After worship I love seeing your names showing you’ve signed in when the service was being live-streamed on Facebook and reading your comments.

Dear Congregation,

We are now in the season of Easter after celebrating, remotely again from my living room, a joyous Easter Sunday. After worship I love seeing your names showing you’ve signed in when the service was being live-streamed on Facebook and reading your comments. I continue to be grateful to Jay Harrigan and Graham Bryan for their lovely music and to my daughter Jory for her technical help.

As we continue on in these odd times we’re living in response to the coronavirus pandemic, it’s very good to be connected in the community of Christ Congregational United Church of Christ. Please do continue to let me know your joys and concerns, by email, text, or phone, so they may be shared during worship.

I think it’s important that you know that the Palm Sunday and Easter worship services on Facebook each reached over 425 people and that in the past 28 days our page was visited 595 times. This is according to statistics provided by Facebook. I find this rather amazing! It makes me wonder if an unexpected blessing for the church in these hard times is that God has opened to our awareness a new way (for us!) to witness to the wider world the love of God in Christ.

I know that I’ve spoken and preached previously about the need for the church to reach beyond its walls to do ministry, but in my mind that was a physical going into the world, as we did when we demonstrated at the Homestead Child Detention Facility. This live-streaming-on- Facebook-worship takes us beyond the walls of the church in a totally different way and has the potential to witness to the word and work of Jesus Christ in a very meaningful way, both now and in CCC’s future.

In this we are being faithful, as we’ll hear affirmed in this Sunday’s scripture from Acts 5:29-32 “But Peter and the apostles answered, ‘We must obey God rather than any human authority. The God of our ancestors raised up Jesus, whom you had killed by hanging him on a tree. God exalted him at his right hand as Leader and Savior that he might give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins. And we are witnesses to these things, and so is the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey him.’”

We are witnesses, that is our job and our calling as Christians. May God bless us as we open ourselves to the leading of the Holy Spirit to witness in new ways, on Facebook, and who knows what else!

See you  on Sunday!

May God bless you, comfort you, strengthen you, and keep you close.

In Christ’s love,

Pastor Candy