Last week, I invited you to fill out a survey to help the vestry discern how St. Luke’s will reopen for in-person worship. I’ve received 29responses so far and the results are interesting. (Note: The responses are a mix of individuals and households.)
Most interesting, by far, is the wide range of readiness for indoor worship. Our community includes people who are ready now, people who will wait until we reach herd immunity, and everywhere in-between. There are even some who are planning to stick with online worship for the foreseeable future. What’s more, we’re pretty evenly spread between most of the categories. Even with a pretty small sample size, and with the way surveys tend to eliminate nuance, I think it’s safe to say that it’ll be a while before we’re back to indoor, in-person worship as our normative Sunday practice. It’s coming—praise be!—but it’s still months away.
Given that in-person Sunday morning worship for everyone is still some time away, we will continue to honor the value we place on inclusion and welcome by holding our primary weekly worship on Zoom. We’ll supplement with in person services, indoors and out, until we can fully transition back to in-person Sunday morning worship.
The vestry is meeting on Monday night to, among other things, give final approval for our reopening plan. I imagine that I’ll have more specifics to share about that soon.
I want to highlight the tangible benefit of holding worship online. Our worship services now have regular attendees who live in other states, something that was impossible when worship was just in-person. Closer to home, folks who aren’t comfortable driving are able to join in worship equally with everyone else. People with time conflicts can watch the service later. It took a global pandemic to get us online; now that we’re here, we’re here to stay in one form or another.
Thanks to everyone who filled out the survey! If you or your household haven’t done so yet, it will accept responses until Monday morning. Click here to fill it out.Have a good weekend! I look forward to seeing you on Sunday for church on Zoom (for now…).
Blessings,Justin
St. Luke's Episcopal Church 