Good news from the Okeford Benefice
As churches learn to 'broadcast' prayers and services, attendance is increasing in many cases, and so is regularity.
In the Okeford Benefice, prayer meeting attendance has increased significantly.
The Revd Lydia Cook explains:
"It's not often that I have an attendance figure that is going up! The graph shows the attendance at our Zoom morning prayer which we say Tuesday to Friday each week.
"Since lockdown, the Okeford Benefice has embraced Zoom worship. Whereas pre-covid we used to meet each day in a different village church, with perhaps 2-4 people attending, now we meet on our computers and we are regularly 19-20.
"This has been really good news for us: our prayer footprint has grown and our discipleship has deepened, as people no longer hear just 2 isolated chunks of Scripture each week, but begin to get the feel of the narrative flow and the drama of our Bible.
"We have brought back into regular prayer those who were housebound and unable to get to church, we have increased the number of those engaging with Morning Prayer, and we have been more at ease about offering spoken prayer in our Zoom environment.
"For rural parishioners to be regularly meeting with a relatively large number of Christians has been hugely encouraging. How lovely, when so much narrative has been about church decline, to have a graph going up!"
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