Leia Durland-Jones, Director of Faith Development

Your church staff continues to work diligently to keep our church community safe, connected and supported during this surreal time.

Our online Family Worship service at 10:15 on Sunday mornings are creating connection while offering spiritual nourishment and faith development. These multigenerational services last about forty-five minutes and are designed to reach across the lifespan with story, song, images, sharing and ritual. The weekly at home #chalicechallenge is a fun way to invite participants to create a chalice out of found items at home and submit an image that is shared during worship. Our weekly meditation hymn, There is a Love, includes photos of our church families/members that they submit as well as the names of those we are holding in our hearts and circles of concern. All ages are participating in this service and using the chatbox as well as participating in breakout rooms to share joys and sorrows.

Caroline does a great job with technical and in the moment support for these live services.

We offered Family Worship on March 22, 29, April 5, 12, 19 and plan to do so indefinitely. Attendance has ranged weekly from 76 to 126 people.

I continue to meet weekly on Mondays with Sean and also have a regular check-in with Alex. Our weekly staff meetings on Wednesday mornings, attended by all staff, help keep us connected and able to identify ways to support and assist each other in our work. It is wonderful to have all of the staff contributing inspirational/pastoral articles for the church emails and blog.

My Tuesday afternoon weekly church chats on Zoom have 6-8 participants each week and offer a consistent opportunity for people to check-in and connect with others from church.

Our weekly virtual coffee/social hour attracts between 20-25 participants. I have been serving as the manager/technical support/gatekeeper and created a handout for group leaders to use to facilitate small conversation groups via Zoom. Breck Gastinger, Christine Gresser, Caroline Heins, Gayle Floyd, Frank Dukes, Achsah Carrier and Shirley Paul all agreed to host breakout rooms. I have received positive feedback about having breakout rooms—although this past Sunday we ran into a Zoom glitch and had to stay in one big group (of 25) and that worked too.

Caroline and I have a daily check-in to assess priorities and tasks for the week/day. She has taken the lead on producing both the Wednesday inspirational email as well as the regular Friday email. We work together on assessing and curating the materials for the Friday email and she does a great job of assembling them. I echo those who have expressed appreciation for Caroline’s articles in the church emails. In support of our RE families, Caroline recorded two Spirit Play stories for families to access and use at home. She is also packing up Summit House in preparation for our hosting of PACEM in June.

Creating Family Worship takes a chunk of my time each week as does resources curation (for worship and or supporting church life online.) I continue to write and edit the weekly Faith Development e-newsletter that comes out on Saturday mornings.

As church life is virtual for now, I am paying more attention to the church Facebook page and posting there more frequently as well as sending more to Achsah for inclusion on the church blog and webpage.

The virtual Talent Show on April 10 was great fun! Achsah is working to upload the acts of those who gave permission for their performance to be shared on the webpage—so there will be on-demand performances available soon. Thanks to everyone who participated!

I met with the RE Committee virtually in April and we plan to meet again in May. While I include family faith development activities in the weekly Faith Development e-newsletter, it is clear from checking the click-throughs on Constant Contact that only a few families are accessing these materials. Feedback I have received from families with younger children is that they continued to be maxed out managing the details of day to day life and trying to do schoolwork from home.

Our youth programs continue to meet online successfully! Neighboring Faith, Coming of Age and YRUU continue to meet weekly. It is a joy to pop into their Zoom rooms and connect with them. I am thankful to the advising teams for the willingness to continue meeting with our youth. Linda Dukes, our mentor support liaison, and I had two meetings with Coming of Age mentors to support them in their continued efforts to mentor COA participants this spring.

Our Special Friends church pen pal program has had modest interest expressed with about ten participants. We will have a special gathering for the Special Friends participants so that they can meet in person once we can gather again.

Regarding Stewardship, I am working with Linda Dukes to continue identifying people we can ask to pledge who might not have been asked directly yet. Our hope is to continue to close the gap even though the pledge drive is officially over. Caroline and I will be meeting this week to go over some database updates. Sean is working to help us improve our current database woes. I am thrilled that we have added giving by text to our fundraising tools. Yay Sean!

To give my mind and body a break from so much screen time, I have been working (with help from Annalee!) on cataloging the Faith Development library in Summit House. It is a big project that we are tackling a bit at a time. It allows for a sense of accomplishment and we will have a lending library for parents when we can be together in person again.

Pastoral support continues to be a need as well as resource curation for congregants going through various challenges. I am grateful to be called upon for these requests.

There has been such a tremendous response from volunteers in our congregation to help create ways for us to stay connected to one another during this scary and strange time. Thanks to every-one who has stepped up and said, “yes!” whether by running an errand, making masks, making a phone call or by staying home (which can sometimes feel like one of the hardest things to do!)

I was reflecting with friends and family the other day about the pandemic. I shared that one of my hopes and prayers is that when people in our congregation look back on this time they say, “It was my church that really helped me make it through.” Thank you for being that church.