Wednesday 10th February 2021: Shall we Zoom?

 

One internet platform that has certainly shone during lockdown has been Zoom. 

Zoom is a noun, yet we use it as a verb.  We zoom on Zoom!

The other day I was totting up the various groups at AFC who are zooming.  The list below is probably not comprehensive but it gives a sense of how much, as a church community, we are now using Zoom:

Team Meeting
Elders’ Meeting
Church Meeting
Junior Church
2 Life and Faith Groups
Book Discussion Group
EcoChurch Sub Committee
Guides
Men’s Luncheon Club (planned)
After Service Fellowship
Tea at Three (planned)
Lent Night Prayer (planned)
Recordings for Audio Service (readings and prayers)
COTHA AGM
COTHA Ministers’ Meetings

Eric Yuan invented Zoom in 2011.  He came up with the idea whilst still living in China as a way of making contact with his girlfriend without undertaking the 10-hour trip to see her.  Back in America he left his employment, taking forty friends with him, to start his own company.  The name ‘Zoom’ came as a suggestion from a friend of Yuan’s.  This friend’s toddler loved the board book ‘Zoom Cars’, and for no other reason than that the name was chosen and stuck!  The company’s first big customer in 2013 was Stanford University and the rest, as they say, is history.  Talk about being in the right place at the right time!

There is an insatiable desire within us to ‘connect’ and platforms like Zoom, WhatsApp, emails and telephone calls have become invaluable to us during this time when physically meeting up hasn’t always been possible.

Surely it’s significant that one of the ancient titles for Jesus is ‘The Word’ – The Word who spoke to us of God’s grace and truth.  Who knows, perhaps in years to come some teenage bible paraphrase might even come up with the phrase: God zoomed among us.  On second thoughts it doesn’t quite have the gravitas needed when used as the final reading at the carol service!

We thank God for the technology that has meant we can still communicate with each other and our prayer is that we will for ever be conscious of God speaking in the kaleidoscope of ways in which he still becomes The Word for us today.