Winston-Salem, North Carolina
2020
To reflect the church's renewed mission to become a sanctuary for the city by broadening worshipers' imagination for worship and deepening its engagement with the community.
Provide a brief summary of the purpose and goal of your grant.
Desiring to expand beyond our walls to create "sanctuary for the city," our Vital Worship Grant began as a way to press our congregation beyond our walls after a multi-year building project that downsized our space and demanded significant energy. We imagined that a series of specific worship events designed with our downtown community in mind would energize our congregation, serve our community, and recenter us within the breath of the Holy Spirit unleashed in the world.
What are two questions that have generated reflection on worship and helped shape your project?
After seeing how participants found particular artifacts used for our Stations of the Cross and Easter worship to be deeply meaningful (i.e. an olive palm cross for Holy Week, a ribbon streamer for Easter), we wonder: what tools will help a worshiping congregation take what they experience in worship and thread through their lives? And how does community-centered worship retain its distinct liturgical & theological commitments and avoid the broad brushstrokes of a general outreach campaign?
What impact has your project had on the worship life and habits of the congregation?
Our grant prompted us to see every opportunity to gather in-person this year (which were few!) as an opportunity to use the grant's resources to inform our worship. From our Shadow and Light memorial, to our Stations of the Cross, to our outdoor Easter service, to our Pentecost celebration as we welcome the congregation to re-embody itself, we have seen each offering as one not just for our people, but for all who live and move and have their being around us. May that spirit carry forth!
What have been your greatest challenges (or challenging opportunities)?
The impact of covid profoundly shifted our plans for the grant, while still stretching us to preserve its essence. We focused less on big worship events to invite the community into, and more on substantial installations and artifacts that took familiar elements of worship outside our walls (i.e. a huge plant giveaway on the front steps on Easter, new banners out front offering our prayer to the community with words from a beloved hymn: 'strength for today, bright hope for tomorrow').
What would you like to share with other Project Directors?
We're already dreaming about ways to continue energizing worship as we return to in-person worship on Pentecost, using the lessons we've learned this year to lift us as we re-embody our community. While we wish that some of the events we dreamed could have come to life, we look ahead with hope for the season in which we might pursue them safely. And we give thanks for this remarkable opportunity, for the creative imagination it prompted during a pandemic, and for what seeds it planted among us!