Rector’s Report for 2021
The Very Rev. Kyle R. Tomlin
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Well, we made it through another year of the pandemic! When we started 2021, we were still very much in the mode of 2020. For the first 10 weeks of the year, we were only doing virtual worship through our Facebook page. But then, around the end of Lent, we began see some daylight when were able to return to outdoor worship (at least on nice, non-windy days!). This was quickly followed by an opening up of the church to return to indoor worship with distancing and masks, per Diocesan approval, and by early summer the Diocese had granted us permission to put all the chairs back in the church and let masks be optional. Then Delta hit, our plans to restart Coffee Hour ended, and we were back to masks for the remainder of the year.
Through it all, though, I have to say that God has been gracious and merciful to us. It’s very easy to bemoan what we don’t have right now, but I think it’s important for us to stop and look at what good things we do have. Despite the ups and downs of COVID restrictions, we have been able to return to in-person worship and have been doing so consistently, even through Omicron, since April of this past year; we have been able to start up in-person Adult Ed and Sunday School once again; and we have been able to return to in-person Men’s and Women’s Bible Study. In short, we have been blessed to have the opportunity to be together again on a consistent basis, and we haven’t had any Sunday morning related COVID outbreaks, thanks be to God! Most importantly, we continue to be fed by Jesus as we hear His Word and receive (at least partially) His Sacrament, and God the Holy Spirit continues to sustain us in our faith. For all of that, we can certainly give thanks and praise to God!
While none of us can see the future to know what 2022 has in store for us, it’s my hope that, barring another variant of COVID, we’ll be able to keep on going in the direction we’ve been going and that we can possibly start to add some new things in along the way. Specifically, I hope and pray that we’ll be able to start having Coffee Hour once again and also have some more opportunities for fellowship events throughout the year. I do expect that once COVID numbers begin to drop again, we’ll start to look at adding some of our service music (the Gloria and the Sanctus) back into our Sunday morning worship, and we’ll also be able to start offering the wine again (at least in some form) during Communion. At some point this year, I also hope to begin offering Rector’s Bible Study again.
Two final words. First, I want to say thank you to both the Vestry and all of you for your support and encouragement over these last two years. Some of you are keenly aware of just how difficult this pandemic has proved to be for clergy. There have been many news articles published over the last two years documenting the ever-increasing numbers of clergy who are resigning from ministry to pursue other lines of work, because of the pandemic. I would be remiss not to note that I too have felt the weight of these past two years. Thankfully, I have a good support system of clergy colleagues, family, and friends in place to help me through these times. For that I give much thanks to God. I also thank all of you who have spoken words of encouragement and support to me and Holly over these last two years. I feel very blessed to have been called here to be your pastor/priest, and I give thanks to God for each one of you. (And don’t worry, I’m not thinking of resigning to go look for another line of work!)
Second, as many of you have noticed, we have lost some folks over the last two years. We’ve had people move and we’ve sadly had families and individuals move on for other reasons. But here too, God has been good to us. For as many as we’ve lost over the last two years, we’ve been blessed to have as many new folks join us. That said, I want to take a moment to warmly welcome all of you who have joined us throughout this past year! It’s a blessing to have you worship with us and we look forward to sharing many years ahead with you as fellow members of the Body of Christ.
Here’s hoping and praying that 2022 will be a blessed year here at COTM. Because I know who God is for us in Jesus Christ, I have every reason to believe that it will be one!
Yours Spiritual Father in Christ,
Kyle+