We’d love you to join our virtual congregation!
We’d love to invite you to be a part of our Carol Service.
Just like we did with the song Pray, for our Thy Kingdom Come prayer week, we want lots of members of our community to join in singing Once in Royal David’s City, whilst lighting and/or holding a candle.
You don’t have to be a perfect singer – just like at church there will be plenty of other voices around yours. And if you want to film with your family, or other members of your household – even better!
If you want to join in without singing, then we’d love you to still go ahead and film a short video of yourself lighting a candle. Find more detail below.
The deadline to give us your videos is Sunday 13th December.
How to get involved
- First you’ll need to download our backing track for this song, made by our worship leader Matt. It has a click track to help keep in time.
You need to be able to play this song back listening on earbuds, or headphones. (there’s more explanation about that later)
- Get the lyrics ready, you can find them here.
- Get a candle and matches/lighter ready too.
- Next, decide where you’re going to film yourself. It should be somewhere quiet, that isn’t too echoey. And it should be more dimly lit, to help make the candle effective. But we still want there to be enough light to see your face 🙂.
- Put your camera / phone in landscape, and try and make sure we can see you and your candle in shot nicely. You can get lots more tips in this brilliant document our editor Naomi put together.
- Use earbuds in to listen to the backing track. This means your video recording only has the sound of you singing, and doesn’t pick up the backing track.
- Press record on your camera, then press play on the backing track. Singalong, smile and have fun all the way through to the end of the song.
- Check your video recording, to make sure you’re happy with it. You can always do it again until you have a good take!
- Send us your file. If possible, try and rename your video file with “Carol” in the title. Then upload it to this drop box link below
The finished music video will be shared publicly online. By submitting your video recording, you’re accepting that we’ll edit it into this music video, which will be made available online. If you’re not comfortable with this, then please don’t send us your video.
- If any children or young people are in your video- When the videos you send us are used by the production team they will be part of the Tabs services or items that appear on YouTube and facebook, and therefore in the public domain. If any children or young people up to the age of 18 years appear in your video, please send an email to safeguarding@tabspenarth.org.uk confirming the filename of your video, and that you are their parent or guardian. In your email, please give us consent to use the recording and share the final video publicly online. No videos involving children or young people can be used without this written consent.
- The closing date for videos is Sunday 13th December.
If you would prefer to not sing, then we’d still love for you to be involved. Just film yourself lighting a candle, following the relevant steps mentioned above. Please just film yourself lighting and just holding the candle for 30 seconds or so – that’s it. Then send us your video using the same dropbox link.
We’re so looking forward to seeing the final video, and for our whole Carol Service. It will be available on Sunday 20th December, at 6.30pm, on YouTube, and facebook.