In this time of physical distancing, Zoom, a video conferencing platform, has become one of the tools most frequently used y Sabbath School leaders, teachers, and pastors. Zoom has seen a massive surge in use over the past few weeks as many aspects of life have gone increasingly virtual.
With any growth comes growing pains. We are seeing abuses of the platform happen in the form of “Zoom-bombing.” It’s unfortunately become a common occurrence. In short, Zoom-bombing involves people entering random meeting codes to see if they can catch one that is active. When they find an active meeting, they post inappropriate content to all those viewing. This is happening regularly enough that we are recommending everyone take a few easy steps to try to mitigate it:
- When you schedule your meeting or Sabbath School class, be sure to add a meeting password
- Make sure that your screen sharing preferences are set to “host-only”
- Disable file transfers
- Disable the ability for attendees to “Join before host”
- Disable “Allow removed participants to rejoin”
In many cases, simply adding a meeting password will address the issue. The Sabbath Schools using Spencerville or General Conference-provided Zoom accounts already have these settings in place. However, we are asking those leading and participating in our Sabbath Schools not to post any of our Zoom Sabbath School meeting information online, including social media. The best invitations to Sabbath School are always made personally (this includes email and text/SMS messages). We encourage you to work with your Sabbath School leaders and to invite people you know. But again, these invitations should be made personally.
Frequently Asked Questions About Zoom
The links below will take you to Zoom-created resources to answer that specific question.
- How do I add co-hosts to my meeting?
- How do I add Waiting Rooms to my meeting?
- How can I add authentication to make my meetings even more secure?
- How do I reset my Zoom password?
- When I scheduling a meeting, how do I send out the link?
- What if I want to schedule a recurring meeting to happen at the same time each week? Can the attendees receive automatic reminders?
- Will requiring registration (the creation of a Zoom account) make my meetings more secure? Yes! Here’s how to set that up.
We’re working on setting up an on-call team to assist our Sabbath School leaders and attendees with creating and hosting meetings during Sabbath mornings and beyond. As that team is rolled out, we will continue to use the Weekly Update and Worship Update emails as a method of communication with our church and extended families.