Worship at Trinity
The Rev’d Julia E. Whitworth, Rector The pandemic continued to challenge our worship team to imagine new ways to create liturgy together safely. I am proud of our hard work and creativity, even as we remain exhausted by the memory of it. Yet through it all, we were reminded that God is with us wherever we are. By the end of January, we succumbed to the cold and finally suspended all remaining outdoor services and resumed a completely pre-recorded video model for Sunday worship. After that COVID surge abated a bit, and adult parishioners gained access to vaccines, we began slowly to layer back some in-person, and temporally bound worship for our parish community. During Lent, we welcomed the 8am Sunday and 5:30 Wednesday Eucharists back into the Church. What a joy it was to see small groups of people back in our pews again. For our larger, 10:30 service we moved away from pre-recorded worship to Zoom, which allowed us to create a live experience and enhance parish connections. We also created Lenten bags for at-home devotions. Holy Week 2021 challenged us to create some interesting adaptations of our regular traditions, including a live-streamed Agape Supper from the Fortune Room, a virtual vigil with the Blessed Sacrament, an outdoor Good Friday walk for families, and an in-person Easter Vigil by the Holy Fire in the garden, before proceeding to the Church for an in-person Eucharist. Easter Sunday found our congregation gathered, at last, for two glorious services under an enormous tent, also livestreamed, in the parking lot. For Pentecost, we had a community Eucharist on the soccer field, and the choir offered a beautiful, if windy, Evensong on the playground. Our Bishop came in June to confirm 12 confirmands in a beautiful service in the Lemler Garden. Basically, there are very few spots on our campus that haven’t enjoyed
some sort of liturgy at this point. We have an even deeper gratitude for the gardens and green spaces on Trinity’s urban campus that gave us flexibility and a fresh perspective for these various approaches to worship. By June, we had recommenced larger in-person services in the church building—still masked, with socially distant seating, albeit refraining from congregational singing or full choir. We were able to release our registration protocols. In our decision-making, Trinity’s Regathering Taskforce continued to maintain a careful balance between the pastoral needs for increased in-person options and the concerns of the most vulnerable among us—especially the immunosuppressed and unvaccinated children. It has remained important to us to have many options for many risk tolerances. From June through October, we convened three services each Sunday, at 8am and 10:30 in the Church, and 9am in the Garden. While we continue only to administer Communion in one kind (consecrated Bread, no shared chalice), it’s been a joy to enjoy the Sacrament of Holy Eucharist, in person, together. A very exciting change to our on-line options for worship was the installation of our new live-stream cameras in the church in the spring. I designed our four-camera system with Albie Marco and the technicians at Force Technology Solutions in Greenfield. Our cameras are low-profile, but powerful enough to rotate over 180 degrees with a powerful zoom. Controlled remotely from a console in our coat closet, the cameras have allowed us to improve on the home experience during live services considerably! We are so grateful to Albie Marco, Tracey Lemon, Ray Neufeld and Ken Feeley for operating the live-stream cameras for the Sunday 10:30 am services, as well as many weddings and funerals in the last year. Since regathering in June, we managed to continue our 3-service schedule through October. After a Start Up Sunday
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