The Worship and Ministry Committee met regularly throughout the year to discern how to support the diverse spiritual needs of our community during this time of the COVID pandemic. Our committee meetings often began with an opportunity to reflect on a centering quote or query that helped committee members to come to know one another better. An example of sharing from 3rd month were: reflections on personal experiences of how each of us center in worship. Another example is: when have we felt a union with other worshippers in our Meeting. Our discussions helped us to understand the diversity within our committee, thus prepared us to hold and try to be of ministry to the wider diversity of our Monthly Meeting.
The choice to use a variety of items of technology to extend our worship beyond the Meeting House to those who cannot attend in person was the central topic of almost all our meetings. The committee spoke with members to better understand their needs. Early in the year our meetings for worship occurred with weekly alternations between blended worship (onsite and online worship groups blended using Zoom conferencing) and then on the alternate week separate worship for the two groups. The Monthly Meeting assigned an ad hoc committee to hold group discussions with members to share what members and attenders were experiencing with this type of alternating worship structure. There was a growing understanding that the alternation of worship structure was not addressing the needs of members and attenders of Plymouth. Some continued to find technology intrusive and limiting to their worship. Others experienced a sense of separation from members when the non-blended worship occurred. As summer came, we held called Meetings to determine how to proceed.
Our called meetings and then a regular meeting for business discerned that Plymouth would extend the opportunity for First day worship to 2 hours; 10 am to 12:00. The first hour would be technology free, now called Plain Worship. This worship would flow into worship that used technology to join with those worshiping online, which we call Blended Worship. The transition is kept as unobtrusive as possible as those who wish to leave exit gently, those who remain, remain in worship and those responsible for the technology activate it. We continue to evaluate what this structure of worship has provided for our Monthly Meeting but as of First Month 2022 we have not had an all-Meeting discussion of how this new structure is working. Some thoughts that have been receive are:
- The longer opportunity for worship has been welcomed
- Those joining in one or both worship formats have had some worship opportunities that felt deeply gathered
- The two worship opportunities have regular participants to each. These participants can be described as four groups: those online; those attending the plain worship; those attending the blended worship on site; and those attending both worship opportunities onsite. Our Meetings have 15 to 25 people total attending across these four groups.
- People of each of the groups have spoken of the need for opportunities for everyone to mix with one another outside of Meeting for Worship so Monthly Meeting does not find its participants defining themselves only as participating in just one of these groups. The COVID restrictions have made wider group opportunities difficult to happen.
- Top on the list of opportunities people are looking forward to is resuming our Friendly Fourth communal meals once our Risk Committee deems these types of gatherings safe.
- There is a desire for those attending a blended worship to be seen during worship and not identified as being a part of worship only after its completion when we share our names. The approval of a visual presence of online participants was approved in Second Month Business Meeting.
Planning opportunities for learning and discussion outside of Worship has emerged as the place for attention in this coming year to help draw people together. Worship and Ministry is planning Monthly opportunities for people to share around prearranged topics. Plymouth has had difficulty in attracting people to these discussions in the past. We hope that with the acknowledged need to participate in opportunities to come together our members and attenders will be more open to do so than in the past. There are several emerging topics that are generating interest across our community such as immigration, land stewardship and outreach. Worship and Ministry hopes to support this cross- community activity to help our community to continue its growth into the next venue of our Monthly Meetings life.
The pandemic has challenged our community in many ways. It has caused us to know intimately our differences, yet we affirm the importance of all our members in creating our faith community. We remember what Connie McPeak Green and Marty Paxson Grundy wrote in their Pendle Hill Pamphlet Matthew 18: “Our meetings can be the laboratories where Friends are provided with (often unsought) opportunities to learn how to live with others and to see what nurtures love, what blocks it , what needs to be changed, and how to put into practice what each of us may be learning inwardly from God. Joined in community we are able to offer a more powerful witness to the world. Perhaps through our interactions with others — within the faith community and in the larger society — we may demonstrate an alternative way of living. “Let our lives speak,’ as Friends are fond of saying.” Truly we have been in the laboratory these past two years experiencing the challenging lessons of God’s desire for us to let our lives speak with love through our community.
