The end of an era

Sunday 27th June 2021

Backblip

It had to come but I wasn't prepared for the mixed feelings it would generate, in particular the sadness. We tentatively launched our Zoom services on  10th April 2020. Our Sunday 10.30am service has been on Zoom ever since and regularly had 70-80 people attending, that has only recently started to drop as other services have opened up. 

Our parish expanded to include members from other churches around the country and as far away as South Africa and the Bahamas - with friends of friends. Blip was partly responsible for that as two of my blip friends joined in and then also invited their friends. It has been a real blessing to be able to share with everyone and friendships have developed. Zoom enabled us to share in fellowship before and after the services. 

In recent months we have returned to the church building for our 8am and Thursday services and introduced a new service at 4pm for those who wanted to attend, but maintained the 10.30am on Zoom because of its success and also the reluctance of most people to return to the building at that stage. However, with the success of the vaccine programme and with the anticipated release of restrictions the time has come to start encouraging people to return to the building so today was our final 10.30am service on Zoom run from my house. 

We are hoping to get wifi to the church to enable us to stream the services from there but it won't be the same without the fellowship before and after. It was important that we marked the occasion so we ran a service of healing and wholeness today and also included a chance for people to say cheerio (I can't bring myself to describe it as goodbye). I found it incredibly difficult and emotional. Many paths have crossed in the last year and that has enhanced our time on Zoom. 

We gradually collected photos from all the churches that people were representing and started each service showing them, to remind us of our wider community. Today I used a collage of those photos, as you can see. 

We also had a baptism service in church afterwards and then held our last 4pm service, the fourth service of the day. It all made for a long, tiring and emotional day. 

Yes, the end of an era but friendships will remain as will the memories - positives amid the pandemic. As a parish, we now also have a calf and a wallaby in Leicestershire named after us!