The Methodist Mosaic Volume 62 Number 5 The United Methodist Church of Kent— A Place to Grow May 2020
Dear Friends, We have now been in fully online worship since March 22, livestreaming our contemporary service at 9:30 and our traditional service at 10:30 each Sunday morning. Two aspects of this have been especially notable. First is the extent to which people have been connecting with our online worship experiences. In the first two and half months of this year, when circumstances were “normal,” we were averaging around 400 persons connecting with our worship each Sunday—about 300 attending “in-person” and about 100 attending virtually through our livestreaming, videos, and podcasts. Since going fully online, we only have around 15 persons in the building each Sunday morning, comprising the small teams of worship leaders and technical people in the gym and in the sanctuary; but we have been averaging nearly 500 people connecting online. This phenomenon—that total worship attendance actually increased—has also been reported by some other large churches that have been broadcasting well-developed online services. This has occurred in spite of the fact that some of our people do not have access to online worship and have not been able to attend. What is happening is that we are picking up quite a number of online worshippers who were not previously connecting with our worship. We also may be experiencing something of the phenomenon that has occurred in periods of crisis in the past (such as 9/11)—that in such times people feel a greater need to seek God. In any case, we rejoice that in these trying circumstances we can join in worship! The other notable aspect of our recent worship experience is the way that our staff and volunteers have stepped up to the task of shaping worship in new ways. From technical innovations to creative musical leadership, a great deal of energy and initiative has gone into creating what you see each Sunday in the worship hours. We are blessed with a very dedicated team that has rapidly moved our church forward into these new ways of worship. Some of the techniques we are developing will enable us to continue to present enhanced digital worship experiences even after we return to in-person worship! That return to in-person worship still appears to be some time off in the future. In the meantime, we encourage you to connect with our livestreaming each Sunday at www.kentmethodist.org (services continue to be available in recorded form after Sunday morning); or if you do not have online access, you can get a DVD of each Sunday by simply contacting the church office (330-673-5879, ext. 10). Our ministries also continue to be active in many ways beyond Sunday worship; see the rest of this newsletter for details.
In Christ, Dr. David Palmer
Our sympathies to: • Family and friends of Joe Coia • Sean Phillips on the death of his father
Recent Hospitalizations and Surgeries: Don Ashton, Greg Friedman, Fred Gross, Dave Kurtz, Gretchen Laflin