Worship at Trinity The Rev’d Julia E. Whitworth, Rector strumental preludes/postludes recorded elsewhere while our organ is revoiced—as well as photo montages, recorded readings, guest preachers, and more. Our intention was to continue offering moments of beauty and spiritual nourishment for you throughout this season of fast from our space and community. We have also attempted, quite bluntly, to keep it interesting so you will keep tuning in. In May and June, I assembled a Regathering Taskforce to help us frame parameters for reintroducing in-person worship. On July 11, we began to offer a Garden service with required registration, enrollment caps, assigned and distanced seating, masks, and other precautionary measures. By summer’s end we were holding three Garden Services: 8am Morning Prayer in the Cloister Garden, and 9am and 10:30 Holy Eucharist in the Lemler Garden, while online offering continued with Zoom adult forums and coffee hours. We also celebrated the Eucharist in the Garden on Wednesday evenings at 5:30.
For obvious reasons, 2020 brought considerable challenges in planning and executing liturgy at Trinity. We kicked off the year with a celebration of the Epiphany, the Baptism of our Lord, the Feast of Dr. Martin Luther King, and the commencement of Lent as we traditionally do: with the celebration of Holy Eucharist and rich offerings of music by our choir and choristers in our beautiful sanctuary.
After a live-streamed “Welcome Back” Eucharist and picnic on the soccer field, the weather began to get colder and the days shorter. By November we had scaled back our Garden Eucharist to just one per Sunday at 10:30am. On January 9, we suspended the Garden Eucharist until Lent.
I think none of us will take that for granted ever again. As the realities of the COVID-19 coronavirus began to make themselves known, on March 15 we offered live streaming of our 8am and 10am Eucharist services for those who preferred to stay home. On March 22, we offered Morning Prayer service which was streamed with no congregation in the church, and by Sunday March 29, we were all home under the Governor’s Shelter-in-Place order.
I am tremendously grateful for so many who made liturgy -the work of the people--continue through this pandemic year. I give thanks for the creativity of Trinity’s Worship Team—especially Dr. Messina, Father Ben, Mother Erin, and Summerlee Walter. I’m deeply grateful to Hugh Resnick who has continued
In the ten months which have passed since, the staff Worship Team—myself, Father Ben, Mother Erin, and Michael Messina, along with Summerlee Walter, Missy Roetter and recently Tracey Lemon— have continued to modify our worship offerings, responding to restraints of the virus and our technological limitations and conscious of the appetites of our parishioners as expressed through parish surveys. Because of the size of Trinity’s congregation, we determined early on that we would pre-record our worship services to make them available both live on Facebook and at any time on the parish website, which was rapidly redesigned to meet the needs of a digital community. For three months we gathered on zoom from our homes and we recorded the Liturgy of the Word. Soloists and readers recorded their offerings from homes as well. Our Communications Assistant, Summerlee Walter, stepped into the role of worship video editor gracefully and has knitted together our online services every Sunday since March 29, save Christmas I and the Annual Meeting Zoom . On Trinity Sunday we were permitted to return to our sanctuary for recording worship, at which point we began including Holy Eucharist and Spiritual Communion in our online offering. We continue to edit in musical material —ranging from virtual choirs, soloists recorded midweek, organ and other in9
