Thank you for participating in our Listening Sessions!

Thank you to everyone who participated in our listening sessions for regathering our 10 AM service over the last week. We had over 40 participants in the three sessions who expressed a wide range of feelings and enthusiasm for regathering.

It is safe to say that we have a core of dedicated parishioners who are eager to regather, and many who long for the way we worshipped together before the pandemic. We have a small group of people who are eager to regather as soon as possible - no matter the costs to our program. Others are eager to return once we can return with our full complement of musical leadership from the choir.

What struck us most was the large majority of people who expressed their deep love and affection for one another and their desire to protect the vulnerable in our community - including unvaccinated children.

As many of you will have seen by now on Tuesday the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released sweeping new guidelines for those who are vaccinated which include the resumption of many pre-pandemic activities for the vaccinated as long as they are masked. These recommendations have significant implications for our choral program and for our life together and we are in the process of digesting them fully.

We would expect our next steps to be a very timely consideration of all that we have heard and then a proposal to be reviewed by our regathering committee, our Vestry Executive Committee and then the whole Vestry at their May 11 meeting. Following that process of review and input we should all expect a date certain for regathering to be announced very shortly after that meeting.

Please accept our sincere thanks for your participation in these listening opportunities and for your love and commitment to St. John’s.

- Gideon and Seamus