It’s hard to believe that this Sunday, June 21, will be our fifteenth Sunday of worshipping online. We’ve learned a lot over these fifteen weeks – what works, what doesn’t, and maybe more than we wanted to learn about Facebook Live, Zoom, and YouTube… While it’s been a new experience and a steep learning curve for all of us, the grace and generosity of our community has been incredible. We’ve worked hard to create meaningful online worship experiences for our community and from the feedback we’re receiving, we’ve largely been successful in spite of some technological glitches along the way. Many thanks are due here:
To Jason Bradley, Beckie Chambers, and Paul Laughlin who have worked hard behind the scenes with our audio and video needs to bring you each worship service.
To Taylor Hightower, Lei Xie, Tom Kimmel, Pat Alcorn, Connie Benedict, Xin Zhang, and all the USM students who have helped enliven our worship while we can’t join our voices in song.
To Martha Ginn, Sherry Laughlin, Nancy Ratliff, Anne Hurt, Beverly Williams, Virginia Butler, Sally Dyess, Pat Alcorn, and Connie Benedict who collaborated to create the wonderful new banners we have in the sanctuary and to Roger McDowell for building stands that allow them to be more visible on screen.
To Gena Lott, Casey Greene, Kelly Taylor, and Sherry Laughlin who have continued to provide beautiful altar arrangements to make our worship space vibrant.
And to all of you who continue to support UBC with your gifts and resources. We’ve had a string of three consecutive months of giving that has exceeded our expenses by over $18,000. In addition to your financial generosity, you’ve stepped up, as brothers and sisters in Christ, to care for and check in on one another even while we’ve had to be careful to keep our distance so that we can all remain healthy. This is a wonderful community of which to be a part. Thank you!
We’re closing in on (we hope!) the day when we can once again worship together in person and continue this good work together. In conversation with the staff and Deacons, we are targeting August 9 as that date for our return to in-person worship. Why August 9?
As you’re aware, cases of COVID-19 continue to spike in and around our community as the economy re-opens, summer travel continues, and our general desire to resume our regular activities increases. By targeting August 9 as a return date, we can continue to monitor the progress of the virus in our community, make the necessary arrangements to welcome you back to worship, and have a date toward which to to look forward. This also happens to be the Sunday when we’ll begin a new series on unsung heroes in scriptures. There are countless unsung heroes who have guided us through these months, so it feels appropriate to gather again as we consider those in our scriptures and in our lives.
We are also aware that this date may change. While it won’t move up, it could move back depending upon the trajectory of the virus. We hope it won’t move back, but if it turns out we need to continue worshipping online only, we will let you know.
When we come back, we’ll begin by worshipping in Kelley Hall (where we gather on Wednesday nights near the east entrance of the building). Worshipping here does a number of things that are helpful as we transition back to in-person gatherings. It allows for greater flexibility in how we arrange the space to accommodate both social distancing and capacity than the sanctuary while also allowing for easier cleaning and disinfecting after services. Additionally, we’re hopeful that coming back to this space as opposed to the sanctuary for worship will help us remain mindful of the transitional period we’ll be in for a while as we move back into being together in-person after what will be, at least, twenty-one weeks of online worship. We’ll continue to video our worship services and share them on YouTube when we come back to worship in Kelley Hall for those who need or wish to continue worshipping from home.
If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us. We are grateful for you.
As always, you belong.
Kat and Brett
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