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New Journey UCC will continue our
current practices of physical separation.
Join us Sunday mornings at 10:00 am for worship via Zoom
We start gathering at 9:45 for "coffee time".
Bring your coffee or tea and join the fellowship.
Go to link: Worship May 31st
OR
Type in browser
OR
Dial in at 1-312-626-6799 and enter meeting ID # 114 610 684
WORSHIP: There are THREE options.
1) Local cable channel (Nuvera 10) at 6:00 pm on Sundays and 9:00 am on Mondays. This will be a pre-recorded worship experience.
2) New Journey YouTube channel. The pre-recorded service is at this link on YouTube. YouTube Link Recording is in three sections - Gathering, Message and Response.
3) 10:00 am Sunday from wherever you are. For a casual, interactive experience you’re invited to Zoom into worship the regular time from
the comfort of your home. In fact, grab your coffee and zoom in at 9:45 for that usual chat before worship. Follow the instructions above.
Opened . . . Never Closed
The church has been in the news, my friends. Recently you may have seen the declaration of the President that churches should be “opened”. You may have also seen that Governor Walz has negotiated the loosening of restrictions on churches gathering. If government proclamations were the only thing to consider we would have an easy decision as a community of faith. But we have that pesky science to consider as well. Negotiations to “open” our churches haven’t changed the way the virus moves through our communities and neither Hutchinson nor Minnesota has yet hit the first peak.
Earlier last week we received a letter from our Conference Minister, Shari Prestemon. She has been in weekly contact with health experts and government officials and laid out a comprehensive document urging us to be extremely cautious of in-person gatherings. Last Wednesday the New Journey Council met and all agreed that we should continue our current
practices of physical separation. I hesitate to offer a possible date to come back together because it is a constantly changing target and the science of predicting where this virus will break out next is not an absolute. Out of love for one another, we are simply not willing to risk the lives of our church family at this time by coming together for worship in the sanctuary.
You may wonder why I’ve chosen to put “open/opened” in quotation marks. It is because that language doesn’t really reflect what we’ve been doing. As many have pointed out, our church has never closed. We continue to worship and pray together even though we cannot be physically in the same place. We are open to the Spirit’s calling, open to hearing a word of God in our lives, open to words of assurance and comfort…. You get the idea.
We will continue to consider ways that we could safely connect with one another, perhaps in small groups in a park or other well-ventilated space. Please reach out either to me or to one another if you need anything, even if it is simply a familiar voice on the other end of the phone. Until then, I truly do thank God for each and every one of you. Our strength and our faith, and most importantly our God will see us through.
Blessings, Pastor Jill