13 July, 2020
Dear Friends in Christ,
First of all, let me give heartiest thanks and blessings to all of the volunteers who made our first in-person worship since the quarantine began run so smoothly. And extra thanks to Terry Roberts, our Parish Administrator, who digested all of the rules and guidelines, created and implemented our plan, ordered the needed supplies, and recruited and organized the volunteers.
Sadly, we learned today that our first foray into in-person worship will be our last for a while. Because the rapidly rising number of Covid-19 infections means gathering safely is too difficult, in accordance with Governor Newsom’s instructions we will suspend our gatherings for now, and return to online gatherings only.
I am very grateful that we had this one opportunity, though, because we learned a great deal from our not-very-successful effort to livestream the service, and we will use the time between now and the next time we are able to gather to get the equipment and training we need to make our livestream worship glitch free and with high quality images and sound.
I would like to reiterate what I said in my announcements on Sunday. The deadline for the survey for the search process is Saturday, July 17
th
. So far about a fourth of our members have taken the survey, which is not nearly enough for us to be confident that the survey results will truly reflect the ideas and opinions of the parish. So if you haven’t taken the survey yet, please click on this link:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/VC7F527
to take the survey now. We need to hear your voice.
Please ask everyone in your household age sixteen or older to fill out a separate survey. Even if you all agree on every question, it’s important for us to know how many people share that view. People are reporting that it takes between a half-hour and an hour to complete.
And don’t forget that we have Virtual Coffee Hour every Sunday morning at 9 AM. It’s a great chance to catch up with friends from the parish that you don’t see face to face. The Zoom link is in our weekly parish e-mail and in the service bulletin you can download. You don’t need to install Zoom on your device to log on, and you can join from any computer, tablet, laptop or phone.
I look forward to seeing you electronically on Sunday.
Blessings,
Bill Doggett+
The Rev. Dr. Bill Doggett, Interim Rector, St. Wilfrid of York Episcopal Church.
