Dear People’s people,
It is good to have seen so many of you in the last few weeks. While I love the intimacy of the summer Sunday services, there is such joy in a mostly full commons and a lot of Zoom connections on Sunday mornings.
Your lead staff and I are starting something new this month – Second Saturdays Potluck and Programs at Church. (This needs a catchier name. If you can think of something, please let me know.) We are hoping to cluster programs around a potluck lunch on the second Sunday of the month. There will be a morning program or two, a potluck lunch, and an afternoon program or two. Most of these won’t be brand new programs, but events and activities that likely would have happened anyway, just clustered together.
This is an experiment. Why are we trying this? There are several overlapping reasons. Right after church services on Sundays is prime time for church programming – and too often we have competing programming then. We hope that second Saturdays might alleviate some of that pressure. For similar reasons, I think Saturday pro-grams might work better for me as your minister. I am a better minister when I can linger over coffee with folks who attended the service in-person, making connections, checking in and answering quick questions, rather than rushing off to lead programming. Often, I am spent after I lead a Sun-day service, as anyone who’s watched me lose my way mid-sentence on a Sunday afternoon has experienced. Additionally, I am excited by the possibilities for connection that clustering programming on one day can offer. Over lunch, the folks who spent the morning making pasties, those who are attending a class, and those who are just stopping in for the meal can get to know each other. It’s easy for us to get siloed from each other, clustered into smaller groups based on our interests and stages of life. It is my hope sharing a Saturday meal together might help us build connections with one another.
Our first second Saturday program will happen on October 11.
- Morning programming: pasty-making, building and grounds workday
- Potluck lunch at noon in Room 19 – bring something to share
- Afternoon programming: pasty-wrapping and a UU and People’s Church history class led by Rev. Rachel
(More details on these offerings are elsewhere in this newsletter.)
Feel free to come for as much or as little of this as you like. Yes, it is fine to come only for the meal!
We are going to have second Saturday programs and a potluck for several months. In the spring, we will assess how it has gone so far and make a decision about if and how we continue. In the mean-time, if you want to offer a program or activity at the church, please consider scheduling it for a second Saturday.
Take good care, everyone,
Rachel
Rev. Rachel on Study Leave – October 6-10
Rev. Rachel will be on study leave October 6-10. During this time, she will mostly be working from home, preparing and planning for upcoming church activities. (If you have already scheduled a meeting with her during this week, don’t worry, she’ll be there.)