Religious communities Zoom in to stay connected during lockdown
"We want to be safe. We want to be wise. We don’t want people to feel lonely during this time."
Rotorua District Presbyterian Churches minister Reverend Simon Cornwall
As a lockdown forces people to stay home in their bubbles, religious communities are finding new ways to work and stay spiritually connected.
Many of the religious communities in Rotorua have turned to Zoom, phone calls and other forms of technology to communicate and continue to practise their religions.
Rotorua District Presbyterian Churches minister Reverend Simon Cornwall said his community was taking the lockdown very seriously.
“It’s important to make sure people are safe and we take care of the community that’s around us,” Cornwall told the Rotorua Daily Post Weekend.
“We want to be safe. We want to be wise. We don’t want people to feel lonely during this time.”
Cornwall said he and Reverend Rob Williams were using technology to communicate with their people.
“We send out links to our online liturgy which is an outline of a service and you click the link and it goes through to a few different resources,” Cornwall said.
“We have some speakers who are recorded and people can listen to that. There’s worship music, items on prayer, different things people can use to pray.”
Cornwall said sending out links to videos this way allowed people to be involved whenever they wanted to and helped essential workers to have access to worship at a convenient time.
Cornwall said the church also had a team phoning vulnerable members of the community.
“We want to make sure all the age groups are catered for with our pastoral care.”
Rotorua Islamic Association executive committee member Zureida Khan is also a pediatric psychiatrist who is seeing clients via Zoom during the lockdown.
Khan said the lockdown did mean some meetings, such as the monthly Muslim women’s breakfast which was meant to be hosted at her home, had been cancelled.
Also, since Friday is the Muslim equivalent of the Sabbath or Sunday there was no gathering at
the Rotorua Mosque between 12pm and 2pm on Friday.
But Khan said the community was working within lockdown restrictions to continue worship
practices and to support each other.
“We can’t gather to pray so we pray at home. I think we have three Whatsapp groups, one for males, one for females, and one for the executive team.
“We also meet via Zoom. We just check in to see if anyone needs anything.”
Rotorua Catholic parish priest Father Thomas Thanniyanickal said he and his fellow priest, Fr Prakash Somu, were supporting parishioners through phone calls and text messages.
“We tell them to keep safe and that we are praying for them.
“We have sent an email asking people to stay home, pray, and stay connected to each other.
“The Bishop in Hamilton has already started online Masses and we’ve been encouraging everyone to join him. We are all united as one family through the Mass.”
Thanniyanickal said he kept everyone in his prayers.
“That is the most important thing we can do now.”
Jinesh Patel is the trustee and secretary of BAPS Swaminarayan Sanstha which supports and runs five Hindu temples in New Zealand, including one in Rotorua and a remote centre in Tauranga.
“In terms of spiritual guidance and moral support, especially when we are not able to open the temple doors, what we have organised is online spiritual discourses and assemblies,” Patel said.
“Every Sunday we would do it in the temple but due to the restrictions, we are sending a link to devotees to an online webinar where they can listen to and watch rituals.
“Apart from that our nominated volunteers will be calling devotees at home to ask about their wellbeing and if there is anything we can do, in a contactless way, to help them out.”