I don’t suppose it’s surprising, but people who work in churches think a lot about “church.” Here are some things our staff members have been thinking about, in no order, and none of them have been decided but they are ALL related to returning to “normal” after this l-o-n-g time away.
Worship
We know for sure that we will livestream (to a closed link due to copyright issues) and record our worship service. We are in the process of finding a vendor to provide the equipment we need to do that. While doing that we also learned that ALL of our microphones need to be replaced because they work on a frequency that Verizon now owns and that makes them illegal for us. Oops.
Every single thing that is published in church-oriented literature from all denominations surmises that in-person attendance on Sunday mornings will drop quite far below the old norm. So, does that mean that we re-start with just a single service?
And if we do that, can we/should we shake things up by re-formatting Sunday morning entirely? Many Protestant churches hold faith development classes for children and adults before worship, and then they have their worship services. The littlest kids get dismissed to activities like we were doing BC, but older children and youth are welcome at church. And the worship services are not adjusted to account for this wider age range. Should we try that? How great would it be if we could incorporate many more children and youth into our worship? We can’t do that now because they are “in class.” Imagine adult faith development groups of various sorts meeting before worship. Is that exciting or terrifying?
Sunday RE
This is one big area of unknowns. It turns out to be much easier to make a decision about resuming Sunday worship since anyone who might feel nervous about being in the Sanctuary with others (with whatever restrictions might still be in place) still has an option of attending or watching virtually. That’s not really possible with RE. Right now, virtual RE classes meet every other week. Should we keep doing that even when things are in person to reduce the class sizes? Kids are in school. Do we want our RE classes to resume as we had them before? Our classrooms are pretty small, and we have adults of all ages leading them. Will people feel safe enough to do that? And WHEN will we start recruiting the adult leaders?
Interim Minister
This is just another big unknown. It’s pretty complicated to think about opening, let’s call it in September just for this conversation’s sake, when a new minister doesn’t arrive until August 1. That’s not much time to plan a massive change. (Although what am I saying? We changed from in-person to virtual within 4 days. I still can’t believe it myself.)
Membership
What’s a “member” anyway? Now that we have some virtual participants who do not live in the area, can they be members? Legally, the institution needs official members, a board of trustees, and an annual meeting where official members vote. But lots of folks can be connected to UUCA in a number of ways without being an official member. Does that matter? How do we count our membership?
There are other issues, of course. When we add video to the work of our Sunday A/V techs, will we have to add a second tech person each Sunday? How do we pay for that? We’ll need childcare workers again and we have none at the moment. When do we start the hiring process? And lots more.
Just thought I’d share a little since these are big issues that your staff is working on now and that you will be hearing more about in the coming months. Please answer our calls or complete any surveys you get. It’s hard to get feedback these days when we don’t have much casual, in-person time with each other.
Linda Topp, Director of Administration