At the onset of the pandemic in Australia, we realised that all our upcoming conferences were going to be cancelled. So work began on an online conference, to take up a bit of the deficit.
The conference committee from Victoria were gracious enough to let us “borrow” the theme from their Easter weekend camp which was cancelled, which had been called “Our Greatest Need.” And since we didn’t have missionary school students to assign topics (they had already gone home after EMC 2020 was cancelled), each of our church workers around Australia and New Zealand was assigned a topic.
There was a flurry of activity in the weeks leading up to the 15th to 17th of May as the media team prepared for a completely online conference. Each location had to ensure that their equipment was up to scratch, and in some cases, presentations were prerecorded. At the AUC office we had to prepare to host every single meeting from our location.
The media team managed quite a technical achievement, when they discovered how to hand off a livestream from one location to another. This meant that the host could introduce the speaker, and then the control of the livestream could be handed off to the other location.
A purpose-built website was created, with schedule of meetings, livestream links, and previous meetings which could be watched later.
Finally the day came, and we shared 13 wonderful messages and a Sabbath afternoon program of testimonies. Although there were a few technical hitches, all came off surprisingly well, as hundreds of viewers joined us from around Australasia and across the world.
If you missed the conference or any part of it, you can still catch up with video, audio or transcripts online at Our Greatest Need Conference.