April 29, 2021
My Dear Doubters of Great Faith,
If you are a person prone to statistics, you may be very interested in knowing that, over the course of the last year, we have had 67 (YES, 67!) experiences of liturgical worship in a format that, prior to March 17, 2020, I would wager most of us had not heard of, Zoom! In that time, we have made good use of the gift of this technology for Vestry meetings, retreats, adult education classes, “happy hours,” and a whole host of other events that kept us connected and ensured the Holy Spirit was (and is) alive and well on this corner of Inwood and Mockingbird. I honestly don’t know how we would have stayed together so well if it was not for this technology.
And one of the reasons it has been so effective, and so emulative of our traditional worship experience, is because of the hard work and dedication of several people who work tirelessly each week to bring this experience to us, knowing that liturgy and worship is foundational to our common life together as the Doubter community. And I want to thank those people now, as we move back toward our traditional setting of in-person worship.
First, as an organist myself, I KNOW the level of skill and creativity required by our Organist/Choir Master, Lee Corbin, to produce convincing, spirit-filled worship on a week-in and week-out basis. As you well know, Lee is extremely self-effacing, and he is equally talented in what he does. Having to record hymns, preludes, and anthems in advance, without mistake, is absolutely unimaginable to me!
And I know you know as well as I the adept skill and calm nature of our unflappable Seminarian-in-Residence, Allen Junek, in navigating through slides, and managing Zoom rooms, and mutes and unmutes. There really is something happening ALL the time! But the time and creativity that Allen devotes to coming up with slides that evoke the liturgical spirit of the service and of the day, his devotion and care, are unmistakable. Allen’s attention to detail allows the Holy Spirit to sing through.
Finally, you may not know how much work our newest member, Dr. Randolph (Randy) Lacy has devoted to this process as well. While we certainly get to hear the great gifts that Randy brings through his canting of psalms and leading of hymns, you may not know that Randy “sound-engineers” each and every one of Lee’s recordings, spending multiple hours with Lee each week recording tracks and then getting those tracks into the right places during the services. We don’t get to see Randy’s computer screen when this is all happening, so we really have no idea how much work goes into bringing the music together into one cohesive piece.
And then there are the many wonderful (WONDERFUL!) soloists (Fred Owen, Julie Thomas, Kenneth Goodwin, Laura Ayres, and many more!) who faithfully offer their talents so freely and so willingly to the glory of God. Lectors, beautifully managed by Sandee Lowe, bring in the voice of the people in reading God’s word.
There are a lot of moving parts, more than you may have imagined! We have so much for which to be grateful.
And now, as we begin the process of winding down our Zoom worship experience, and focus our resources on the in-person worship experience, I want to thank these people for all that they have done to make this worship so beautiful, and so convincing. They have held us all together in ways we cannot begin to imagine. And most importantly, I want to thank you, for participating, week-in and week-out, so faithfully, when it might have been easier to do anything else.
In the immediate days and weeks to come, our 9 am Zoom worship experience will become a stream-lined, spoken service, and our 10:30 am in-person service will be the service in which we offer a compliment of musical worship. We are exploring live-streaming of that service so that over the course of the next few months, we will be able to send out that product to our shut-ins and those who live beyond the St. Thomas in-person reach.
The goal is that we will eventually resume our schedule of two in-person Sunday morning services, one a spoken liturgy and one a musical liturgy, with one of those offerings live-streamed.
My hope is that we transition as gently and as graciously and as “grace-filled-ly” as possible back into our worship space, leaving no one behind. My prayer for you is that as you work your way back to worship, you will let me know how I may best be of help to you!
This community is YOU. YOU are the Doubters of Great Faith.
Yours in faith,
Fr. Christopher+
