June Thanksgiving
On June 6th, 429 days after the Covid-19 pandemic forced the St. Luke’s community to move our worship services online, and 223 days after our community moved our worship space and administrative offices to a new home at Wrightwood and Kimball with Grace United Methodist Church, St. Luke’s held its first in-person Sunday worship service. This June, the St. Luke’s Council is deeply thankful to everyone who made online worship possible over the past year(and three months). Our community is indebted to all of you who gave so generously: your time in submitting community announcements, weekly lectionary readings, and prayers; your energy in creatively adapting to holy times of the year and (two!) Lenten seasons and Easter Vigils.Simply your presence, whether at worship “premiere” or any other time, contributed greatly to our community.
Council extends further thanksgiving to those who gave special time and attention to making online worship videos possible, through video editing, sound mixing, and the numerous post-production tasks. Special thanks to Megan Moran, Francisco Herrera, and JJ Evans who contributed to video editing. Huge thanks also to the Byrley family with the help of St. Luke’sCantor, Bev Jedynak who undertook monumental efforts to record, compile, mix, and disseminate music for weekly worship, which greatly enriched many lives. Thanks also to Genevieve Wasser who mapped and rendered precise virtual models of our new worshipping space to account for social distancing in seating arrangements.
Finally, we could not neglect our immense gratitude for the work Pastor Erin has done day-in and day-out, week to week, season to season, to make worship speak boldly into the chasm of uncertainty and peril that many in our city and world have experienced during this pandemic.Amid the upheaval of our regular worshipping routine, Pastor Erin faithfully heeded the call tore-imagine and vigorously revise worship online, a mission that was carried out with the upmost care
.In a time of physical isolation and profound spiritual anxiety, Council is grateful to everyone who has come together to profess a bold witness to justice, hope, and the transforming promise of the Gospel message in community. While Council still recognizes that much remains unknown about the future of the pandemic—that many of the most underserved and vulnerable in society are still suffering with the consequences of mass inequality worsened and propelled by the pandemic—we nonetheless celebrate this moment of transition back to in-person worship as a hopeful sign of re-emergence. Council is grateful for the efforts of the Reuniting St. Luke’s Taskforce for their research and guidance in keeping our community up to date with necessary public health safety precautions alongside concerns for the safety of those most vulnerable to the coronavirus. We look forward to seeing how God is making us new.
Each month the Council gives thanks to God for someone in our community. If there is a person that you would like to lift up, please reach out to St. Luke’s council through Justin Perkins (jperkins16@gmail.com).