Parish Committee

Happy Holidays and Wishing everyone a very happy and healthy New Year! There are so many wonderful happenings, where to begin? The Newcomers lunch was well attended and a fun social time was had by all. We are so happy you are all here! The Pageant was a joyful creative event, a heartwarming celebration of the children and youth. The true meaning of this holiday time shined through! So many thanks to all who made it possible. The Wednesday evening Solstice service was warm and enriching. It...

Greetings from Parish Committee! What keeps us all connected and, is what we’re doing working well? This is a question came up at our recent Parish Council meeting (more on the council below). How many people read the Arbella? The group thought it might be low, some as low as 15% of the congregation. We are very happy to report this is not the case! Our email program, Mail Chimp, is able to see how many people “open the emails” that are sent. FPW emails the Arbella to 230 people and, on...

Greetings from Parish Committee! What is there to say after Sundays Installation service! What a celebration of our congregation and Rev. Sophia’s shared ministry, it left us speechless. The planning committee did an amazing job, committee on ministry and Will Twombly designed, and Will build, our congregations’ gift to Rev. Sophia, a spectacular new pulpit. The choir and band filled the sanctuary with  joyful music and song, our hearts were full. The reception that followed had many...

Greetings from the Parish Committee, It’s been a busy past month! The 391st Annual Meeting of FPW was held with a large number of the congregation participating. There was a lively discussion on the revised Social Action by-law that concluded with a unanimous vote in favor of the proposed by-law change. A big thank you to the Social Action committee for all their work on this. The prior year’s financial report was presented by the Michael Collins, Finance Comm Chair, and the new budget was...

Greetings from Parish Committee!   After much deep consideration by the Opening Up Committee and the Parish Committee the decision was made to expand in-person capacity and lighten the protocols at the church starting on April 3rd. Please see the below information and community commitment the committees confirmed: In the spirit of community, upon entering communal space and gatherings at our church, we ask everyone to take a moment of care and concern for the larger community and please chose...

Greetings from the Parish Committee! Our month started with the Opening Up committee meeting on February 1st. It was an exciting meeting as the group reviewed the positive trends in high vaccination rates and lower covid numbers. Beginning in-person and multiplatform services is a great joy! We hope to continue to expand in-person capacity as spring approaches. With all this good news Religious Education is ramping up! As Lauren our DRE talked about in last week’s Arbella article RE is holding...

Greetings from Parish Committee! Once again it’s been an active month. The results of the multi-platform worship survey are in. We had 28 responses.  Thank you to those who responded. The results have been compiled into 15 pages of charts, graphs and 9 pages of reflective comments, helpful suggestions and ideas! Once we have finished organizing the results, we will share them with committees and staff and will be putting a link in the next Arbella for the congregation. Overall, people feel the...

Greetings from Parish Committee!   What a busy time it has been for all. The month began with Parish Committee coordinating a meeting to discuss the Multi-Platform services and our in-person protocols with a wider scope of people. The meeting included three Parish Comm members, the Opening Up group, 3 staff and committee representatives from Worship, RE, Personnel and Safe Congregations. The group had an in-depth discussion focused on clarifying the in-person attendance protocols. We also...

Greetings and Gratitude! Our church continues to thrive in this church year. We now have a new way to look at the total numbers of people attending our Sunday services. When you log into zoom on a Sunday morning, you may see 47 screens logged in as you did last week, a number of these are 2 (or more) attendees. Then we add the number of members who are live at the service plus our Choir members. This past Sunday, we reached over 90 adults before adding the number of youths enjoying the Sunday...