‘Drive-in’ churches to swap pews for car seats
Sermons may be delivered from outdoor stages as clergy consider innovative ways to return to worship
CHURCHES are poised to introduce the first “drive-in” services during the UK lockdown in an attempt to encourage churchgoers to return to worship.
Enforced social distancing measures could leave congregations confined to their vehicles as leaders conduct hymns and Bible readings from a stage in church car parks. First popularised by American evangelical preachers in the Fifties, the services have been identified as a way to allow worshippers to attend church events before rules around social gathering are relaxed.
In Northern Ireland, ministers are due to discuss allowing “drive through” services as part of a gradual relaxing of restrictions. The proposals, which have yet to get final approval, were published by the Northern Ireland Executive.
Church officials have welcomed the plans. Billy Jones, pastor of the Dunseverick Baptist Church, Co Antrim, told The Daily Telegraph: “Hopefully, from next Sunday, I will be leading the sermon from a lorry which has a platform attached with a sound system. People can tune in to a specific radio frequency from their vehicles too, if they want. It will mean the local community can come together with a desire to encounter God.”
Churches in England have said they will consider adopting similar “drivein” services if they prove successful.
Kevin Felix-hollington, the pastor at Halling Baptist Church, in Kent, said: “We could convert our car park, block the entrance and space chairs out at a two-metre distance so worshippers would be able to follow the rules and listen to a sermon.
“We have even considered the possibility of having open-air meetings, where people could come in clusters and sit down on the grass at the local park to listen to a pastor pray and sing.”
“At the moment we are doing our services on Zoom, which involves Bible
reading and singalongs, with a discussion at the end.”
The Church of England said it was unable to comment, while the Church of Scotland ruled out allowing services in its churches.
Boris Johnson is facing increasing pressure to reopen churches. In a letter in The Times earlier this month, more than 800 clergymen claimed that the excessive ecclesiastical lockdown represented “a failure of the Church’s responsibility to the nation”.
On Friday, Mr Johnson disclosed in a call with the 1922 Committee of backbench Tory MPS that he had spoken with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, about allowing churches to reopen. Under the Government’s lockdown strategy, places of worship could re-open on July 4 at the earliest, but some leaders warned church services might not return to normal before the end of the year.
The Bishop of London, the Rt Rev Sarah Mullally, said there would need to be significant changes to key aspects of Christian worship “for some time” to come. “I don’t envisage, even up to the end of the year, we will be back to our normal services,” she said. “We’ll have some churches doing things differently.”
Other churches have come up with imaginative ways to spread their message to worshippers at home.
St John the Baptist Church, in Leicester, has turned to Minecraft, the popular video game, to teach youngsters about Christianity during lockdown. The church has been digitally recreated on a server so that members of the youth club can play Bible-themed games online every Wednesday.
In its virtual setting, instead of a field and houses surrounding the church as they do in real life, there is a sea with the whale from the story of Jonah to explore, among other highlights.
♦ The Archbishop of Canterbury yesterday spoke about his struggle with anxiety and how society should change in the aftermath of the pandemic. Justin Welby said: “Of course anxiety is a very reasonable thing to suffer. “Loss, grief, anxiety are traumas. And trauma has to be gone through and you can’t do it with just a stiff upper lip.” The Archbishop also said he hoped a Royal Commission into social care would be set up after the coronavirus pandemic.