WORSHIP UPDATE
From tomorrow we will meet virtually. See below!
This morning a dozen of us joined and worshipped together at our Lent Prayer Retreat. It was a sweet time of thoughtful listening to God, individually and corporately. We were grateful for Josie’s careful preparation and appreciated the reminder that God looks at each of us with such deep love and compassion. I’ll be picking up on that theme in the sermon tomorrow!
As a community we are so aware of our friends and neighbors at this time, and mindful of the additional layers of care that we are all taking to protect each other and so we are making the move to virtual worship for the next few weeks. Updates will follow week by week on Facebook and the website.
I hope that by Palm Sunday we will be able to gather joyfully together outside the sanctuary and sing and wave and delight in the reminder that our King comes riding on a donkey. I hope that we will then enter into Holy Week in person… but we will wait and see how the situation changes in our community.
Earlier this week, the staff team met and we considered a number of different ways we could do communal worship together when it became necessary. We discussed our shared values and the ways we want to worship, welcome and wonder together. In the end, we concluded that ZOOM (a conferencing app that works by phone or computer) might best serve our needs in a virtual worship world, as it gives the capacity for us to hear each other’s voices, to see each other's faces and to all have opportunity to contribute. We also like its capacity for us to see the service slides as well as the leader (and each other!). The service will remain high-participation.
However, we recognise this means that you each need to work out how to operate yet another piece of technology! We hope this will be easy to negotiate - but we are aware it may have bumpy moments … we will see!
The signup details are below. This week we will meet as normal (but virtually) at 5pm (4.30pm for technology tweaks) … we may move to a new morning time in a future week so keep reading my updates!
So how will this work?
The sign up information is down below.
When you log in you should automatically be muted. If you are taking part (as a reader or doing prayers of the people) you will need to unmute yourself when it’s your ‘turn’ to speak.
Our musician will sing - and you are encouraged to sing along from home while remaining muted (sadly the system does not work well with multiple voices at once!).
We will have the slides available on our shared screen to guide you through the worship, but you can also follow along in your BCP2019 starting on page 105.
At 4.30pm tomorrow we will open the ‘meeting,’ so dig out these instructions (see below) and connect! This will be a time to troubleshoot any difficulties, so if you anticipate .
Then get out your BCP and an ESV. Perhaps light a candle and quieten your heart for worship.
Then at about 4.58pm, smile and wave at each other and get ready for corporate worship in a new and different setting. Stay muted unless you have a role to play, EXCEPT there will be a chance in the Prayers of the People to respond - feel free to unmute yourself and jump in then. ALSO at the end we will stay on line for an "open mic" opportunity to share how you are doing.
At 5pm we will begin with a short orientation to zoom and check everyone is on board before we begin.
If you want to gather with your household or a few safe friends to worship together that could be delightful.
Here are the invitation details:
This is a scheduled Zoom meeting, and we will change the meeting link from time to time for security reasons. You can always join the most up-to-date meeting link by clicking the orange "Join Sunday Service" button on the virtual worship page of our website here: Virtual Worship.
And ... some conference call etiquette:
DO mute yourself upon entry (if not otherwise muted)
DO use earbuds if you can. The mic tends to work better than the speaker phone.
DO state your name before speaking so those not on video can identify you when we have our “open mic” time at the end (but readers and POTPers should NOT introduce themselves during the service). For example say, “This is Liz. This week I have felt welcome when...”
So tomorrow, we will look at Luke 10:38-42 … Curious about Martha and want to know how to not be anxious about ‘many things’? Join us for worship at 5pm!
41 But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, 42 but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.” Luke 10
With love
Liz