Even before the pandemic, May was usually filled with many shifts. As the school year wraps up for students, teachers, and families, daily rhythms of classroom and homework move to lazy mornings and relaxed schedules. Weather shifts from cool, spring showers to steamy days and humid nights. Work schedules have the occasion to shift from long days and weeks to make way for summer vacations and allow for holiday weekends and evenings with friends and family.
Our Lord of Life community shifts with the church year and the seasons, too. How fitting that we begin our summer this Sunday with the celebration of Pentecost, honoring the Holy Spirit, that leads us into new and exciting ways to live, share, and celebrate.
This year, there are additional shifts happening, too. In the last few days, we heard about a major shift in COVID protocols, which modifies many of the restrictions of the last fourteen months. As we review the changing protocols, we are thrilled to announce some big news about our lives together.
First, beginning Memorial Weekend, we’ll shift to our new summer schedule of 8 am and 10 am worship. Allowing an extra half-hour between the services allows us to return the 8 am worship service indoors, in person, surrounded by the ongoing sanctuary renewal projects. Please bring your own chair for comfortable seating. Metal folding chairs will also be available.
Our 10 am worship service will be outside, weather permitting, with the option of in-person, inside when the weather is bad. We invite you to bring your own chair or blanket for comfortable seating. Metal folding chairs will also be available.
Both worship moments will continue to be streamed online, so you can watch from your home, the campground, or wherever else you might be when summer Sundays roll around. You can also watch them later. All of our worship services are archived on our YouTube channel and our website.
There will also be a shift in our food truck events. These have been a huge success over the last six months, pumping revenue into local, independent restaurants and bringing our community together during a time of isolation.
This summer, food trucks are shifting to the first and third Wednesdays and we are adding a free concert series with artists from around the region. Please see the announcement on our social media, website, and weekend bulletins. These will not only be great opportunities to listen to a variety of great music, but also a time to reconnect with friends and meet new neighbors. We’ve shifted our traditional Vacation Bible School (VBS) to a series of activities to coincide with the concerts.
Even though the mask mandate is lifting for vaccinated individuals, we encourage you to continue wearing a mask while moving about in the indoor and outdoor spaces. It isn’t required, but our ministry staff will mask up, even though we are vaccinated, knowing that it will bring comfort to some of our little ones and the vulnerable around us who aren’t yet vaccinated.
Thank you again for your patience, flexibility, and encouragement over the last year. Your faithfulness to what God is doing through our congregation has been a source of comfort, hope, and stability. “We love because God first loved us” (1 John 4:19).
Even as the Holy Spirit guides us to shift in new directions, Jesus is the rock we can stand on.
I pray that you are well and staying healthy.
See you soon,
Pastor Lowell