, switches to cutting the lawn.

Mute - A fantastic invention that means some Bible study groups may never return to meeting in person.

Novelaunch - When all the books churned out by ministers with time on their hands hit Kindle.

Remotesary - Shrine Prayers at Walsingham.

Remotesolution - If you can't consecrate at a distance does forgiveness of sins work? Do you have to have line of sight?

Saint Mark's Revenge - A naked housemate wandering through shot.

Saying hello to the person sitting next to you - No.

Semaphore - A method of signing a service at a safe distance.

Some said it thundered - when someone forgets they're in a Zoom meeting and gets on with typing up the order of service for Sunday.

Spiritual Communion - No idea, sorry. Ask someone else.

Wave of Peace - What we should probably also have been doing all along.

YouTubenediction - Trying to work out whether it is legitimate to reverence a host that was consecrated and consumed three hours ago, before you found the stream.

ZoomAgape - Encouraging remote-worshipping congregations to have some bread and wine with them when they're watching an online communion. But not, definitely not, suggesting it is anything other than bread and wine when they eat it.

Zoomxhaustion - The tiredness felt by a Methodist who has discovered they can fit in even more meetings, due to the lack of need to travel between them.

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