Northborough, Massachusetts
2020
To explore and experiment with different formats of intergenerational worship in order to foster cross-generational community and deeper connection with God.
Provide a brief summary of the purpose and goal of your grant.
The purpose of the grant is to explore intergenerational worship options through study, consultation, and experimentation. We will look at the history and meaning of our current worship format, and explore successful approaches used by other churches and recommended by experts. Based on this, we will invite a broad coalition of participants across generations to design engaging intergenerational worship formats. The end goal is to create a more meaningful worship experience at Trinity Church.
What are two questions that have generated reflection on worship and helped shape your project?
The two questions that we continue to explore are:
- Why do we worship?
- How to we adapt worship to be engaging and inspirational to a broad spectrum of people?
What impact has your project had on the worship life and habits of the congregation?
This project has lead the congregation to think about why the do what the do in worship and to look at ways to make worship more engaging without loosing who they are as a congregation. Both the project and the pandemic sped up plans to create virtual worship experiences and the congregation is planning to continue virtually once they go back to in person. They has also been broad participation in both planning and leading worship during the pastor's sabbatical.
What have been your greatest challenges (or challenging opportunities)?
We continue to face challenges due to the coronavirus pandemic. This has limited the level of involvement in several of the events we planned for the project. However, we were able to make adaptions and host the planned events virtually. Another challenge has been to keep the congregation engaged throughout the project. Some of this is due to zoom fatigue. However, we have been getting a broad participation across the congregation for planning and leading worship during the pastor's sabbatical.
What would you like to share with other Project Directors?
Doing the project during a pandemic made me realize that it is good to have a contingency plan.. I would also say to be flexible. We had to make many shifts during this project, but the shifts allowed the congregation to engage with one another in a new ways. Most importantly, embrace the unexpected. It was disappointing to not have planned activities in person, but the blessing was that the pandemic sped up moving to virtual worship, which the congregation was discussing prior to the pandemic.