May 28, 2021
Friends in Faith,
This is a letter I have been wanting to write for 5 months now. Back in December when Council first decided we would move our worship services online-only the longest anyone thought it might last was maybe March. Each month we would look at where things were at and each month the number of active cases in Grande Prairie and area was higher and so we kept extending the decision to keep worship online only.
By April some of us were starting to think that maybe the time was coming soon. But then case counts really spiked – peaking at over 500 in the city alone. Still we knew that vaccinations were occurring and with those shots came a promise of hope. At our May meeting we looked at vaccinations and decided maybe it was time. At that point the provincial regulations were really saying “don’t do in-person worship” so we decided we would go with when the province loosened restrictions again. This week the day came. Instead of 15 bodies in the church for worship we are now allowed 15% of our fire capacity, with the possibility that in a couple of weeks we can have 1/3 of capacity. Our Sanctuary has a fire capacity of 388 so 15% is 58 and 1/3 would be 129.
Which is a really long way of getting to the point of saying that as of June 6th St. Paul’s will once again be having worship both in-person and online. We will be using the same protocols we used in September-November. As the provincial mask mandate is still in force masks are required. We still will not have congregational singing but will have our 3 person choirs each week to share music with us. Humming along with the singers is appropriate. We will have folk greeting and ushering at the door. We will keep a record of who is there each week in case contact tracing is required later. We will still be spacing ourselves around the sanctuary. We still can’t have post-church coffee (in person at least, coffee time on ZOOM will continue). But at least some of us will be together in person. It has been a long winter where we have not been able to say that. Believe me when I say that it feels really odd (or even terrible) to lead worship to an empty sanctuary and a camera. I look forward to having real live bodies looking back at me.
Like many of you, I am living with the hope that the end of COVID-tide is drawing near. It has been a long 15 or 16 months thus far. I miss getting together in person. I tire of connecting only over a computer screen. I feel disconnected. There is still a ways to go, we are not past the finish line yet. Some of us will still take time before we really feel comfortable getting back to “normal”. But we are getting closer. As I went to name this file I noted it was the 9th letter of COVID-tide. I sincerely hope it is the last pastoral letter I write with COVID in the file name
As we start to see the end of COVID-tide on the horizon I have a request. I think that if we try to go back to doing things exactly the way we were doing them before we will have missed a chance to learn new possibilities from the past few months. So I have a question for you. What have we learned about being the church in this time? What do we want to do differently than we did before? What might we need to let go of so we can take on something new? What is really important to keep? We are still called to be the church. What does that mean in this new era?
June 6th marks a new stage in our journey. We will be worshipping in person and online. Conveniently it is the first Sunday of the month so we will mark the new stage with the celebration of communion and a reflection on the 96th anniversary of the United Church of Canada. And whether we are present together in person or present through cameras and screens we are present together as a community of faith. God is there in the sanctuary and God is there in the cables and the bits and bytes. We are not alone. Thanks be to God.
Have a Blessed Summer, May God be with you till we meet again,
Gord
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