An Offering of Praise: Worship Inspiration for Everyone: March 2020

Tuesday, March 24, 2020

Sunday, March 15, 2020

How are you doing? Corona Virus, Mid-Lent, Life!

So how are you doing? It's been an interesting couple of weeks, hasn't it? We're already dealing with mid-Lent preparation concerns. And to add to that we're now having to deal with COVID-19, how it's impacting our church community, and the potential for our worship services being cancelled. Plus we have our own personal concerns -- our own health & our families. So what are you doing to deal with these stressers?

Here's my story from the past week or so. Background: I serve a very small church. We typically have 40-50 in attendance on Sunday -- that's counting the choir too. I have 11 in my choir. They are great people, excellent musicians, very dedicated -- but they are aging. I have 4 that are younger than 60 (45-60 age range). The rest are 70-90+. And my organist/accompanist is 90. I have been the music director at this church for 7 years. A couple of years ago, I made the decision to not prepare major seasonal cantatas. So now we do a "sermon in song" that include 2 to 3 anthems with narration (usually scripture). A week ago Wednesday, I felt super stressed about the progress that my choir was making on the hardest of the two anthems we are presenting. But we had a really good rehearsal and got a lot done. This past Wednesday we worked on it again. It didn't go as well as I hoped -- mainly because two of my strongest male singers were absent. But we still have three rehearsals to work out the bugs. Or do we? So now we are dealing with COVID-19 and whether to cancel worship and ministry gatherings. We are having church today. Out of the 11 choir members, only one of them did not make it to church because of illness. Unfortunately, he's one of my choir chime members, which meant I had to play his chime part because the chimes played the prelude. We are also dealing with mobility issues. One of our members has serious knee problems and can't climb stairs. We have three steps up to the chancel area and one step into the choir loft. A decision was made a couple weeks ago that the choir would sit in the front of the congregation and stand on the floor level to sing their anthem. Tomorrow is the first Sunday that the entire group will be singing from the floor (last week our ladies sang). We practiced where to stand on Wednesday. But now with the COVID-19 concerns, I asked them to spread out in one line as we sang our anthem. We made it through this Sunday, but going forward is up in the air. Decisions need to be made this week about whether to cancel worship for the next two weeks, and we need to decide whether to cancel choir and choir chimes rehearsals. I would like for us to continue rehearsals, but in all reality, my choir is in the most vulnerable demographics for this virus. I would rather have a healthy choir than to be wondering each week if someone (myself included) is going to get sick. And then there are personal concerns -- my husband wasn't feeling well this week but fortunately it's not the flu or COVID-19, the grocery stores were crazy, the local community choir I sing with had an event cancelled & our rehearsal on Monday has been cancelled, and I have an almost 90 year old mother who lives 1,300 miles away from me.

So what am I doing to ease the stress in my life? I'm continuing self-care -- a priority that I've made for myself for the past 3 or 4 years. I make sure that I begin every day with a personal devotional time. My newest discovery has been bible journaling. So I'd like to share with you what my morning devotional time comprises:

1. I follow Bible Journaling Ministries -- specifically Bible Journaling for Beginners FB Group. The leader of this ministry publishes a monthly calendar with daily scriptures. She also provides a free 10-day introduction to Bible Journaling plus free resources.

2. I also follow blessinks and the Sketchnote Boss Facebook group. This is the group that I'm most excited about. The leader has a 21-day challenge that gets you started on Sermon Sketchnoting.

3. During Lent, I am following Picture Lent and sketchnoting each day's devotional. I post each day's sketchnote on this blog.

4. During other times of the year, I focus on different creative and visual things like verse mapping.

The biggest challenge is not getting too carried away. I've learned to pick and choose so I don't get overwhelmed. Because it's all about finding my Sabbath time. I've found that when I take care of myself, I'm a better me plus I'm a healthier me.

Finally, I'd like to suggest that you download this COVID-19 Visual Faith Ministries Coloring Page and use it to focus for the next couple of weeks as we all work through this crisis. I will post my completed coloring page once this crisis has resolved.