Letter from Lindy Sept 13

Pilgrims,
 
Heavens, we have a lot going on this Sunday. All important. All good. But with it comes a change to our normal Sunday routine. As I hope you all have read, we will have our bi-annual congregational meeting this Sunday after worship. We will do so by staying in the Zoom webinar with our moderator leading us through the decisions before us. All agenda items have been sent to you under separate email. For those who join worship via YouTube, you will need to log on to the zoom link to join the meeting. Please do so.
 
With the congregational meeting, we will host both Holy Communion and a special Creation Justice Q&A prior to worship. The links and times for each are above. Again, any and all who would like to join, I encourage you to do so.
 
Our wonderful ambassador, Bill Dolbow, has suggested a new way of connecting Pilgrims together (safely) during the worship hour. We have strengthened and expanded our wifi capacity such that it now extends to the columbarium--we are just not sure for how many. It worked for one phone on the day Spectrum was here. 
 
Bill's hope is that a group of interested Pilgrims might want to join him, devices in hand, to watch worship together. The Reopening Team thought this might be a good test case for a small group gathering (with all appropriate safety protocols) to see how we do. Our reopening guidelines allow for 15 people (or 8 families, we rounded up :) to come together at the columbarium. Before we jump all in, we thought we would test it for the next few weeks, just to see how stable the connection is while we live stream worship, slowly building the number of access points. Our hope is to be able to offer a sign up sheet for folks to join in. Be on the look out :) And, we will keep you posted.
 
As we turn toward fall, the worship and tech teams want to offer an idea for connection, if even virtually. We would like to go into Zoom Meeting Mode versus Webinar the first Sunday of each month, so that we might "be" with each other in two ways. We will open the meeting on the 1st Sunday at 10:15 for you to log on and fellowship with your fellow Pilgrims. At 10:25, Danny will offer our prelude for us to center ourselves for worship. During the welcome, we will join together in a zoom protocol of muting ourselves and turning off our videos, so that our focus is on worship. At communion, we will invite you to turn your videos on, so that we can visually share in communion together. Fingers crossed we learn to do so with not too many bloopers.
 
Finally, it has been important through the summer for the tech and worship teams to have one weekend unplugged from live worship. We believe it is important to continue to do so, so that we offer you our best selves. In looking Christian calendar for September -December, we believe pre-recording the 4th Sunday of each month, allows us to live naturally into its rhythm and honor seasons and sacred days. On those Sundays, or worship service will be uploaded on YouTube only.
 
I've shared a lot of information, but I hope you take the time to not only note our Fall rhythm, but to join in with these ways of being beloved community together. I hope they help us find connection amidst a continuation of distancing.
 
Any thoughts, I would love to hear.
Grace and peace,
Pastor Lindy