Thursday Greetings!
Maybe you have been hiking before and found yourself lost or having gone off the trail. Maybe you went off trail intentionally!
Walking an untrodden path is challenging, and takes way more energy and effort to go the same distance
as on a well-worn path.
I wonder if we are entering this sort of time in these days. A bit of social distancing weariness and fatigue starting to set in. Maybe you are getting tired of having the extra meetings and all the extra energy it takes to figure out and navigate what didn't require any meetings only a few months back.
This time is like trailblazing...filled with both exhaustion and exhilaration.
I so appreciate the continued willingness of all who make our worship fresh and grace-filled each week. Yet, maybe the novelty of online worship is not so novel anymore, becoming more familiar, maybe even feeling "normal." This new taste of grace may be starting to fade in its impact, like the flavor of chewing gum has a way of doing. One thing I love about worship is not that each week there is some new shiny thing to entertain me and keep me coming back...but that in worship, we experience this well-worn path of grace and love of God for us all.
God is the best life hiking partner...one who knows when we need a well-worn path...but also one not afraid to challenge us with a little grace-filled trailblazing.
Speaking of trailblazing, council, with the support of the Building Committee, voted this past week to move forward with installing live-stream capabilities in our sanctuary as part of the other upgrades to our sanctuary through Building to Bless (BtB).
Our hope is that when we re-start in-person worship in the near future, we continue to offer an online worship option.
In many ways, this time is a little like starting a satellite worship site. Yet, this new worshipping community was not something we asked for, but has come to us as we began having online worship. This is a moment we get to ask,
"what does it look like to BOLDLY living and sharing God's grace online?" Below are our worship attendance numbers so far for 2020.