There!

Friends,

New York has finally reached the 70 percent vaccination level and we are free to shed our masks and hug once again. Let us pray that first we get this rate up closer to 80 percent soon and that we are not visited by a new variant soon. It’s been a tough year and a half, but we have persevered. The Session has decided to still keep some of our safe practices in place until we learn more from the CDC. Whereas masks are optional for those who have been vaccinated, we will still keep chairs at a safe distance. Those who chose to sit together do so at their own risk. We will worship indoors more than we originally planned throughout the summer. Please refer to This Week at Trinity for notices about the schedule. Summer at Trinity is also a time of refocusing our energies to more outdoor events. For instance, our mission activities will feature hosting summer lunch in the park and a trip to Woodberry Crossing, (see the articles included). Our Christian education team is already at work planning Vacation Bible School which will be August 16 - 19, (again see article included). Two special exploratory teams have been formed by the Session related to our building and property as we arise from the pandemic. The first is a Trinity Greening team, which will begin to explore ways that we can become more environmentally friendly as a community. This team is to explore both lifestyle changes we can make as well as ways we can make our building more energy efficient, if not help create energy. The good news is that there are many grants available to help churches make advances in these areas. The other group is a Building Improvement Team, which will begin its work by assessing what aspects of our building are tired, worn and need of an upgrade. We will then take some field trips to glean ideas from some local churches. From there the team will develop a proposal to bring to session along with some estimates of potential costs, as well as researching grants that can help. Both of these groups will take some time to research and develop their plans and proposals. Since there is a degree of overlap between them, the groups will be comparing notes and ideas along the way. If any one of these planning teams interest you, please contact me. We could always use more help along the way.