Reopening - Live Oak’s Decision

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Live Oak Friends Meeting would like to weigh in on the conversation about meetings reopening.

The decision to reopen was based on local COVID statistics and moved along with good quaker process--we reopened May 23 with masks and social distancing, no hand shaking or coffee and snacks afterward, at least for now.  What has been much more complicated has been what to do about combining online and in person worship. Adult First Day School, which meets right before Worship in the meeting room, very much wanted a hybrid meeting because attendance at it had more than doubled when we were all online. We have the technical potential and tech hosts with the skills and laptops, so some of us moved ahead with obtaining an adequate camera, microphone, hotspot, large screen TV, connecting cables and a wheeled cart to hold it all.  We did two test meetings with people on line and in meetinghouse to iron out glitches.

Those who spoke out publicly in response to queries about making our worship hybrid were all saying "too distracting, will interfere with my worship, those people didn't come in person anyway and haven't contributed to the life of the meeting, we should center the meetinghouse and those who make the effort to come here. Do what you want with FDS"   So on the 23rd we did FDS hybrid (and even though we had done two pilot meetings before to iron out the glitches, more  showed up) then moved all the equipment out of the room after FDS.

I  connected to Zoom on my phone and discovered 8 people remained online for worship.  What is the proper response to this?  Have two meetings, one online and separate from the one in the meetinghouse?  Or keep the equipment and the online folks in the room?  The next two Sundays we tried keeping the TV and on line folks in the meetinghouse after FDS. (and each time we had fewer glitches)   Discernment continues on what will work best for the LOFM community.  I have always appreciated the experimental quality of how Quakers do things, and it appears reopening is an example of "proceeding as way opens"  rather than figuring out all the details before hand.

from Leada Dietz, Live Oak Friends Meeting (6/17/2021)