Sunday is the start of Holy Week, the time from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday when Christians recall the events leading up to Jesus’s death and Resurrection. The worship services this week for congregations around Billings and elsewherebare going to be very different.
This year the Easter egg hunts, Sunrise Services and public worship have been cancelled and replaced with digital and streamed services.
"We are creating service specific for people to view in their living rooms," says Jordan Steingraber, communications director at Faith Chapel in Billings.
"Even before we got to this place we have been streaming our services online," Steingraber says. "So we had some experience and some technology in place to help us to continue to do that."
Other churches in Billings like Faith Chapel, have been regularly streaming live services, while other congregations went digital the last few weeks after Yellowstone County Public Health Officer John Felton issued a closure order and Governor Steve Bullock’s stay at home order was put in place.
Despite the cancellation of many Holy Week gatherings, pastors around Billings report services will still happen electronically on Palm Sunday, Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Sunday with messages specific to that day.
Several congregations will take the opportunity to celebrate communion this week, although online. Parishioners will be asked to have bread and juice or wine with them during the service so that the clergy can bless the elements remotely.
This weekend four of the United Methodist Churches in Billings will have palms outside their building for people to pick up, wave in celebration and share their photos online with their congregation.
Even for those congregations like Faith Chapel that are old hands at streaming worship services, Steingraber says social distancing is still a new experience.
"Not being able to sing or experience a message together physically in the same place is different."
