In normal times, Workshop and Open Mic are every Monday Night. Workshop is first and gives an opportunity for University of Virginia students and Charlottesville locals to work on their craft, rehearse and collaborate. Open Mic follows with a signup sheet and an open stage set up and ready. Showcase is on every Thursday night all year long. Showcase is a curated performance night of several artists (poets, spoken word artists and musicians). These things are open to UVA students and the Charlottesville public, believer and non-believer.

To address social distancing, we have used Zoom for Showcase. Eunoia is the name of the ministry. It is a greek word that means “beautiful thinking”. I love seeing and hearing our Eunoia friends perform from their home context! A wonderful change from the stage! One computer at a time to perform of course. We mute everyone for the best performance by each, but then unmute right after each for applause and happy chatter. I don’t host. It keeps me more present in our experience together.

Eunoia’s Essentials Ministry: Another part of Eunoia’s ministry is called Essentials. This is more like other campus ministries: Find Christ, Grow in Christ, Be Sent in Christ. Our Essentials core group of a dozen meets on Monday nights. It is a collection of UVA students who are highly committed to living the Jesus life in real community. Discipleship is big thing with us! We now have an Online Essentials at 6PM on Tuesdays. What I love about this is that students are having to live out their faith in their homes. It’s rife with challenges and has brought out many matters for prayer and counsel. Thus, texting and phone calling has never been more needed. Yesterday was 5 hours worth of phone calls. My ear hurts, my throat’s sore, but I wouldn’t trade this opportunity to disciple and care for these students! Really, really a spiritually rich season…

Practical suggestions for using Zoom for performances:

We use Zoom’s Pro option so there are no time constraints, though it’s tending to last 1hour instead of our usual 1.5. I focus on the lighting from where I sit. Day light makes me blue, incandescent warms me up. I just want to give the feel of stage without overdoing it. There are a few who use the mic from their computer. Others who have it use an external mic, most use one that suits for podcasting with a usb connection. Mine’s different. I use a condenser mic that I plug into an interface (Focusrite Scarlett 6i6) that then connects to my computer. Most of us use headphones to minimize all the ambient sound that comes out of everyone’s computers into their rooms. Doing that makes both the internal and external mic sound more “present” and not so “roomy”. The best thing about doing this online? Happy familiar faces! (One tech note: in Zoom’s audio settings, there is an “advanced” button. Click that and see the option on the top to use “Original Sound”. For music performance it’s often better to use that because it bypasses Zoom’s effects and gives a more natural sound for instruments and voice.)

The Rev. Dave Petty, EUNOIA Creative Christian Ministry, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA