Dear Iowa United Methodist Clergy, Worship Leaders, Lay Leaders, and Staff,
Bishop Laurie recently shared, “For the past five weeks, our clergy and laity have been working tirelessly to provide vital worship, pastoral care, and hope for our local churches in the Iowa Annual Conference. I also know that many of our clergy, church staff, and worship teams are utterly exhausted in mind, body, and spirit. Therefore, I am requiring those teams to find three days back-to-back between now and Pentecost Sunday, May 31, to experience rest, renewal, and sabbath. That means no work on those three days. To make it through the long haul, caring for your spirit is essential. We need you.”
Bishop Laurie realized early on that to require our clergy and worship leaders to take off three consecutive days would be of no real value if they still needed to squeeze into the rest of the week all of the work involved with creating and sharing worship.
The Cabinet has worked closely with our guest preacher Bishop Deb Kiesey and the Communications department to prepare a worship service that can be used anytime in May, ideally before Pentecost.
Go to the Worship with the Cabinet Page
The Eastertide Message of Hope worship service has been developed to be used in many of the styles used across our connection. You will find three different lengths of video, bulletins, transcripts and audio all created to be shared with your congregations.
We hope that you find this useful, and you and your congregation will be blessed. If you have difficulties or questions, please email them to [email protected].
Blessings to all,
The Iowa Annual Conference of The United Methodist Church's Appointed Cabinet