On Monday March 16th, the leadership at Bendigo Baptist decided to adapt to the COVID-19 pandemic by moving all of its weekend services into one livestream. Like many other churches that have made this move, it didn’t stop us from BEING the church – it just changed that way in which we would GATHER as the church here in Bendigo.

To ensure that our connection across our entire church (i.e. two campus locations) and the broader community remained as effective as possible, we decided to up the level of our communication through a variety of creative means. With our church already appreciating the connection through our livestream, we decided to add video devotionals entitled “Growing Stronger” and then redeploy some staff to shoot another video segment called “This Is Our Family” which is shown each Wednesday evening.

Growing Stronger: Each week, there are three separate video devotionals being recorded by people of all generations in our church. These are posted on a Monday, Wednesday and Friday morning and have been a great source of encouragement to our entire church as they engage and reflect on what our own people are saying.

This Is Our Family: This weekly news segment helps us share a variety of different stories / testimonies telling our wide church family how God is at work in the life of the church. Our theme in 2020 has been the “mission of God in the hands of ordinary people” and this weekly segment has helped spur us along in mission.

Our church has responded well to the extensive effort put in place to keep us all connected. While many are experiencing social isolation, the majority of those within our large church family are feeling a greater sense of connectedness than they did before.

We are so grateful to God for what He’s done in and through us during this period of time.

Ps Dave Lovell
Senior Pastor