Yesterday was our second Sunday of gathering in-person as church. After the long interval of trying to be church while separated by pandemic and distancing edicts, we are now once again working at finding out who we are when we come together as church.
Next week I hope we will approach something closer to a more traditional worshiping Sunday (or at least as traditional as we ever get) but this week and last week have been all about talking about how we live into the future.
I am so very grateful to my folks, for their openness and their honesty about what they value most about us as church, and what they liked and found helpful about our "lockdown church" and what didn't necessarily work for them. What do we want to continue into the future and how do we interlace that into "what we did before." It's going to be an adventure.
In the meantime, I have some news: I'm going to continue posting videos each week -- they will not be the same as those I've been posting. In lieu of meeting together this past year I have been recording full services for each Sunday, but these new videos will be shorter and more personal.
My starting point as a preacher has always been, "OK - this is a scripture story from 2000 to 3000 years ago. Why am I reading it and what does it mean for us, right here, today?" I read -- constantly -- Facebook posts, news reports, and, of course, magazines and books. All my books have notes scribbled all over them because I always want to come back to that point and develop it further.
That is pretty much what I will be doing -- finding something that grabs my attention and running with it -- relating it to scripture when a connection seems to demand it, rather than starting with scripture and moving outward from there.
I hope that it proves interesting and will feed people. I'll continue to post links here, just as I have done in the past. Wish me well.
P.S. I just realized I titled this piece "The Interim: Week Two" -- but the more I think about yesterday's gathering, the past two weeks have not been an interim -- a filling up of space in time -- they may well have been the most truly "churchy" thing we have done in years. We talked and listened to each other and shared our worries and our joys and our hopes for tomorrow. There's going to have to be a lot of that built into wherever we go.
Blessings, Cherie
Next week I hope we will approach something closer to a more traditional worshiping Sunday (or at least as traditional as we ever get) but this week and last week have been all about talking about how we live into the future.
I am so very grateful to my folks, for their openness and their honesty about what they value most about us as church, and what they liked and found helpful about our "lockdown church" and what didn't necessarily work for them. What do we want to continue into the future and how do we interlace that into "what we did before." It's going to be an adventure.
In the meantime, I have some news: I'm going to continue posting videos each week -- they will not be the same as those I've been posting. In lieu of meeting together this past year I have been recording full services for each Sunday, but these new videos will be shorter and more personal.
My starting point as a preacher has always been, "OK - this is a scripture story from 2000 to 3000 years ago. Why am I reading it and what does it mean for us, right here, today?" I read -- constantly -- Facebook posts, news reports, and, of course, magazines and books. All my books have notes scribbled all over them because I always want to come back to that point and develop it further.
That is pretty much what I will be doing -- finding something that grabs my attention and running with it -- relating it to scripture when a connection seems to demand it, rather than starting with scripture and moving outward from there.
I hope that it proves interesting and will feed people. I'll continue to post links here, just as I have done in the past. Wish me well.
P.S. I just realized I titled this piece "The Interim: Week Two" -- but the more I think about yesterday's gathering, the past two weeks have not been an interim -- a filling up of space in time -- they may well have been the most truly "churchy" thing we have done in years. We talked and listened to each other and shared our worries and our joys and our hopes for tomorrow. There's going to have to be a lot of that built into wherever we go.
Blessings, Cherie
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