So the weather in the Frederick/Washington County area (well, and all the way in Baltimore) just plain stinks this evening! It's cold, rainy and windy. My fiance Chris and were driving back to his house from Baltimore---where we'd had a Mother's Day dinner with my mom---and ran into (well nearly) a tree that completely blocked the windy mountain road to camp and his house! Chris was about to jump out and move it when he noticed it was resting on power/phone lines, so we headed for the long way to camp and called 911 to report it. So we're back at his house, just waiting for the phone or power to cut off (Chris is on the land line with his mom, so both losses would be annoying!). But it's just an interesting, subtle paranoia.
Church was great this morning--packed house at 9 am thanks in large part to the confirmation of 3 of our youth. This was my first group of confirmands at Jefferson, since a huge proportion of the youth (10) went through confirmation with the interim pastor a few months before I arrived. Jake, Josh and Connar are all cool kids, all different, and it was definitely a learning experience to lead confirmation. Chris had suggested we lead together, as opposed to using the mentor-based program by Willimon, and we ended up using Belton Joyner's Unofficial Handbook for United Methodists...which was a great pick, and had a great mix of humor and good info. And since he'd been one of my professors at Duke, it was an added treat.
We're approaching yet another morph to our Sunday worship schedule. Our contemporary worship service has taken many shapes and leadership during my time here, and low numbers have plagued us. And when my charge associate pastor, Michael, told me the current band would be stopping at the end of May, I wasn't sure what to do, and figured we'd have to finally cancel it. But Ad Council had the idea of making both services similar to each other, with a more "traditional" structure, and maybe bringing some more contemporary elements into the 9 a.m. So I'm actually really excited about it, and anxious to move beyond the "traditional" and "contemporary" distinctions. I'm looking forward to including even more creative elements in worship.
I tried my hand at an altar call of sorts in the 9 a.m. worship service this morning. Didn't go over well, but partly due to it not being really a part of this congregation's culture at the moment, my own inexperience in intro-ing something like that, and a difficult closing hymn that was the time people were to come forward. FYI everyone, Georgia Harkness' hymn Hope of the World may look good on paper but it's a beast for a congregation to sing for the first time! Poor Jefferson struggles under my sorry attempts to work through the current hymnal, since I've heard a new one may be coming. Of course it's years away, but there are a lot of strange and different (and unknown to my congregation) hymns to work through.
Meanwhile, I've been busying visiting shut-ins, and still needed to stop by and visit with more. A funeral Tuesday and various other little meetings, and Annual Conference is nearly upon us. So now being on the AC worship committee is really going to catch up with me! Next Monday, meeting Jenny Smith, pastor of Mt. Carmel UMC, we'll head to the conference center to pack all the stuff for worship...including (hopefully) a large waterfall that Trinity UMC in Frederick is loaning us. The whole water fountain thing was a big deal that I'm glad is settled, and the long and short of it is that some decisions just take longer than needed when decided by committee!
Well, the wind is howling, and electricity is still working, so I'll post now before I lost connection!
:-) Sarah
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