Feeling the Energy
Greetings WUUC community,
After a slow and restful summer, we had our Ingathering service back in September. And, although this was when we kicked off our church year officially, I’m really starting to feel the momentum of our community picking up now.
Slowly but surely, more and more people are showing up to the church on Sundays to attend worship services in person. Most who attend stay for coffee hour afterwards, and I’m noticing the conversations there are getting warmer and livelier as the weeks go on. I’m also seeing a steady stream of visitors coming to check out our community and learn more about who we are; and most of these visitors are returning again because they like what they experienced.
Volunteers are coming forward to provide snacks and make coffee, the choir is returning to a version of its pre-pandemic self (and has even added some new members), and we’ve got a whole crew of Zoomkeepers, and camera and sound techs trained and ready to go. And this is just the Sunday morning experience. Circle suppers are back, small group ministries like pondering the big questions and soul matters discussion groups are back to meeting again, and more social offerings are getting added to the calendar each month.
In October, we hired two new people to join our WUUC staff team. And now as I work with Amy Genova, our new Membership Coordinator, and Skylar Hopkins, our new Director of Religious Education, I find myself getting excited about the things we are planning for the coming year. As I write this, we just had our first collaborative event with the Woodinville Country Day School (who shares our space Monday – Friday), a Trunk or Treat prior to Halloween. It was a wonderfully fun event, and it was also an encouraging step toward potentially more collaborative community events in the future. Just having the Day School in our church building through the week brings an energy to our space, and I can feel it. We are doing the things a community should be doing: building human connections, strengthening relationships, and showing why the whole is always more than the sum of its individual parts. We are stronger together, and together we can be a positive force for good in the world. And we start by being a positive force for good right here in Woodinville, by being good neighbors.
I’m feeling the energy, and I hope you do too. Let’s keep it going and see what we can do.
Peace and Blessings,
Dan