Central Abbotsford

Even though weather forecasts are notoriously unreliable, I still love checking them out to see what the days ahead might look like. As I am writing this, I see that the forecast for this Saturday includes a high of 28°C. 

Now, full disclosure, I will be away for the end of this week at Northview’s pastor and elder retreat, so I am writing this blurb on the morning of a cool, grey, rainy Tuesday. Maybe the forecast won’t hold up! But right now the Sunday and Monday temperatures are listed as even higher than Saturday, so I have a feeling that hot weather is indeed coming this weekend.

Those of you who have attended Central Abbotsford for a while will know that once the temperature gets over about 20°C, it can get quite warm in our Worship Centre. The combination of an older building, the lack of air conditioning, and a service time at the hottest part of the day, when the heat has had time to build up and get trapped inside, and you have all the ingredients for not only an uncomfortable setting for church, but one that is so uncomfortable that it can indeed distract or subtract from some of the purposes for why we gather.

And, so, we are getting to the time of the year where, just as for the last two summers, we will move our church services into the air conditioned gym. Starting next Saturday, June 20 (unfortunately we couldn’t quite get in for this weekend!), our services will be held in the gym, through until the end of August. We are hopeful that the climate control allows for an environment where we can focus on worship and the word, and not the weather!

As always, this shift brings a few changes to the rhythm of our evenings together, so I wanted to communicate them here. Our dinner start time will shift to 4:15pm. This will allow us time to eat before we change over the layout of the gym for the service, which we will do at around 5:10pm. If you are physically able, we would love to have you join in and help in this changeover – we need to clear the tables, fold and store them, and then set up seats in rows for the service. By the end of the summer we usually have it down to a science – but it takes a lot of hands!

Our service will then start as usual at 5:30pm, with dessert and visiting after the service as usual (except that we won’t have tables to sit at – just rows of chairs). 

There is one last important scheduling change that all of this necessitates. For the last few months, we have been running our Pre-Service Prayer time in the Unsupervised Nursery at 5:10pm. However, this now falls right at the time that many of us will be busy turning over the gym for our worship service. We do not, though, want to simply remove a key time of prayer from the flow of our evenings. So, for the summer, we will begin our meal time at 4:15 with either myself or someone else leading us in a prayer of blessing for the meal and the service in the gym. I hope you’re able to make it there for this moment!

He who gathers in summer is a prudent son.

-Proverbs 10:5a