WFH: Favor Church’s James Aiton

MONDAYS to Fridays were spent working in the office. Friday nights kicked off the weekend of me-time or hanging out with friends. Sundays were for church and family bonding. Then Monday would roll around. An ordinary week used to look like this. Until the pandemic happened, and everyone found themselves stuck at home 24/7, save for the occasional grocery runs and essential errands. Now the days blend together and it’s doubtful anyone can tell what day it is without looking at the calendar.

Despite that, people try to replicate most of their usual activities from home. They work from home, hold Zoom catch-up sessions with friends and family, and attend digitally streamed worship services.

Attending church is a highly social activity, a weekly mass gathering attended by hundreds of people: something quarantine measures strictly prohibit and probably won’t allow for the foreseeable future. How do churches cope?

Favor Church, a Mandaluyong-based Christian congregation led by Senior Pastors James and Kate Aiton, is one of many churches that turned to digital platforms while Metro Manila is under strict quarantine. Mr. Aiton told BusinessWorld via e-mail how his congregation gathers during these unique times.

Replies have been lightly edited.

HOW LONG DID IT TAKE FOR YOU TO ADJUST TO THE CHURCH-FROM-HOME FORMAT? DID YOU HAVE TO SUSPEND ACTIVITIES LIKE THE SUNDAY SERVICE WHEN THE ECQ (ENHANCED COMMUNITY QUARANTINE) STARTED, OR WERE YOU ABLE TO MOVE IT ONLINE IMMEDIATELY?
The announcement of ECQ happened on a Thursday night, so we had 48 hours to change our physical service into an online videoed service, and then full ECQ happened the day after, giving us 12 hours to get everything we needed out of our church venue (located in a mall) before it was shut down. That was a pretty hectic weekend!

The flexibility of our team was amazing, and they were able to make it happen so quickly, and every week since we have been working on different things, trying to improve the experience for those watching, and the workflow for us.

HOW ARE YOU DOING CHURCH ACTIVITIES NOW? HAS THE WORK-FROM-HOME FORMAT AFFECTED YOUR LINEUP OF ACTIVITIES?
In our church, our two main focuses are the Services and midweek Connect groups (small groups of people that get together for social connection and Bible studies). Obviously both of these things, and most things we do, are centered around meeting with people, so the change has been moving all these meetings online.

We’ve had great success in transferring nearly all our activities online, but are really missing that person to person contact!

We have been able to film our services with a skeleton team in a make-shift studio, and all other meetings have been done from homes.

WHAT WAS A NORMAL WEEK LIKE FOR YOU BEFORE THE ECQ, AND HOW DID IT CHANGE?
My week consisted of meetings with my staff, spending time preparing for sermons and catching up with leaders and members of our church.

I’m a highly relational leader, and so I have really missed being in person with people. I’ve been able to easily shift all these meetings online, but having three kids under the age of six has made it a little more difficult to have meetings at home. There is an increased usage in the “mute” button on video chats!

HOW DO YOU GATHER PEOPLE ONLINE — BOTH CHURCH WORKERS AND ATTENDEES?
Our strategy is based on whether the event is an internal one (just aimed at the people within our church) or an external one (aimed at everyone online).

Internally, we have communication channels set up through Facebook groups, messenger groups and via e-mail to promote what meetings are coming up. Most of these internal meetings are done over Zoom (sometimes up to 400 people) or Google Meet.

For external meetings, we rely heavily on social media, through our own promotion on Instagram and Facebook, and our church family sharing those posts.

We use different social media platforms to broadcast our meetings externally.

WHAT IS YOUR PREFERRED PLATFORM FOR HOLDING WORSHIP SERVICES ONLINE? WHAT TOOLS DO YOU USE TO RECORD YOUR PROGRAMS?
During the ECQ, we have been on quite the journey with this. At the moment we are broadcasting (through a restreaming service online) to multiple platforms — Kumu, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Periscope — and recently have partnered with ABS-CBN to be shown on itsr Sports and Action Channel, Sky Cable, and iWant.ph.

It looks like mass gatherings will be prohibited for the foreseeable future, so we are in the middle of trying to transition people to a new platform that is actually run on our webpage. This gives us greater control (not relying on streaming sites’ back end) to connect with people. We highly value connection with people, and don’t believe church is just about attending a service, but actually doing life with people. This new platform will give us greater flexibility in being able to pray for people, and connect with them, right on the page! It also has an auto translation tool for those typing in the chat in different languages!

For our services, we have a three-camera production set up, and have a team that captures and edits our service. For everything else, we are just using laptops and phones! Trying to be as resourceful as possible.

HAS THE QUARANTINE SPARKED NEW OPPORTUNITIES FOR YOUR CHURCH TO EXPAND? HOW?
It’s been huge for our church. We were not streaming services before this, so it forced us to go online. Within the first month, our reach on Facebook alone exploded to about 3 million people.

Viewing of our services has increased dramatically from when we were meeting in our venue. We also have had to start new international connect groups for people that are now tuning in from overseas.

The ECQ has been horrible on so many levels, but the silver lining for our church is the fact we’ve been able to get into people’s homes through their TVs and devices, people that never would have stepped foot in our venue. It’s very humbling.

Also, we have established our Favor Church Community Care, which have been feeding between 500-3,000 families a week all over Metro Manila. Families that otherwise would not have had access to food. This has been made possible by the generosity of our church family that have given financially towards it.

WHAT DO YOU MISS THE MOST ABOUT BEING UNDER QUARANTINE?
I miss people, giving them hugs and laughing and eating with them in person. I love people, and the fact that social distancing is going to be a real thing for the future, it breaks my heart that I won’t be able to get back to that for some time. — Denise A. Valdez