Interim Update for July 10, 2020

Services for Charley Baum

I held a family service at Foos Funeral Home on Sunday at 1pm, and the comittal was Monday at 11am at York Chapel Cemetery. Ken Ries was part of the honor guard for Charley. It was good to see him again. Keep Sandy and the family in your prayers.

Hymn Words and MP3's added to Sunday morning Email

Those who have been attending in-person worship have benefited from listening to Chris and Paul open up the outstanding St. John's pipe organ, providing that important musical element to the worship for the day. But what about those who are staying home and worshiping by way of our YouTube livestream? In the beginning we tried using music for this service, but the quality was so poor, we decided to eliminate that element from our service.

I have found a way to add some half-way decent music to that service, although in no way does it come close to what Chris and Paul do with the organ at the in-person service. I own organ music of all the public domain hymns in ELW (our cranberry hymnal) in MP3 format. So this is what I will start to do with this weekend's service:

• The email that I send on Sunday morning (and is posted on the St. John's Facebook page), and which includes the YouTube link to the livestream of the service, and also includes the text of the spoken parts of the service, will now include the text of the two hymns sung at the in-person service: the Gathering Song at the beginning and the Sending Song at the end..
• The title of the hymn will also be a LINK to a YouTube file that will load and play the MP3 organ accompaniment for that hymn.
• I will give online worshipers the opportunity to pause the livestream and play the sing the hymn before returning to the livestream, which will pick up where they left off. If you are viewing the livestream this Sunday, try it out and let me know how it works.

Worship and Music Meeting

Worship and Music met Thursday in Fellowship Hall. Here are some details of our discussion, per minutes taken by Cathy (Thanks Cathy!):

• Nancy Pickens has prayerfully agreed to an appointment to serve the remainder of Ann Paul’s term. Thank you Nancy for your willingness to serve. The committee voted to accept Nancy’s offer and make a recommendation to council that she be so appointed.
• Pat Olsen will continue to read each Sunday in July. Cathy will contact some of the others who have been attending live worship to see if they would be willing to help with the reading on some Sundays.
• Chris and Paul will continue to self-schedule organist coverage for in-person worship.
• Pastor Mark continues to focus on keeping the service brief to minimize exposure.
• You Tube worship: The number of views on Sunday has decreased but numbers throughout the week average around 30. The open rate for invitation emails is about 35%.
• Pastor Mark may try to send a mass text through Breeze to see if that increases the view rate.
• Drive through communion: There have been 5-6 cars each week.

This Week's Zoom meetings

Last week was very quiet as far as Zoom meetings go, but this week was plenty busy. Here's a summary:

• Tuesday - Bishop's Zoom with Synod congregation leaders. Bishop Daniel led us through a devotional reflection using a nature photo and scripture. He then focused his presentation on the challenge of racial healing, and provided us resources -- books and movies, including Emanuel, a documentary on the nine church members killed by Dylan Roof. Bishop Daniel reminded us that this his close to home, as Room came from a Lutheran family. He also challenged us to write about our own experiences of diversity and racism. The suggested resources were emailed to us after the meeting, and you can find ther here.
• Wednesday - Wednesday NIght Live was sparsely attended, as some of our regulars were shut one by a power outage, likely due to an accident on 20 and 302 that hit a large utility pole, killing a Bellevue man and his grandson. Very tragic, keep this family in your prayers. A Sundusky Register story on the tragedy can be found here.
• Thursday -- Two Zoom meetings
  • I joined a Zoom meeting from 12:30 - 2:00 entitled "Advocacy Tools for Loving Your Neighbor." The meeting was co-sponsored by advocacy leaders in both the ELCA and ECUSA (Episcopal Church USA). Presiding Bishops MIchael Curry (remember him from Prince Harry's wedding?) and Elizabeth Eaton both provided keynote messages, and were joined by other staff members from our respective Advocacy offices, as they explained the nature of faith-based advocacy, the issues to which we can speak, and the ways we can make our voices heard. For more information about our church's ministry of advocacy, and ways that we can get involved, go here.
  • Synod Transitional Pastors met from 2-3. Members of this group shared experiences and challenges of return to in-person worship as well as parking lot worship. Chris Young reported that her interim (I forget which congregation she is serving) setting was doing parking lot worship with an FM transmitter, and the transmitter failed. Technology is great when it works. This group will begin a study of the book Bishop Daniel encouraged us to read this year, "A Field Guide for the Missional Congregation: Embarking on a Journey of Transformation." I have the Kindle version for $14.24, and looks like a good read. If you'd be interested you can get it here.
• Friday -- today was my monthly interdenominational support group of interim pastors organized through the Interim Ministry Network. This interdenomination group is also international. One of the co-leaders is Lieve, who is from Belgium, and serves a church in Germany. I'm not sure what her mother tongue is, but it's not German, and of course she speaks English fluently. And preaches in German. There were two new members of our group, including Susan, a fellow ELCA interim pastor. I met Susan at a workshop in Minnesota during my interim there, and reconnected with her here in Ohio when she became a part of our synod interim pastors group. So was surprised to see her again in today's Zoom meeting.

One Day at at Time

In these pandemic days, we have been learning the importance of living one day a time. One of my Facebook friends posted a video which reminds us of this in a sweet way. The star of this video is 93 years old. You can look and listen here. It's very much worth 3:31 minutes of you time.