Mt. Calvary Baptist Church in New Iberia is calling its parishioners, or rather, they are calling the church.

Mt. Calvary and the Rev. Mark Louis have continued to provide weekly worship with online services as well as a teleconference call for the last 10 weeks, with plans to continue that way until the foreseeable future.

“Because many of our congregates are seniors and many have pre-existing health challenges,” Louis said of maintaining the virtual services. “And we don’t want to run the risk of having anyone exposed to the virus.”

Every Sunday, Mt. Calvary holds its regular service at 8 a.m., but because some of the members are not on social media, the church is providing a conference line where people can call in via telephone.

“We have about 60-80 people on the line who are listening in to our Sunday morning broadcast,” Louis said. “We probably average about 200 or so who are watching via Facebook Live.”

The Sunday morning conference call for Mt. Calvary started after a weekly prayer conference call that took place every Thursday. After suspending in-person worship and seeing great numbers in viewership when they switched to broadcast-only, Louis said he noticed not everyone was on social media like Facebook.

“It caused us to start the conference calls on Sunday mornings,” Louis said. “The first week we had about 137 people who were on the confess call that morning, the first Sunday.”

Louis said on average, the church has anywhere from 60-80 participants now on the conference call, as well as continuing the Thursday calls.

Due to a time limit on conference calls, Mt. Calvary had to modify its sermon to fit the necessary time.

The service opens with a praise song, followed by prayer and then a worship leader leads them in worship then they have a 15-20 minute sermon.

“We’ve probably abbreviated our service, we probably have cut off maybe 45 minutes,” Louis said.

Though the church has to edit bits of the sermon out, Louis said it’s mainly about getting what’s right at the moment and reduce it down to the details and specifics.

“You have to be concise and precise at the moment because on the confess call, you only have a limited amount of time,” Louis said.

Though the church isn’t able to hold a normal in-person service, Louis said it hasn’t stopped the members from continuing to practice their faith, no matter the location.

“The people are very resilient and they are persistent in their faith,” Louis said. “I have been encouraged and inspired by the people because they continue to support the church financially and they are involved and engaged.”

Louis calls the Mt. Calvary parishioners the true champions in dealing with COVID-19.

“Everyone has had an amazing response in spirit and attitude and temperament,” Louis said. “They are looking forward to getting back to in-person worship, but they are also content and resolved to wait this out and go the long haul if necessary because we are all concerned for the overall health and safety of our members,” Louis said.

Anyone is interested in participating in the Sunday or Thursday services at Mt. Calvary Baptist Church can reach the church via its Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/mtcalvaryiberia.

The number to join in on the Sunday conference call is 425-436-6355, and the access code is: 672533.