Moving to Beverley Hills
- Amy Rowe
- May 28
- 7 min read
By now I hope everyone has heard the surprising news: Incarnation is moving! The information below was shared after church on Sunday, May 25. Please reach out with questions!
New Summer Worship Time
Starting on Sunday, June 1, we will worship all summer at 11:30am (the same time we worshipped on Easter Sunday). Beverley Hills will worship before us at their usual time of 10am.
I mentioned last week that Beverley Hills has offered to change their service time to accomodate us, since we both worship at 10am. This is an incredibly generous concession to our needs! But late last week, their leadership let us know that they wouldn't be ready to make a decision about their new service time before I go on sabbatical. This is a major change for their congregation (as it is for us!), and they understandably need more than 2 weeks to deliberate.
So, we will worship at 11:30am all summer long to allow Beverley Hills more time to pray and consider their options. This also allows our staff to make a single plan for the summer now, while I'm still around, rather than beginning at 11:30am and then pivoting to a new time once Beverley Hills makes their decision.
We are targeting a switch to a new, permanent service time on my first Sunday back, September 7, or on the first Sunday after the fall retreat, October 12. Our most likely service times in the fall and beyond will be either 9am or 11am. (Most likely. Not guaranteed!)
Both times have pros and cons, and those pros and cons vary widely depending on where you live, who's in your household, and what your daily rhythms are. We all have preferences and opinions, but this is Beverley Hills’ decision rather than ours, so for now I simply invite you to pray.
Please pray that God will lead both of our churches to the time slot that will best enable the work he is calling us to do in this next season. That time slot may or may not be the time that we most want for ourselves and our households (and it’s perfectly okay to pray and ask for that, too!) This is a faith-stretching journey for all of us. Let's all start praying and let's see what God does next.
Hospitality
Potlucks and other church hospitality events will take place before the service throughout the summer. (Remember the shady, spacious, beautiful Easter morning potluck vibes!) This means that the Pentecost potluck picnic will happen at 10am on Sunday, June 8 (my last Sunday). Sign up here to bring something! Rain plan TBD.
We will still make coffee before the service each Sunday, but now our coffee maker has a permanent home on the kitchen counter at Beverley Hills. And we hope to continue building our friendship with Beverley Hills over coffee between our services.
Children
Beverley Hills is a beautiful church with a large natural playground and a thriving Reggio-Emilia preschool on the premises. We are excited for the possibilities this holds for our children's ministries in the future!
However, this is a big change, and navigating it will take time, patience, and creativity. We know that 11:30am is a particularly tough time for many young children (and their parents!), and that moving from the spaciousness of Drew to the pews of Beverley Hills will be an adjustment for all. We are doing what we can as soon as we can to help with this transition, and we will be observing, learning, and tweaking throughout the summer.
I am asking everyone to please extend some extra grace to children, parents, staff, and volunteers as we all navigate this transition together. Nobody expected this, everybody is learning, and new things take time — it's normal!
Below are some important details on children's ministry:
Next Two Sundays
On June 1, children ages 3+ are invited to gather when church begins at 11:30am on the playground (same location as our Easter brunch). We’ll make paper airplanes and practice for the Pentecost service, then join the rest of the church family in the sanctuary at the Peace. Nursery care will be available for children under 3 in the lovely Beverley Hills nursery!
On June 8, it’s Pentecost! Children will help to lead this celebration of the Holy Spirit and the Church’s birthday. We'll gather in the courtyard a few minutes before 11:30am to prepare for the opening processional. No nursery care will be provided, since we traditionally observe this major feast all together! The nursery will be open and available for parents to use as needed.
Wild Wonder
On June 15, Wild Wonder begins! Wild Wonder will meet weekly at 10:45am on the playground to enjoy God's creation and the many gifts of our community. This time will include a brief all-ages prayer liturgy before entering the service together. Our hope is that between this and the Eucharist, families of young children will feel "prayed up" even if energy, attention, and behavior wane over the course of the service.
Summer Nursery
Throughout the summer (beginning June 15), we will slightly expand the age range in our nursery as a help to the parents of our youngest children. We are currently looking into the most helpful age range to balance the needs of our families with the constraints of the space and our volunteers; details TBD. The nursery will open when church begins and close at the Peace so that all ages can celebrate the Eucharist together.
Balcony
The balcony at Beverley Hills has been partially cleared to make a calm spot for parents of feeding or napping infants-in-arms. We hope to work with Beverley Hills to further clear and use this space in the future. It's a big task, and although they've done a LOT of clearing already, there are still many decades of ministry materials being stored up there, somewhat precariously. For this reason, the balcony is not yet not a safe spot for crawlers or walkers. Please do not allow your children to play up there!
Spaces Available
Please consider how you might take advantage of Beverley Hills' many peaceful and well-equipped spaces (the nursery, the courtyard, the narthex, the playground) to help your children worship on Sundays. Just a few examples:
Kids who need a quiet break might enjoy leafing through a picture book in the narthex — within earshot of the service, but with less sensory input.
Kids whose wiggles overflow the pews might appreciate a parent taking them to the playground during the sermon or prayers (I can't tell you how many sermons I spent walking my toddlers up and down the sidewalks outside of church).
Young children may appreciate spending a portion of the service playing in the nursery.
All parents and children might benefit from walking around the building together before or after church to get used to things, to say “Thank you, God!”, to enjoy the natural playground, see where the nursery is, where the bathroom is, etc. Notice that many things in this shared space don’t belong to us (most of them, actually)!
Child Safety
We loved the wide sight-lines and windows that made for safe, visible children's ministry pretty much everywhere at Drew! By contrast, there are many corners, hallways, and tucked-away spaces throughout the building at Beverley Hills that pose new child-safety challenges. As a result, we are working hard to update the site plan for our child safety policy.
Parents, please do not allow your children to play and explore the building unattended!
Sanctuary Acoustics
Due to its beautiful domed ceiling, the sanctuary is very loud and reverberant — it was built for soaring choral harmonies like we heard on Advent. But this also poses a sensory challenge for some of our worshippers. It's also a challenge for our musicians; we want to be able to hear voices and instruments as we sing together, rather than a booming wall of sound.
We are taking many, many steps to abate the sanctuary's acoustic challenges. Some of these are in process right now! And some will take more time, as they will require staff capacity, permission from Beverley Hills, and/or larger budget decisions. For that reason, the sanctuary sound will be a work in progress.
I won't list all the acoustic details here, but if you're curious to learn more, please ask!
Offering and Money Counting
We have removed our drop safe from the van (thank you Grant Sung!) and are working with Beverley Hills to install the safe on the church premises. Once we do, we will inform our volunteer counters and ushers of the new process for handling the offertory. This may take a little time, so until we are ready, we will suspend the in-person offering.
Sunday Volunteers
We were already deep in the midst of summer scheduling when we learned about this unexpected move. We did not have time to completely overhaul volunteer assignments in PCO; however, the work of most volunteer roles will change significantly. We will winnow down what we do not need as we learn more over the summer.
On Sunday, June 1, we will offer an “instructed service” that will walk everyone through the new plans for worshiping and volunteering in the building. From there, we will continue updating volunteer instructions and training on the job as we go.
If you are scheduled to volunteer this Sunday, June 1, stay tuned for instructions!
Parking
Beverley Hills only has street parking and a small accessible lot. So far, this has not seemed to create a significant hardship. However, we will be keeping an eye on parking over the summer and learning what is feasible for us on a long-term basis. We have already scoped out a few possible aids to our parking if we need them.
The construction at Drew is only temporary? Could this move to Beverley Hills be temporary too?
In theory, yes. If everything goes disastrously this summer, we could reload the van and move back into Drew this fall when construction finishes. Our adaptability and pilgrim mentality is a strength!
However, we anticipate the move to Beverley Hills being a permanent change, and we are making plans for this to be the case. We would not want Beverley Hills to move their service time for only a temporary change! We see many benefits to a new season of stability for our Virginia congregation as we prepare to launch a church plant in Maryland. And most importantly: we believe this move is God's clear leading and provision for our church, though certainly not on a timeline we would have wanted. I wrote more about that in my letter.
Last Sunday before the service, someone prayed that we would always be a congregation that is willing to follow where God is leading us by the pillar of fire and the cloud. This unexpected move isn't quite that level of clarity, but it's pretty darn close, and so we are stepping forward with hope, faith, and courage for whatever comes next. Thank you for taking this step together!
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