Just thought I would update on what our worship team decided on what we would do....
St. Matthews is a little different from the typical parish as we do not have a formal church building, but a community house. Late this week we are going to have a come and pick up your palm event on the front porch of the house. Palms will be spread on a table on the entryway of the porch for parsh members to pick. Father Joseph, our priest in charge will be on the porch, and able to talk to members and offer blessings while maintaining social distancing.
Palm Sunday - we will be streaming both our 8am morning prayer and 10:30 Eucharist services. There we will go through the standard palm sunday services but with only our two priests, deacon, music director,and myself at the camera. We have been doing services this way for the last two weeks and it has been working well for us (or at least as well as can be).
During holy week we are going to encourage members to build home altars in their homes. We are going to include some ideas on how to incorporate the home altars into daily life and while watching streaming services at St. Matts.
Maundy Thursday - We are going to stream our service. Instead of foot washing, we will include images of the pitcher and washbasin and see about doing a meditation of footwashing. We will also strip the altar during the stream.
We are also going to still do our overnight vigil and garden of repose. We will live stream the whole vigil for those who wish to pray from home and we may allow 1 person outside of the streamer to come in to pay at the atar at a time.
Good Friday - We will be steaming stations of the cross.
Easter Sunday. Traditionally, St. Matts does a Sunrise service at 7am in front of a local coffee shop in Westerville. This will still be done. 10:30am service will be streamed as always.
Not to toot my church's horn too loudly, but as a congregation, I think we really has adapted as well as can be expected in view of the virus lockdown. We offer all meetings over zoom, including 7pm daily check-in/ brief prayers for those who want, Wednesday night Compline, and a Thursday night reflection from Father Joseph. We also have a email list though Google (just like this one). We are not a cash rich church, but we have found it amazingly easy to stream online using nothing but a smart phone and our imagination. Lastly, we have also phone called all in the parish to make sure everyone is safe.
Hope this brings ideas for anyone looking for more ways to reach out during these trying times.
-Krys Clark
St. Matthews Episcopal Church
Westerville, OH