Friends,
I am looking forward to in-person celebration this week with a mixture of excitement and anxiety. I’m excited because I am overjoyed by the thought of seeing members of the MPC family in person and I am excited by the prospect of worshiping in community, which is how Christian worship is supposed to happen. I’m also really happy to know that we will be able to preserve an online option for those who, for whatever reason, cannot be with us.
But I’m also feeling a little anxious because we are trying something new, something complicated, the kind of thing that will not go entirely according to our plans, even if we have the best plans in place. So thank you for your ongoing patience with our process.
As I worry about the details, fretting about what could go wrong, I am comforted by remembering how our prerecorded celebrations started because we didn’t have the Wi-Fi bandwidth in the sanctuary sufficient to make live-streamed celebration work. At the time, Talitha suggested using a video play list on YouTube as a work-around. That solution was a lot of work, and it was complicated, but in the end, I feel really good about the worship services we were able to produce using that method. I’m glad the emergency work-around became our way of doing celebration.
As we move into a new way of doing celebration it is good to know that any number of obstacles may lead to a really good end-product. I covet your patience as we figure things out, and I invite your feedback during the process as we continue to hone what post-pandemic celebration will look like. I was trying a new thing with the videos I made for online celebration right up to last week, and I expect we will be tweaking the process every Sunday for the foreseeable future.
In fact, this process of revision has already started: after telling folks we were going to broadcast our livestream on YouTube we have had to switch to Zoom; we’re also trying to figure out better ways to handle the sign-ups (we’re springing for the sign up programs premium package, which I hope will help us to avoid glitches). We’re also still trying to come up with policies around how to live-stream the services while honoring the desire of some folks to stay out of the camera’s sight. We haven’t yet adopted those policies, but if you don’t want to be on camera, please consider sitting behind the camera during the outdoor services. (Our camera can pan 360 degrees, but it is highly unlikely that the camera will capture any images behind it during celebration).
In the end, our outdoor, hybrid in-person/online services are just one more unexpected thing to come up during the Covid season, and it is further proof that we live in a world that is unpredictable and full of surprises. I’m glad I’m walking this odd journey as a member of the MPC family.
God’s peace,
Ben