How St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Greenville Dealt with Pandemic Restrictions
Item
-
Title
-
How St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Greenville Dealt with Pandemic Restrictions
-
Description
-
My reflection documents how the congregation and church leadership of St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Greenville dealt with the effect of the pandemic on their normal services and activities.
-
Coverage
-
Greenville, North Carolina
-
Creator
-
Elmore, Martha
-
Date
-
2021-02-16
-
Text
-
I am a longtime member of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Greenville. The most immediate change in church activities caused by the COVID 19 pandemic was the cessation of in-person worship services and other gatherings. Fortunately, our church leadership is pretty technology-savvy, so we began streaming on Zoom our worship services as well as adult Bible classes, youth Sunday School classes, and EYC (Episcopal Youth Community) meetings from the church’s website. All members receive email updates using mailchimpapp.net at least twice a week and more often when necessary. This is in addition to our monthly newsletter (email and regular mail). In the summer, the Scullery (the owners are church members) provided Wednesday evening suppers every 2 weeks for $5.00 each to be picked up in the church parking lot. This was to partially make up for no longer having Wednesday afternoon communion services and suppers. Another Wednesday activity begun was to have a Hymn Sing starting at 5:30; people text in their hymn requests and then everybody sings those hymns. We will still have an Ash Wednesday Zoom service (only 1 service instead of 2 or 3) and blessed ashes will be available for picking up from the church ahead of time if desired. The one activity that hasn’t changed, other than to institute safety precautions, is our Food Pantry open every Thursday from 1 to 3. I give our church members a lot of credit for how well they have worked together to keep the church activities going. But nothing replaces being able to worship together in person. So far, the only in-person service provided has been an 8:00 am Sunday Morning Prayer Service (no Communion) held outdoors in the Garth area with people bringing chairs and sitting socially distanced. Unfortunately, either extreme heat in the late summer or cold temperatures and rain in the fall and winter have caused many of those services to be canceled. I believe St. Paul’s Episcopal Church has handled the situation as well as possible.
