"Worship during Covid" by Rachel Watson

I sat in front of a laptop with a second monitor plugged into it with a Zoom meeting open and ready to go. Beside the laptop was an iPad displaying a worship leader’s guide. On the other side, my phone was open to a beadle group chat. It was just a normal pandemic Tuesday morning. It was time for worship at Austin Seminary and the beadles were ready.

When I applied for the job of a chapel beadle, this is not exactly what I had had in mind. But the world had other plans. Beadles prepare worship spaces. They make sure that things are ready and hospitable. They make sure that people are ready and able to meet God in worship. The pandemic forced us to think about what worship spaces look like when they are confined to computer screens. How do we keep community? How do we keep the central things of worship, physical reminders of God’s love for us, when we are physically separated? How do we do church?

The thing I appreciated most about pandemic worship at Austin Seminary is that no decision was ever made lightly. We met for hours, walking through every decision, thinking about every implication of our choices, thinking through the theology of worship, figuring out how to make the virtual real, pondering how to respect the traditions when life had thrown us a curve ball. Sitting with my peers and with our fearless leader, Eric Wall, I learned more about what worship means and how worship works, practically and theologically, because of this experience. I wish we had never had to leave our physical churches, but I appreciate the perspective it gave me.

If you had told me five years ago that I would be the one sitting in a staff meeting imagining worship through a camera lens or be the one standing before session defending the need for hybrid worship or actually have a theological reason for choosing Zoom over YouTube, I would have laughed. But here we are. At Shelton Chapel, I learned how to really think about worship, both in the physical and virtual sanctuaries, how to tend relationships and how to witness to the world where it is, no matter what the world throws at us.

Rachel Watson (MDiv’22) was a chapel beadle and president of the student body. Upon graduation in May she was ordained as stated supply associate pastor at University Presbyterian Church, Austin