Welcome to the Monday Mailing #25 –
The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men
Gang aft a-gley (Robert Burns)
You know the saying, the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.
So it is with our plans for launching the Hybrid (Zoom/In-person) worship service on September 13. But there is a plan. And here’s the information you need.
We will be continuing worship on Zoom-only through October 4. This will give us two more opportunities for Communion at home (9/6 and 10/4) while the Worship Ministry makes plans for November first – All Saints’ Sunday – and a communion Sunday. More on that later.
Pastor Janice will be on vacation on September 20 & 27 (good for her), but we will continue to Zoom for worship, blessed to have representatives from both our Synod (Synod of the Northeast) and the Synod of Mid-America sharing God’s word with us those days.
Worship ministry is in conversation with Dream Lab Pro to work on the issues we have encountered with our ability to Zoom to the sanctuary, and vice-versa. We learned what we did not know during our two trial worships in August, and look forward to being able to upgrade our service, and therefore our ministry. There is a matching grant from the Presbytery of Albany to help us in this matter, and we will be applying for that soon.
NOTE: we will need to train some folks to join the ranks of our “tech” people. Dream Lab Pro will be working with us, so that what we have will be able to be used by us! My colleagues in the Presbytery who have already used Dream Lab Pro have assured me of just this. If you are interested (not asking you to commit, just express an interest) in being a part of a tech team, please let me know. We can sure use your skills!
So with all this said, we are pushing back the launch of our Hybrid Worship service to October 11. The Session believes that this will give us time to work out the kinks in what we are doing, and allow for the level approach for re-opening of the worship experience. Look for more information about this in the November Newsletter.
The church has never “closed” – we continue to meet virtually!
Peace to you. . .
Pastor Janice