I Miss Real Life Church (COVID19 Church Talk) - Episode 11

“Hello, and welcome to this episode of the Worship Band Builder podcast, where we are working with you to lay the foundation for skillful worship! I’m Eric Roberts. I’m joined by my co-host, Emily Roberts.”

PROMO: Digital Guitar Pass - Learn at home!   
https://worshiptheking.com/digitalpasses/

What do you miss about church during the COVID lockdown? 

What has your experience been like with digital streaming church?  

(Would you consider doing that all the time now instead of attending church?)

What would society be like without a weekly worship gathering? 

Is it OK to go back to church now?  

How do you think the church will change because of the COVID Crisis?   

Transcript

Eric: 0:03

Hello and welcome to this episode of the worship band builder podcast where we are working with you to lay the foundation of skillful worship. I'm Eric Roberts and this is my lovely co-host and comedian Emily Roberts. I am, I was color Canadian. Now maybe it will come true. She didn't do a comedy routine at church and it was pretty hilarious and that that for the first time. Yeah, so maybe we can get some jokes on future episodes.

Emily: 0:30

We'll have a little standup show.

Eric: 0:31

Yeah. Today we're talking about, Oh, how I miss real life church and it is painful, painful, painful. It's actually very interesting. But first, listen guys, I know you're out there watching Netflix. I know you're out there doing nothing. Sitting around in pajamas all day, walking around your neighborhood, get on worshipbandbuilder.com And worshiptheking.com Click on shop, go to digital passes. And yes, we have the church passes for your whole church, but if you're just sitting at home going,"man, I always wanted to play guitar", you can check them out at worshipbandbuilder.com And just click on the shop and you can get to an individual digital pass for guitar, bass, drums, voice, piano, electric guitar. We've broken them all down for you.

Emily: 1:16

You can use your time constructively and feel good about it. Don't be a loser is really the key. Oh, loser, slackers, slacker may be. I think we can all confess to being slacker ish here recently.

Eric: 1:33

Pretty slacker. Sure. I'm here. It is. I miss real church and really sometimes I have to admit, because we're going to talk about this openly. I get tired of going to church. Something like Sundays come in and I'm like, well yeah, I was just going to be honest. I go to, cause you know me, I'm like, some days I'm like, well it's okay tomorrow Sunday. And I'm thinking to myself, I don't know, I'm just going to stay home tomorrow and mow the grass, like just be a complete heathen. But that easily done. I don't, I don't usually because my wife says like, but I want you to sit next to me. And I'm like, I feel bad about it. So I don't. But there are those moments, at least in the last several years where I've been like, you know what? I'm just gonna not go today cause it just feels, I dunno why I have that feeling like I'm just going to be irresponsible.

Emily: 2:24

Well this is kind of a recent thing. I don't think, you know, in in the years that we have been married, you've always been a very faithful church attender. And, and there've been times when that wasn't even an, there was no question about whether or not you would be at church because it was your job to be at church. And then some days I was like, Oh no, you know, so now as a volunteer it becomes more of a, you can always volunteer at church as, as you want. They will take as much of your time as you will give. They need volunteers, but you have to be able to balance. How much time can I give without burning myself out to the point where I don't want to help anymore at all.

Eric: 3:18

Yeah. So sometimes I just want to stay home, but right now dude, I just want to go to church. I'm serious. Like I'm just like, this is so lame.

Emily: 3:27

Can I get an amen?

Eric: 3:28

We just want to get back to the church. People know like zoom church is cool. We're going to talk about the different things. And uh, first of all I guess we'll just go right into it. What do you miss about church during the[inaudible] lock down? What do you miss?

Emily: 3:42

I just miss seeing people in person.

Eric: 3:45

Yeah. It's weird cause like I said, sometimes I'm like, I've just seen too many people. I'm going to stay home today. And I took it for granted. I think this has really opened my eyes to be like, wow, like a couple, like it's only been six weeks, maybe four weeks. Well it started in March. It's not been very long. So, and I'm already like, Oh man, I want to go back to church. So, um, I think I was taking that for granted. Maybe this is a good thing for me to realize that

Emily: 4:14

I think in general overall the freedoms that we have, um, I have come to appreciate those much more. Uh, having some of them sort of modified, I won't say, I won't say taken away, but, um, you know, I mean life is different right now. And, um, I don't think most of us appreciated all the freedoms that we had and hopefully still have.

Eric: 4:47

Yeah. Because right now it's all of this unknown and secrecy and all of these crazy conversations about two years or 18 months until we can get back to normal, which I call complete Lou Lou Lou, what do I call it? Ludicrous. Lu lunacy. Lunacy. Maybe that, that word fits. That's complete lunacy. So as we get back to, we'll get back to it, but I've, I think I've missed, um, I think I missed worship. Uh, which is weird. Well, it's hard to worship with the TV.

Emily: 5:20

Yeah. If it's hard, stand in your kitchen and, and sing your worship songs. And I don't know, it's

Eric: 5:28

hard. It's different. It's different. Because I started, we started live streaming our worship two weeks ago. Well we've been live streaming but I mean to say is, let me, let me explain it. We started re prerecording our full band and I'm doing the sound. So on Thursdays I get to go to church and see all my friends, all my band friends and then I get to sit there while they're doing worship and mix it. And it's so awesome. Like it's so real. I'm like, Oh, this is like live music. Which I took that for granted. I'm sure too. It just becomes a job and you're like, I got to go mix. I got to go mix or I got to go play. And now I'm like, I was mixing a lot for two weeks now and I like, it's awesome. I'm like, damn, I can do this for hours. I could sit here and hang out and mix and, and uh, you get to see, you know, a small group. I believe we're still under 10, so nobody come after us. It's a small group. It's not like we're breaking any laws or anything, but, uh, it's still like a small band and a little acoustic thing, but we're, we're doing it. So I realized the other day, man, I really must, I miss that live organic cause we've been watching that goofy zoom thing every like, I'm a call it goofy, but it's goofy when you watch zoom all day every day for work. And then you go to church. Zoom is, I'm getting tired of zoom is basically, I'm not tired of my church's zoom. I'm just tired of zoom. Like it's just, I call it goofy, not, not to them, to the church, but just that like everybody's on zoom all the time now and it's like, it's exhausting me. It's weird.

Emily: 6:59

Well, we tend to do our zoom zooming, uh, zoom it out back to back to back on Sunday. We have a little live thing for the kids that our son watches for about 20 minutes. And then we have our service, and then we have two different community groups that are meeting on zoom after that. Um, and so it gets to be a long stint in front of the screen.

Eric: 7:25

We start at nine 40 and we've been on there until after one o'clock on Sunday. And that wears me out. But, but, um, because it's all of the mental stuff, but none of that real life physical, like you're not looking at people and they're not looking, I mean, they're kind of looking at them, but there's all these personal cues and all these things in real life that you don't get through zoom. And then

Emily: 7:46

it's funny when we have our, um, kind of our Bible study, community group on, on zoom, because a lot of people are that they're disconnected, they're listening and you know, and they, and they are adding things here and there, but, but a lot of the time they're, you know, they're just looking down in their labs or their, you know, getting up and going to get a cup of coffee or whatever, and they, you know, they just sort of disappear. And so, yeah, it's not the same. It's not the same as when you're sitting in a group looking at each other and you can, you know, hear each other's pages turning. Right.

Eric: 8:30

It's just exhausting. That's what I've, that's what I've noticed about the church. My experience. That was, what is your experience been like with the streaming thing? I've, I've enjoyed it, but after all week of zoom meetings and then all Sunday of zoom meetings, it's not that the zoom is so bad, it's just that the personal connection is gone.

Emily: 8:50

Well, really, I'm thankful that we have it because without that, right.

Eric: 8:55

Yeah, it would be terrible. Yeah. Yeah. It's good. So it's good. It's just starting to become exhausting. Would you consider doing that all the time now? Because I, here's just a side note, I've heard people, you know, pastors and other people like I hope people come back to church because now that they've created this, this is how it can be done. You know, in the, the, the first time he was funny. New possibility. Yeah. It was funny. The first week people are like, Oh, I'm getting my bacon and eggs, and it was like hilarious and it was kind of fun and it was novel like, Oh, this is funny, not cool, a perfect word. But then after now I'm like, okay, let's just go back to real church. So, but we're going to continue live streaming.

Emily: 9:32

Well, the positive, the positive side of this is that you can sit and eat your breakfast in your jammies if you want to, you can turn off the camera. You don't have to get any place on time. So it takes away that stress. That's always the worst part of Sunday morning to me is that hurry up. We got to get their thing, which I know you can blame that on

Eric: 10:03

women. Yes, let's blame it on women.

Emily: 10:05

Stop it. You know, if it's lack of planning, whatever, it's not like they changed the time of church any given Sunday morning. You are running just as late as I am on any Sunday because you think you can just goof around until everybody else is ready and then, Oh, I'm not, I'm not exactly ready yet. I still want to make my coffee and

Eric: 10:36

yeah, I wait until she's in the car and then I say, wait, I gotta get, I gotta make my coffee. I do do that. Or I've got to get another shot of espresso. Um, but my dad, uh, growing up, I never understood this, but you know, now I do, he would like every time we would go somewhere, he would be the first one ready and he would literally sit in the like in the family room, in a chair for like an hour and he would just be ready sitting there for like an hour. Dad was smart and he was just waiting and he was just waiting for out like an hour at least. I'm sure with my mom and stuff doing her makeup and uh, he wouldn't, I don't think he would be helping much, but he'd be sitting there. It's not like he was getting the car seats ready and everything. I mean, he was just sitting there, but that was my dad. But I can get that, you know, guys, we, we have that burden. We will sit and wait, um, around or you know, we could just do a makeup, we could jump into the makeup thing cause I do make up sometimes.

Emily: 11:34

Uh, no, that, that may be a conversation for another day.

Eric: 11:36

I do make up on video shoot days that are really important. So what would our society be like if we had no weekly worship gathering?

Emily: 11:47

Sad. Just sad. I don't know. Well that's like, I mean there are countries where that is true and I don't, I don't even want to think about that right now.

Eric: 12:00

Yeah. I think, I think the worship gathering is going to be different when we go back. Um, and that's maybe what we'll talk about in a few, few minutes out. How it will be. But it, yeah, if we didn't have a weekly worship gathering, I think it would be, uh, just the live music experience that I was talking about, that would be weird to not have. And that makes, it makes me think how important these worship leaders are and how important, even if you're just kind of trying to make it through, even if your band is struggling, even if you're just a guitar player, no matter how good you are, you know, cause we do these worship band building things trying to help everybody get better. But the, the organicness, the realness, the, the community Nez of just grabbing a guitar and singing, you know, some of the best times are just I got to get guitar. You're out at the campfire and you're singing with your friends. So even if that's all you're doing, at least you're doing it. And I think our society would be a disaster without weekly gatherings. And really we should be praying right now that all of this goes away quickly because many churches are going to struggle to open back up. Churches are going to struggle financially. They are struggling financially. People in general that I've talked to are like, I hope we hope our people come back. Like we hope they come back. We hope they don't just wander off into, you know, depression or just decide, well we didn't, we didn't feel like we missed it too much, so we're not going to go back on Sunday. So, yeah. So that's, that's some of the worries to have, but that's, that is, it is okay to go back to church now when your church opens, when you're ready. We talked about that in the last week. Um, but I want,

Emily: 13:36

what about these churches that aren't going to be able to open up after this?

Eric: 13:42

Well, I think, you know, I don't know because some, some businesses, I read an article last, uh, yesterday it said 20% of small businesses won't reopen. 20% will just be like, we don't have the finances. We've closed our shop because we just ran out of, you know, we just, we were on a tight margin and now we're just, there's no way we can rebound or we, some businesses might've lost a large customer base. Um, so I don't know, some churches might have lost,

Emily: 14:12

you know, I wonder if some of the, if some of the smaller churches that, um, were just barely hanging on before this, um, if they might become house churches, maybe, you know?

Eric: 14:29

Yeah. Well they've definitely, I think they've definitely made adjustments. We're America. I mean, we started with nothing. Well, most of these small churches started with nothing. They can start again. And so that's,

Emily: 14:42

that's true. Maybe they will just get creative and find new places to meet. And that's kind of where I was going with that.

Eric: 14:49

They will, uh, how, so? How we think it will change after covert. I think hopefully the church will explode with people going, wow, that was lonely. I need some friends. Geez, I need to get out of my house. Where should I go? And hopefully people that won't just quit going to church. I think the church, the biggest change that I've seen is the church has stepped up their technology game. Like major. I mean they've shifted, they've shifted, they've been thrown off their game in a major way suddenly and then realized, Oh like we need to stream. So

Emily: 15:19

you know, they talk about that in learning actually in, in it, in education there is this kind of principle of, of allowing students to um, get outside of their comfort zone a little bit, work their way up to that learn, learn until they get comfortable in that space and then get thrown out of that again a little bit. It's it, you know, just kind of a principle of learning that we're seeing applied right here to the church.

Eric: 15:52

They're definitely thrown out of their comfort zone and they had to buy equipment. It was funny because we did that episode on how to stream and then people were texting and emailing us going, but we tried to buy the, you know, the line level thing or we tried to buy the, the amount that you have or the light and everything was out of stock. Like everything. And some of the even more, some of the more expensive gear that some of the bigger churches were rushing to get was all out of stock. So like that week where they realized we've got to go live, everybody realized it. And all of the major retailers like Sweetwater musician's friend guitar center were out of like the mounds, the specialty cables that they probably sell like five a month of. And now they were trying to buy like 50 of them a day.

Emily: 16:38

But thanks to our cell phones that that wouldn't even have to exclude you from continuing to have an online service. Yeah. I mean it wouldn't look as good maybe, but, but you could still meet and that would really be the key.

Eric: 16:54

Yeah. And if, and if you miss that, we did have a really good episode. It went, it did really well. It was how to live stream. I think it was 4.1 we showed you our little setup. I mean this is obviously a different setup that we have with the podcasting, but we showed you a live setup for playing guitar. Really simple. And I know it was churches were sending me their, some of their videos, I didn't show you that, but some people were showing me like, Hey, I got this mic and how do I fix this or whatever. But I think it helped a lot of people, which is really good. And if you missed it and you're going to move forward and you're thinking we gotta do live streaming, check it out. It's episode 4.1

Emily: 17:25

well that's cool cause that's, that's always the hope when we do this isn't it? Is that, is that somebody will be encouraged or helped in some way?

Eric: 17:34

Yeah. Hopefully they don't look at it and get totally confused and shut it off and just say hopefully no that's not too bad. I mean, you know, technology is, I've been working for the last hour or two or this all morning, just trying to get this one thing working on my computer and I'm pretty high level tech guy and I can't get the audio to sync with the thing. And so, I mean I feel for these people who just go with what microphone and what plug and you know, I've, I spent a lot of years buying the stupid wrong plug and you know, trying to record something and it not work and through trial and error. Yeah. And you know for churches that have to do it by Sunday, you know, I'm usually just doing it for my YouTube channel so I can imagine the pressure I was feeling the pressure mixing, like if I mix this wrong and then this is my one chance to Sunday we're doing it live and we didn't have any, wasn't going to be remixed. So a lot of pressure. But everybody just chill out. What church is going to be like after code hopefully. Is this going to grow? Hopefully people are going to get over this and hopefully the quicker we go back to normal, the more likely that we're like to debunk everybody. Just chill out. What are you laughing everybody just chill out. Like when you're doing your live stream, just chill out. Just take it easy. Don't think that it's okay. Just chill. Don't put too much pressure on yourself, right? This doesn't have to be an overwhelming experience. If you keep it simple, it's probably going to feel overwhelming. But if you just chill out, take it week by week. I didn't know where you were going. I lost you. I probably lost them too. It's possible you guys were lost. Well, that's it. Whereabouts on our time limit today. So make sure if you want to train your band, if you want to do anything like that, or if you want to learn an instrument, go to worship band builder.com and you can always ask for a individual booking consultation with me or with Emily even. Hey, I'm around. She's available. Make her do it while I'm editing. All right? So God bless you guys. Let's get back to church. I miss real church. I want to get back to church. Let's go back to church as soon as possible. And uh, you know, those of you who are worried and stuff, stay home on zoom. But I am done with that. I'm ready to go back to real church. We'll see you there.

Speaker 4: 20:13

[inaudible].