Tenerife (and others) Virtual Church

Who are we?

We are a group of mostly Church of England people who got together during the lockdown of 2020 in order to support one another and keep sharing our faith. We used the liturgy that was produced by the Diocese in Europe (as that's the one we live in) for an online agape meal.

After lockdown eased and finally ceased, we expected the services to end as people returned to their physical churches but instead found that we had a substantial congregation who, for one reason or another, didn't have a physical church they could attend. And so the services have continued. Originally they were weekly, but are now fortnightly.

The services are put together by Revd Rachel Ganney, assisted by Dr Paul Ganney and involve four teams of people: readers, prayers, preachers and musicians. We are connected to All Saints in Tenerife, where Rachel is an Assistant Priest (having retired in 2014).

Short service - live video stream


Virtual choir and band

One of the features of our services is our virtual choir and band. Recordings are made by members of the group and submitted each week, to be mixed together. You can find out more (and hear old recordings) here.


Survey results

After we'd been running for just over a year, and as COVID restrictions began to ease, we asked for some feedback on the frequency of the services, so we could plan for the near future. You can read the responses here.


People have asked what it's like putting the service together.

We rely on contributions from many people (singers, musicians, readers, prayers, clergy) to make the service work. Then we do some technical preparation, followed by the service itself.

If you'd like some more detail and some instructions on how to do it yourself, Rachel has written a step-by-step guide.

It is a lot of work, but we think it's worth it. We hope you do too.


A review of the first few months

In July 2020 the disocese asked for "lockdown stories" of how church had been delivered during lockdown. We edited this together as our contribution. It's just under 5 minutes long - we hope you enjoy it.


Virtual Church "on the road"

In September 2020, we packed all the equipment required for the Virtual Church into the car and took the service on the road. The purpose was to be able to fulfil two needs at the same time: to provide a Communion service for the people of All Saints while continuing to enable the virtual congregation to worship together live. Once there and connected to the Parsonage's Internet connection (the only thing we couldn't transport), Rachel went through to the church to preside and preach while Paul set up the rest of the equipment and started the pre-service stream. Rachel returned for the start of the service.

Having proved that it is possible (this one was a bit of an experiment) in All Saints, we now see no reason why it couldn't work almost anywhere, freeing us up to assist other churches while still tending to the online congregation. There are already some other possibilities being explored.


Resources

During lockdown, we've compiled many resources and they're all collected below:


Canarian Physical Churches

St Francis (South Tenerife): https://www.anglicanchurchtenerife.com/

All Saints (North Tenerife): https://allsaintstenerife.org/

St James (Fuerteventura): https://fuertechurch.org/

St Laurence (Lanzarote): http://lanzarotechurch.com/

Holy Trinity (Gran Canaria): https://www.facebook.com/Gran.Canaria.Anglican


If you'd like to get in touch, please email rachel@tenerifevirtual.church

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