Dear Faith Family:
Famed Yankee baseball player, coach and manager Yogi Berra, who just may be better known for his “Yogi-isms” than he was for his on-the-field play, supposedly once said, "It's déjà vu all over again."
Writing this article for the newsletter, I think I understand his meaning much more nowadays.
Back in early April, when we made the announcement that we wouldn’t be holding an in-person Easter service, it seemed like a tall task to produce a meaningful worship for our congregation in some fashion. But we persevered, and I am proud of the scaled down, online service we were able to produce in such a short amount of time. All of the members of our Digital Services Team and I were novices at pulling together online services back then, but we trusted in the Holy Spirit. And I think what took place that day was nothing less than miraculous!
It certainly wasn’t the same Easter worship that we were all used to, gathered together, packed tightly in our beautiful sanctuary, with glorious flowers adorning the altar in its resplendent white! But I think that Mike Nelson, Veronica Nelson, Debi Byars and Austin Erickson helped to produce a memorable and emotional online worship experience.
It was a service that was very much needed at the time.
We were only slightly more than three weeks into our online services then, and none of us knew how long the doors of our church would remain closed. Anxiety and fear were high, and we all felt that the Easter online worship was important for all of us to feel a little bit of normalcy. And it was.
But now we are many more months into this pandemic, and we still haven’t been able to open our church doors. Sure, we are still worshiping, and we have many active ministries taking place. But we’ve learned a lot about how to worship online, including what is effective and what isn’t. We know when we can reproduce a meaningful worship and when we can’t.
And this past week, as the Faith Lutheran Church Council met for its November meeting, and it became very apparent that the safe and healthy choice was to continue to hold online worship services at least through the end of December, I felt the familiar pangs of what we went through last spring when we were trying to figure out how to produce a lively and spirit-filled Easter service. … But this time my concern and struggle was over how to do so for Faith Lutheran’s traditional Thanksgiving Eve service and our beloved Christmas Eve service.
Thankfully for me, everyone present in the room felt the same. … This time there was no way to reproduce the feel or the excitement or the emotion of our Thanksgiving Eve or Christmas Eve services here at Faith. … The times are different. This isn’t Easter and early in the pandemic any longer. ... These are Thanksgiving and Christmas services, and there is no replacing them. And frankly, we all know that you are in different places this Advent season versus the Easter season too.
And so we’re not going to ask you all to tear yourselves away from your family to attend an online Thanksgiving Eve or Christmas Eve worship that will leave us all feeling so much was lacking.
Instead, we’ll be recording Thanksgiving week service on our regular Tuesday night schedule, and we will let that serve as our service all through the week on our Facebook and YouTube pages. As for Christmas Eve, that night we will post the worship service from last year’s Christmas Eve here in our beloved sanctuary. That way families can watch it whenever it is convenient for them.
Feel like watching the Christmas Eve service on Christmas Eve because it just wouldn’t feel right without it? … It’ll be there! … Feel like watching last year’s Christmas Eve service on Christmas day! … It’ll be there! … Feel like watching it several times during your family festivities throughout the week? … It’ll be there!
We are all in agreement that this will be a subpar alternative to gathering in person for Christmas Eve. But we all felt that an even worse alternative would be to host an online Christmas Eve service that lacked the excitement and energy and joy that usually accompanies that experience. So, instead, we’ll save that pent up energy for next year’s Christmas Eve when we’ll be back together again!
Finally, I am excited to announce that you still will have a Faith Lutheran Sunday School Christmas Program to look forward to this year! … Albeit a recorded online Christmas program.
The Sunday school and confirmation students have been working hard to perform an original and unique Christmas program that was written by one of our very own Sunday school moms, Renata Smeby. All of our Sunday school and confirmation kids have been eagerly playing their part to produce this program, which will appear on our Facebook and YouTube pages on Sunday, Dec. 20. And you’ll be able to watch the program over and over again throughout the Christmas week.
This program will be a hoot! … And I am very grateful to all of the Sunday school and confirmation families for the time and energy they are putting into a program that will lift up the spirits of our congregation. Bravo to them all!
Faith Family: Thank you again for your patience, flexibility and understanding during this unique and challenging time. We’re all just trying to make the best decisions we can in the moment, and we’re always trying to err on the side of the health and safety of our community.
If I don’t get another chance to say this to you before the holidays: I hope that you are all safe and well and that you find joy this Advent season. I like to believe that the Holy Spirit is providing us an opportunity to strip this holiday season down to its bare essentials: family and gratitude this Thanksgiving, and the miraculous birth of Jesus Christ two thousands years ago that changed this world forever at Christmas!
Happy Thanksgiving and Merry Christmas to you all Faith Family! … May it be a blessed time for you and your loved ones!
Blessings to you Faith Family!
Intern Pastor Devlyn Brooks
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