Sue Yeo, Anna Chaplaincy coordinator for the Maidstone Archdeaconry writes:
When I have been taking services in some homes over the last couple of weeks, I decided to show the autumn DVD which was distributed to the residential homes in Maidstone that I recorded when we were in lockdown and couldn't go into the homes, but this time I sat with the residents.
I suspect some of the DVDs were never shown, or the residents had forgotten the content. This was a great success, the residents loved it because I was able to do so much more when recording to DVD.
Whilst the hymns were playing and the words appeared on the screen, I had lots of lovely autumn scenes – the crops being harvested, autumn berries and the different beautiful colours of the leaves on the trees – as the backdrop. I was able to introduce poetry (‘Autumn’ by John Keats) read by a famous person, once again with relevant lovely autumn scenes. When I spoke, I was being filmed in my church, so the church was also ‘brought to them’.
All this was an eye opener: I suddenly realised a lot of the success was because ‘I brought the outside world in’ – the residents rarely go out. Some have no close relatives that visit to take them out, and the homes cannot afford any form of transport to take them out, so their entire world is where they live. So, as you see, even after all the years this has been my ministry, I continue to learn.
So now I am researching making further DVDs with the hymns on with pictures. I have asked someone in my own church if they can help, but I doubt they could produce the copies required, as I have had quite a lot of interest shown by other Anna Chaplains to this idea.
My thoughts are DVDs with appropriate hymns/songs for occasions such as Easter, Christmas, Remembrance, general use etc. and a DVD of appropriate poems, to be used in conjunction with a service.
Do you know of any person or organisation that would be able and willing to do this, keeping the cost at a reasonable purchase price?
Please do contact us at annachaplaincy@brf.org.uk if you have any brainwaves! Thank you for raising this idea, Sue – our network members are a creative bunch, and someone may also be doing this successfully, elsewhere.