Worship
Holy Spirit is a warm, inclusive community for all who believe in the love of God and spirit of God’s church. Our worship style is grounded in tradition and ritual applied in a contemporary, informal manner. Our goal with worship is to be approachable and inclusive for all, where all are welcome in our church and around the table.
Worship at Holy Spirit centers around our Sunday Holy Eucharist, where in-person service is offered while continuing to stream our services on Facebook Live for remote participation. When the weather is favorable, we enjoy worshiping outdoors on the church grounds. Bible studies are offered throughout the year with various themes, both for in-person and remote participation.
At Holy Spirit, worship is about coming together to share in the word and sacrament together as a community where all are welcome. During the service, the Peace highlights our natural inclination to engage as friends for a moment or two before regrouping for Holy Communion. The pandemic has changed our interaction — from roaming around, and hugging and shaking hands, to waving peace to one another. However, one can still feel a palpable enthusiasm that at times can only be reined in by the smooth transition of the clergy into the weekly announcements to informally share news and events or to highlight accomplishments of the congregation.
Children are encouraged to attend and participate in their joyful, sometimes noisy, unpredictable ways!
Before the pandemic, we enjoyed exploring creative approaches to a variety of worship styles and offerings. We had an active community of our youngest members, ranging in ages from 2-14, who participated in our children’s ministries in the form of weekly age-appropriate Sunday School. We also explored a family-style worship approach called Messy Church, where all ages could join in experiencing fun and faith-formative (and messy, artsy) activities. An area of focus that surfaced frequently in our CAT survey was our desire to reinvigorate and further develop Christian education opportunities for all ages, especially families and children.
We also enjoyed quite a bit of success leveraging the strengths of our music director and talented musicians to offer seasonal Celtic services for a serene, candlelit, contemplative worship opportunity. We are not doing these services currently, but would be open to trying again in the future.
It is our goal to continue to respect traditional worship rituals while offering a variety of worship styles and opportunities.
