Parish live streams & pre-recorded services

during the coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis

We’re really enjoying seeing the huge range of worship and teaching posted by our parishes. Some services are live. Some, like the Diocesan Church at Home service are ‘as live’, and others are pre-recorded. They’re all great and the list below is regularly updated to include all of the parish online content that we are aware of. Email communications@oxford.anglican.org to be included on the list. Want to create your own Church at Home service? Scroll down the page for some top tips and details of our new peer learning group.

  • Cookham Churches – daily prayers and Sunday Eucharist. YouTube
  • The Revd Ainsley Swift broadcasts morning and evening prayer from St Michael’s Bray. Follow Ainsley on Facebook
  • Holy Trinity, Prestwood has daily prayer, Monday – Friday at 8am, noon and 8pm from the parish website. 
  • St Nicholas, Marston, Oxford – daily recorded and PDF reflections on passages from Morning Prayer on the parish website
  • St James and St Francis, Cowley, Oxford. Monday – Thursday and Saturdays at noon on Facebook
  • 4U in Marlow – daily devotional – church
  • St Catherine’s Church, Tilehurst, 10am Monday – Friday – morning prayer – Facebook
  • St Michael at the Northgate, Oxford – 5.30pm Monday – Friday – Evening Prayer/Bible Thought – YouTube
  • All Saints Wokingham – morning prayer – details here
  • Iver Parish – morning prayer, 9am and evening prayer, 5pm – Facebook
  • Shiplake with Dunsden with Harpsden cum Bolney – 10am every day Morning Prayer, Eucharist Wednesdays and Sundays – Facebook
  • hOME Oxford – morning prayer – 8am – Zoom
  • St Anne’s and St Peter’s High Wycombe – morning prayer – Facebook
  • St Mary’s, Datchet and St Thomas’ Colnbrook – 9am and 5pm, morning and evening prayer – YouTube.
  • St Mary’s, Amersham with All Saints, Coleshill – 6pm, evening prayer – details on parish website
  • St Barnabas, Jericho and St Thomas the Martyr, Oxford – Mass – Wednesday 7pm. Zoom. Details on parish website. 
  • St John the Baptist, Kingston Bagpuize – morning prayer, 8am. Zoom. Details on parish website
  • Steeple Aston, North Aston and Tackley – Morning Prayer – YouTube
  • Steeple Aston, North Aston and Tackley – Night Prayer – YouTube
  • St Mary’s, Bletchley – morning prayer – 8.30am – Facebook
  • St Peter’s, Loudwater – 7pm, Wednesdays – Evening Prayer – YouTube
  • St Mary’s, Beaconsfield – weekdays – 7pm – Compline – Facebook
  • Wolverton – Monday – Thursday, morning prayer – 9am and night prayer – 9pm – YouTube
  • St John the Baptist, Kingston Bagpuize – 8am morning prayer – email for the link
  • Hermitage Team – morning prayer – Monday, Wednesday and Friday – 9am – Zoom – details on parish website
  • Hermitage Team – Compline – Tuesday and Thursday – 7pm – Zoom – details on parish website
  • New Windsor – Monday – Friday – 9am – Morning Prayer – parish website
  • New Windsor – Monday to Friday – 6pm – Evening Prayer – Facebook
  • University Church of St Mary the Virgin – morning prayer – Monday – Friday – 9am on Zoom. Email: admin@universitychurch.ox.ac.uk
  • Lambourn Valley – Morning Prayer – 8.30am. Compline – 8.30pm. Zoom. Details on website. 
  • Woodstock and Bladon – Morning Prayer – Zoom details on parish website
  • St Bartholomew’s, Ducklington, 8am – Monday to Friday, 9am Saturday. Zoom – details on parish website
  • St Mary’s & Barley Hill Church, Thame – 9am – Morning Prayer. 8am – Compline. Zoom. 
  • 8.45 am: St Ebbe’s streaming Morning Prayer – YouTube
  • 12:30 pm: Revd Katie Tup – Bible reading, reflection, Lords Prayer and Blessing on Twitter
  • 2:30 pm: Revd Katie Tup – Bible reading, reflection, Lords Prayer and Blessing on Facebook
  • 5 pm: All Saints High Wycombe Evening Prayer – Facebook
  • Parish of Cowley, Oxford, Virtual Church on Facebook with loads going on throughout the week.
  • St Michael’s Horton – Daily Virtual Church
  • St Barnabas, Jericho, Oxford, daily reflection on YouTube
  • St Barnabas, Jericho and St Thomas the Martyr, Oxford, midweek mass, Wednesdays, 6pm – YouTube
  • Daily prayers – Dorchester Abbey – Facebook
  • St Catherine’s, Tilehurst, recorded daily lectionary reading and reflection – Facebook
  • 9am Fridays, St Catherine’s, Tilehurst – Mini Tots Praise – Facebook
  • Saturdays, St Catherine’s, Tilehurst – Something Silly – Facebook
  • All Saints, Didcot – Weekday Worship – YouTube
  • All Saints Didcot – improvised instrumental section – YouTube
  • Warfield Church – Morning Prayer – Facebook
  • 5.30pm St Michael at the Northgate, Oxford – services and reflections – church website
  • 8.30am, St Mary’s, Bletchley – daily prayers  (Monday to Thursday) – Facebook
  • Noon, St Mary’s Bletchley – Pit Stop – Facebook
  • St Nicolas Earley – various resources – YouTube
  • Stone, Dinton and Hartwell – daily prayers – YouTube
  • St John the Baptist, Crowthorne – Sunday service recorded on Saturday – Vimeo
  • The Revd Dan Beesley – daily reflection  – YouTube
  • 10am daily – St Mary’s Kidlington – Pause for Prayer – Facebook
  • 7.30pm Tuesdays – St Mary’s, Kidlington – Iona Celtic Eucharist – Facebook
  • 8.40am Mondays, Great Missenden – Collective Worship – Facebook
  • Daily  – Great Missenden – daily recorded input, including music – Parish website
  • All Saints’, Didcot – weekly worship – YouTube
  • 9am Wednesdays – Eucharist – YouTube
  • St Mary’s, Hitcham – 9am Monday -Saturday – readings and prayers – Facebook
  • 10am Wednesdays – St Edburg’s, Bicester, Holy Communion by Zoom – parish website
  • St Mary’s, Amersham – 10am Wednesday – BCP Holy Communion by Zoom – see parish website
  • Noon, Shelswell Benefice, Monday to Friday – noon – short service of reflection – Facebook
  • Noon on Tuesdays and Thursdays – Holy Trinity, Aylesbury – reflection and prayers – YouTube
  • 6.30pm on Wednesdays – Holy Trinity, Aylesbury – Thought for the Week – YouTube 
  • 10.30am on Thursdays – Holy Trinity Aylesbury – Lighthouse for families with pre-school children – YouTube
  • Noon – Monday to Friday -Broughton Church, Aylesbury – Reflection for the Day – YouTube
  • Noon – weekdays – St Marys’, Beaconsfield – midday prayers – Facebook
  • 7.30pm – Wednesdays – Oasis reflective space at Garsington, Cuddesdon and Horspath – Zoom – Email rev.karen.charman@gmail.com for the link.
  • 11am – Saturdays 9th (Lego taster session) and 16th May (Outdoor Church taster session) at Garsington, Cuddesdon and Horspath – Facebook
  • 7.30pm – the Hermitage Team – alternate Wednesdays – Team Pilgrims book club/Bible Study – Zoom – details on parish website. 
  • New Windsor – Saturday and Sunday – 9pm – Night Prayer – Facebook
  • 9.30am – St Peter’s, Caversham – Zoom – details on the parish website
  • Holy Trinity, Seer Green and the Jordans; Wednesday, 9am, Five Minutes Peace; Tuesday nd Thursday, 9am, morning prayer, Thursday – 11am – noon, study session – Facebook
  • Benefice of Witney – noon – midweek Eucharist – details on the parish website
  • South Chilterns Team Ministry – blog updated on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Pause/thought/reflection
  • Newport Pagnell – Wednesday – 9.30am – morning worship – parish website
  • St Michael and All Angels’ Summertown – A Blog for All Seasons: Pilgrimage into the everyday – the Revd Gavin Knight’s blog. 
  • St Mary’s Maidenhead – website
  • St Mary’s, Charlbury – Youtube
  • Great Missenden with Ballinger and Hampden – BCP Communion – Facebook
  • St James, Bierton – Said Communion – YouTube
  • All Saints Wokingham – Communion – Parish Website
  • St Mary’s, Amersham with All Saints’, Coleshill – Morning Prayer and Holy Communion on Zoom – details on parish website
  • Bucknell, Caversfield and Launton, Holy Communion by Zoom
  • St Matthew’s Harwell with All Saints’ Chilton – parish website
  • St Mary’s, Beaconsfield – Common Prayer Holy Communion – Facebook
  • Shill Valley and Broadshire Benefice – parish website
  • st Mary’s & Barley Hill Church – Common Worship – Zoom
  • Buckingham Parish Church – Family Service: YouTube
  • St Paul’s Wokingham – Facebook
  • Warfield Church  – Holy Communion – Facebook
  • St Michael’s, Easthampstead – Eucharist – YouTube
  • 4U in Marlow – traditional Service – parish website
  • Holy Cross, Slapton – Facebook
  • Caversham, Thameside and Mapledurham – Morning Prayer – YouTube
  • St Mary’s, Pinces Risborough – Facebook
  • St Andrew’s, Oxford – All Age Worship – church website
  • Holy Trinity, Prestwood and st Mary Magdalen, Great Hampden – Morning Worship
  • St Laurence Winslow – Eucharist – Facebook
  • St Michael and All Angels’, Sandhurst – parish Communion – Facebook
  • St Michael’s, Tilehurst – Parish Website
  • Garsington, Cuddesdon and Horspath Zoom. Email rev.karen.charman@gmail.com for the link.
  • St Catherine’s, Towersey – parish website
  • St Margaret’s, Tylers Green – parish website

St Peter’s Caversham – Zoom – details on parish website

St Nicolas, Taplow – parish website

Church of the Holy Spirit, Bedgrove – Facebook

St Andrew’s Oxford – church website

St Margaret’s, Mapledurham – church website

St Michael and All Angels’, Sandhurst – family service – Zoom – details on parish website

St Matthew’s, Reading – parish website

New Windsor – Zoom gathering – details on parish website

Hermitage Team – virtual coffee – Zoom – details on parish website

Trinity@Four, Henley – parish website

RAF High Wycombe – YouTube – recorded and available later.

  • Buckingham Parish Church, contemporary family service – church website
  • St Mary’s, Amersham with All Saints’ Coleshill – children’s story on Facebook – details on the parish website
  • Holy Trinity, Headington Quarry – YouTube or Radio Cherwell
  • St Nicolas, Earley – YouTube
  • Great Missenden – Evening Prayer – Facebook
  • St Andrew’s, Caversham – YouTube
  • Bernwode Benefice – livestream Compline – parish website
  • Woodstock and Bladon – Evening Prayer – Facebook

Greyfriars and New Hope Reading – church website

St Barnabas, Jericho and St Thomas the Martyr, Oxford – evening prayer on Zoom – details on parish website

Great Chesham Emmanuel – YouTube

Steeple Aston with North Aston and Tackley – Worship at Home – YouTube

St Mary’s, Wexham – YouTube

St Peter and St Paul’s, Newport Pagnell – parish website

East Downland Benefice – parish website

St Michael and All Angels, Summertown – parish website

We know that if you’ve never done church online before, whether recorded or live-streamed, it can be bamboozling.

The Church of England has put together this helpful beginners guide to streaming.

Below we’ve published some FAQs, adapted from a range of sources. Got a top tip?… let us know.

New: Peer learning group

We’ve set up a private Facebook group for anyone who is directly involved in organising and running online church services (recorded and streamed). It’s a place to pose questions and support others. Join here.

For churches who are just getting started with film, perhaps start with a simple video of someone reading out this week’s prayers or readings. Maybe a message from the vicar, to say hello and to explain how the church is continuing to function. Remember, online worship doesn’t just have to fall to the ordained clergy – the church needs everyone’s gifts to flourish, particularly at this time.

  • A sermon with an opportunity for discussion afterwards
  • A thought for the day from the vicar or a member of the church
  •  A daily prayer
  •  An update or a good news story
  •  ’Notices’ – read out the week’s notices and ask everyone to share their own news in the comment.

The safer alternative to live streaming – particularly for churches that are new to making videos in general – is to pre-record your worship/prayers/reflection and to upload your video in your own time. This offers a more inclusive opportunity to add subtitles to your video, making it more accessible for many more viewers. It means you can make edits. You can trim out the long beginning section where you are recording, but nothing is happening on screen.

Crucially with online video, we know that people need to be interested within three seconds to decide whether they will keep watching. If all they see is an empty chair, while someone fiddles with the angle the camera is propped up at – it’s unlikely that they will stick with you! Another feature on Facebook and Youtube is the option to Premiere your video. If you choose this option the video will produce a post to let your followers know when the video will be premiering and then it will be published ‘as live’ and people can follow along with your pre-recorded service in real-time.

It’s important not to rush into putting a video online if you’ve never done it before, or feel pressure to do so. While this is an excellent time to experiment and see what your phone is capable of, be aware that too much poor quality content from your church’s account could lead to you losing followers, rather than gaining and nourishing them.

There is so much content out there already. So, we are encouraging churches to ‘buddy up’ with another parish doing live and pre-recorded video well, and ask to share their worship and prayer videos until they are ready to share videos themselves. Perhaps this will lead to the fruitful sharing of resources between churches in the future!

The Rama Vocal centre in Denmark has produced a short film about the benefits of switching to original sound in Zoom. The setting removes speech codecs and the difference it makes to the quality of audio for worship is incredible.

Have you listened to the online Hallejulah Chorus from St Nicholas Taplow? It was fantastic as are these recordings from Taplow.  So, the churchwarden, Tony Bridge has put together these guidelines for how to do it. 

It was a bit of a journey getting the video done – I’m a professional Sound Editor, so I’m very used to audio software, but a novice at video and it was a steep learning curve! Plus, I was up against the deadline of Easter Sunday – so there’s a lot of rough edges, which I’m sure will get smoother over the coming weeks!

First, you need your backing track, which your singers will play on their phone, using earpieces, as we want to record just their voices at this point. If you’re doing an Acappella thing, then I guess a piano guide track is going to be useful. The singers record their video onto a second device with a camera, could be a laptop or iPad, singing along to the track. What comes out is just their voice, with no track.

Then everyone sends that video to the person who will put the videos together (see later for methods of transmission), syncing them all up to the original piano track. What I use for video editing is Cyberlink’s PowerDirector (around £100) and Adobe Premiere Pro (£20 per month) on PC. If you have a Mac, the one to go for is Final Cut Pro.

The main thing for the video editor to concentrate on at the start is planning. First, get everyone to record in the same orientation, either landscape or portrait, but they should be the same. In the Hallelujah, I didn’t think of that until later. The screen looks a bit random and haphazard now, with everyone at different sizes. I prefer landscape; it’s easier to make a nice layout with that. In all these Video Editors, you can use a convenient grid, so that you can place each video neatly. Look for the parameters Scale (to shrink each video down in size) and Position (to place each video around the screen). You might also want to use Crop.

Video is very resource-intensive. Although these programs promise up to 100 video tracks, this will depend on the power of your computer. Late in the process, I realised that I should make up the video in small chunks, sopranos only, make a finished video of just those, then move on to the altos, finalise them, and so on. Finally, bring all those chunks together as finished videos, and the computer will find it much easier to cope. This is where the planning comes in because you have to make sure that all the videos will be visible in the final assembly, not covering each other up!

Then there’s the sound! Because everyone is on their own, singing in front of their PC/iPad, the final result will have all the voices coming out of the middle, and the sound will be muddled up.

PowerDirector is weak in the sound department and doesn’t let you ‘spread’ the sound out (though they also make a companion program called AudioDirector, which does). I ended up stripping the audio from each video and treating the music in my audio editing software (which cost several thousand pounds a few years ago) and sending that back to PowerDirector. It’s still not ideal, but now you can hear individual voices coming from different ‘places’. Premiere Pro and Final Cut Pro are much more powerful in mixing audio, as in other departments.

Then you’ve got to get everyone comfortable with working with WeTransfer.com (which is the easiest for novice tech-users – simply go to the website and upload your file…), Dropbox or Google Drive. Video files will be too ‘heavy’ to send via normal emailing, and you’ll need these solutions to receive all the files. I found some people just gave up because of all the technical faff, and I spent several hours on the phone coaxing them along and easing them through the processes involved.

Phew! Sorry to go off on a Geek rant, you’ve probably gone to sleep by now! But I wish someone had told me before I started about some of the pitfalls. But if you can work through all this, it’s great when the final result comes out! I’m already working on the next one. Once you’ve got an idea of some of the pitfalls (I’m sure there will be more ahead!) things become more fun and rewarding.