Our beloved Trinity Family,
Greetings from your Senior and Junior wardens! We hope you are all healthy and safe as you read these words. These are new and strange times for our church – for the world – as we learn to show our love by remaining apart. None of this is easy, yet we at Trinity are confirming something important about who we are as a community of faith: The building may be closed, but our church is wide open.Thanks be to God!
We are so grateful to all the staff and community members who are keeping us together-while-apart. This pandemic has called us to create new ways to “gather” which, only weeks ago, were both unimagined and unimaginable. We have had 2 “live-streamed services” for the first two Sundays of this new reality, and then this past Sunday, our Palm Sunday worship, was unlike anything we’ve done completely away from our building. We hope everyone who “attended” this virtual service felt as close and knitted together as we did to all of you. And isn’t it remarkable to realize our temporary “virtual normal” is reaching out to so many beyond our community offering all who find us a new way to join in experiencing God’s love Trinity-style?
We have said from the beginning it is important we find ways to care for and connect with each other. We are delighted we have some new and wonderful ways of doing that and they are working:
Trinity’s Daily Bread: is an online tool we have created to make sure people are able to ask for the help they need. (https://www.trinitytoledo.org/daily-bread/).
Trinity’s Card Guild: Is sending out cards to the membership and would love to have more volunteers (Contact Kim Henkel if you would like to help).
In addition, we encourage everyone to keep those phone calls, emails, and texts flowing among ourselves. Yes, we are the church!
No one knows how long this pandemic will require our patient cooperation, but at this point we anticipate the very earliest possible date for us to gather again in our beloved sanctuary might be Pentecost (May 31). But again, nothing is written in stone, and we will err on the side of caution.
We all are taking this one day at a time and following the lead of public health experts. Rest assured we are working closely with Lisa and the staff to monitor the progress and protocols we need to come back strong and together! If that is not until June or beyond, we will be fine and continue to do God’s work in the world, gather weekly to celebrate God’s love, find ways to connect and learn and grow, and discern the best ways for us to be of service in our beloved Toledo.
Until then, keep these other services on your Coronavirus Calendars:
4/10 Good Friday– 7:00pm Stations of the Cross. We will all tune in together and take this sacred journey leading us to the foot of the cross. This will be a beautiful service and we are told we may see something familiar…Go online to print your bulletin for the service if you’d like, but we understand it is all self contained so you do not have to print a bulletin. (https://www.trinitytoledo.org/live-streamed-worship/)
4/12 Sunday- 10:00am Easter service (https://www.trinitytoledo.org/live-streamed-worship/). This will be another first for us- a morning of celebrating the miracle and promise of the Resurrection in a new and different way. We are working hard to incorporate our tradition, our music, our community, our “new normal” each Sunday to offer an experience that is welcoming and affirming of who we are as members of the Jesus movement.
In the meantime, thank you to all of you- together we are making a difference in the world as we stay home, stay healthy, breathe, pray, take care of ourselves and those at home with us. We feel grateful for the depth of our connections and our growing community.
We will end where we started with the reminder that sustains and delights us daily:The building may be closed, but our church is wide open. Thanks be to God!
Faithfully,Donna Steppe, Senior Warden
Roberta Durham, Junior Warden