The Recruitment Committee has begun interviewing candidates for Rector! This round of interviews is happening using Zoom technology, which is exactly what would have happened even if there were no pandemic. The tricky part will be figuring out how and when to conduct the next round of interviews, which will be done by the Vestry. We very much want to meet our candidates in person, to introduce them to our campus and, if appropriate, to the city of Hartford, to share a meal with them and have them lead us in worship. Under normal conditions, arranging all of that would be a logistical task; COVID-19 adds several levels of complexity since we need to make arrangements for meetings that comply with CDC and Episcopal Church in Connecticut guidelines. And so once again we ask for your prayerful support for our Recruitment Committee, our candidates, and our Vestry.

 

A task force has begun discussions about how to re-open our campus. Decisions about using our buildings and grounds are left up to us - to the Vestry, to be precise. The bishops of ECCT have asked that we not gather for worship in person until the end of June at the earliest, and further, they advise us to be prepared for that date to change in the event of a surge in infections. Their primary concern, and the Trinity Vestry's, is to gather only when we can be confident that people will not contract the coronavirus when they visit our campus. Such assurance can only come when we have acquired enough Personal Protective Equipment for everyone who comes, have carefully defined traffic flow, and are certain that we can fully sanitize the spaces we occupy once our worship is over. And because a substantial portion of our regular attendees classify as "high risk" for contracting the virus, we will need to continue offering online access to our worship at the same time as some of us gather in person.

 

Please do keep in mind that we are not re-opening Trinity Church, because Trinity Church has never closed. Our buildings have closed, but our buildings are not all there is to Trinity Church. The church is us! We've been doing things differently, such as worshipping online, supplying local feeding programs with money instead of prepared food, and holding Choir School rehearsals via Zoom. But we are a living church, as the story of Pentecost shows, and changing how we live out our mission is a sign that we are, indeed, the living body of Christ.

 

Like us on Facebook at