Tuesday, January 26 2021
Dear Friends, Welcome to the January issue of The Chronicle. This month is often a slower time in the life of congregations, but it has been anything but slow at St. John's. We're moving pews and other fixtures out of the sanctuary right now, so we can have a contractor come in and remove all the asbestos from the walls (and there's a lot of it). There's also Lent coming up in the middle of February, and preparations for Holy Week and Easter. All this takes quite a bit of planning in usual times, and it's doubly so during a pandemic, when every plan needs a "Plan B," and we're often reinventing how we do things to accommodate the realities of life these days. One of the particular challenges of planning for Holy Week and Easter is that we're not only planning for remote services for those holy days, but we're also beginning to think about what it might look like to begin resuming in-person worship by that time. It's too early to say conclusively that we will reopen by then, but I'm hopeful that vaccinations will continue to help bring the number of new cases down, and we will be able to resume worship in person (though it will still be socially distanced, and it probably won't feel "normal" yet). We will decide in early March, based on the data available at that time. In the meantime, we will continue to stream services from our building (though starting February 7 it'll be from the Chapel instead of the main Church), and our programming will continue by Zoom for the rest of the program year. My sincerest thanks to each of you for your patience and understanding as we have navigated this pandemic together. It brightens my day every time one of our members announces they've been vaccinated; it puts us that much closer to being able to be together again, the church gathered at our building, not each in our individual homes. In the meantime, I pray you all stay safe, and continue to be patient. Soon and very soon! Blessings, R.C. |