When I first came to a service at St. Martin’s, at the outdoor service at the Forbes ranch in June of last year, Pamela told me she saw me for the first time, already acting oddly familiar with the church, and thought, “…do I know you?”
But Sarah, my fiancée, and I started attending St. Martin’s virtually, a little after we arrived in Davis in September 2020, and we quickly found out at the Forbes ranch that we weren’t the only ones who joined, almost unseen, during the “Covid year.” It didn’t happen by accident. The staff at St. Martin’s had done an incredible job transferring the services to Zoom and Facebook streamings, along with other things to keep ministering during the pandemic, like distributing pre-consecrated Host for communion and checking in on our members who couldn’t access virtual services. When I moved to Davis and found any new social life or community practically frozen because of the pandemic, being able to virtually pray with St. Martin’s every week and find a church I was already starting to feel at home in was literally a godsend.
And the next summer, when vaccines were widely distributed and it was becoming safe to gather again, we still took important steps to keep our members healthy – the new air filters on either side of the church speak to that. And even now, as we still virtually broadcast the services and connecting to more people than we know, more people can connect to the church who hadn’t before; a stranger in Davis once recognized Sarah just from seeing her sing in the choir on the Zoom recordings of our services!
As a church, we simultaneously kept our members safe and healthy while still worshipping together as best we could, and this was only possible thanks to the offerings and pledges that let us buy new video recording and streaming technology and pay for the staff, like Gabe Avila, who worked so hard to make our online services happen. We gathered our church community together in new ways through a historic crisis, and that takes a lot of new resources.
Because of the pledges and offerings you gave to St. Martin’s, Sarah and I were able to worship and find a church home when so many doors in Davis had to be shut, and as we learn to live with new viruses circulating, we have the resources to use new technology, like the air filters, to keep looking after the health and safety of everyone who worships with us. So, I’m happy to renew my pledge to St. Martin’s this fall so we can continue to have the talented staff, funds, and resources to keep ministering to the church and be ready to deal with whatever unexpected challenges the world throws at us.
