St. Louis, Missouri
2020
To enliven worship through the arts, especially jazz, and environmental awareness to discover the wonder and joy of being stewards of God's creation.
Provide a brief summary of the purpose and goal of your grant.
Our aim: To create compelling and imaginative worship honoring the stewardship of God’s Creation by embracing environmental sustainability and the arts.
What are two questions that have generated reflection on worship and helped shape your project?
- Will our congregation find this topic/subject important for their lives, such that they will make the effort to watch and participate in our webinars in preparation for worship?
- Will the worship reflect the subject of the webinar while also providing words and music that will feed the spirit and the needs of those participating in it, whether or not they participated in the webinar?
- In addition: How can we pull this off virtually as we endured the effects of an all-too-real pandemic?
What impact has your project had on the worship life and habits of the congregation?
We don’t know. Worshippers reacted positively to the music, images and liturgy that reflected the content of the webinars. Having only two opportunities (due to the pandemic) to offer worship experiences may have limited the impact/habits of the congregation and have not changed the style or components of our worship style. There will be one more opportunity for church members to experience worship offered by the JTC team with a congregational evaluation to discern the impact.
What have been your greatest challenges (or challenging opportunities)?
Working in a pandemic—not being able to plan face to face, being unable to worship together in person. Also, a poor broadband with wobbly electronic access. We were fortunate to have a tech expert who assisted us. Our final challenge was encouraging our JTC team to step up to encourage the congregation to participate in the webinars and worship. Those who did participate very much liked the virtual presentation, but our numbers were less than we would have liked.
What would you like to share with other Project Directors?
We are very grateful for your understanding and flexibility as we changed our original plans: from three webinars to two due to the unexpected pandemic which altered our approach, the technical difficulties due to poor electronic access, and the mid-year winter surge in the pandemic that caused us to change our plans even further. Your affirmation made it possible for our team to make critical changes and adjustments as needed.