The 2020 Annual Report of the Worship Ministry Unit ~ Susan Sanders, chair

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Certainly 2020 has ended in a much different place than it started! We began by saying goodbye to Dean and Peggy as they left for 3 months of sabbatical leave. Weeks of careful planning gave us a schedule of familiar and not so familiar individuals preaching during Dean’s absence. In addition to Mike Ozaki and Allison Maus, we welcomed congregation members Scott Kretchmar, Paul Cho, Daniel Falk, Paul Mortimore, and our own Senior High Sunday School class, along with Rachel Mastin, former SCPC member now ordained minister from the Stillwater United Presbyterian Church in NY, to our pulpit. We will always be grateful for the diversity of voices we experienced during that time.

On March 15, 2020, we were looking forward to hearing seminary student and ordination candidate, Jason Dauer, preach. And then COVID-19 changed everything. Session voted to suspend in person worship for the foreseeable future and our worship service that Sunday was a recorded audio only service.  In hindsight it seems amazing to think about how rapidly we adapted to providing worship through prerecorded YouTube videos. During the warmer months we able to hold small socially distanced outdoor services in addition to the YouTube services and then to move the outdoor service into the sanctuary once the weather got cold. Unfortunately, as we entered Advent, those indoor services no longer seemed safe and we are back where we were in the spring.

Thinking about how our assumptions about what is corporate worship have been challenged this year, it becomes ever so clear that God has been with us each step of the way. Our staff dug deep and uncovered new gifts that have made our collective worship meaningful in new ways. We are grateful to Dean Lindsey, Mike Ozaki, Allison Maus, Deannine Shipman and Ned Wetherald for all they have done. Enormous thanks also go to Jerry Sawyer and Kerry Trout who offer us their time and talent to produce such quality videos. Our worship services would not be what they are without their gifts. Thanks also to many congregation members for facing the video camera to call us to worship and lead us during hymns and to our choir for mastering new software and learning to be a new kind of choir! I think the richness of our recent Christmas services is a perfect testament to how God lifts us during extraordinary times.

Finally, I would like to thank Joan Hartman, Beth Farmer, Bill Lukens, John Robison, Elliot McLaughlin, Bob Zaph, Anne Layng, Tracy Massaglia, Dean Lindsey, and Ned Wetherald for being part of the Worship Ministry Unit and for their faith, honesty, and patience with Zoom meetings.
 
Susan Sanders, Worship Ministry Unit chair

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