St Nicholas Episcopal Church has a new video camera, and we’ve been uploading to our own YouTube channel. Soon everybody in the world can hear me mess up singing that one solo…
YouTube – 1bread1body’s Channel

Welcome to St. Nicholas Episcopal Church! We are a church in the northwest suburbs of Chicago that celebrates all people and focuses on mission to children, LGBTQ individuals and families, the hungry, those in need of healing, and those seeking a deeper spiritual life.

The church is located at 1072 Ridge Avenue, Elk Grove Village IL

They haven’t uploaded anything that they taped during Lent, so I hope new content will be going up soon. I’m interested to see how it looks, especially for some of the special services we do over Lent where the entire space gets re-arranged into a new configuration.

Holy Week services have been effective and pretty well attended except for Maundy Thursday, but Palm Sunday was a big deal as it was a single, combined service. We “strowed” the palm leaves all over the space, especially in the area between the font and the current location of the altar, which is more or less centered in the sanctuary.

I wasn’t all that impressed with the sermon on Thursday; it was given by one of our lay preachers, who tends toward the “show and tell” end of the spectrum, and also likes to dramatize a little. A display was constructed from small tables draped in black (okay, wooden TV trays covered with black plastic tablecloths) and each table contained something symbolic of one of the 6 Sundays in Lent and the sermons other people gave. At the end of the display, a small barbecue had been set up with Sterno cans, with small rocks piled around to make it look like a campfire. This was actually lit and the lights were dimmed while the sermon went on (and on).

It could have been a disaster, as the little rocks were cracking from the heat and sparks occasionally flew up. I could just see Fr. Steve’s fancy new chausuble (think “holy poncho”) going up in flames. As it was, all the little display tables became an obstacle course when it was time for Communion. By the time I finally left, I was wiped out – for such a lightly attended service, there was A TON OF MUSIC that we had to perform. We’d worked on the two (two??) anthems for months, and there was a lot of extra music.

Last night’s service went really well – the Good Friday music was challenging, but aside from having to chant the entire 22nd Psalm (“I am a worm, and no human”) it didn’t seem to be overly long. My friend Dave gave the sermon; he’s another lay preacher of ours (we have a pretty deep bench) and he did an excellent job. Check out his blog, Beware of Pfalz Prophets – he’s a former denizen of the old Jake’s Place comments.

It’s been a long, long week – tonight we have THE BIG VIGIL at 8pm and I have to be there at about 7pm for rehearsal, screaming, and last minute agita. Tomorrow there’s an Easter Sunday service at 10am, so I’ll be there at about 9am. I’m taking it easy today, although it’s a beautiful day; may get out later and enjoy the outside for once. It’s supposed to be nice tomorrow afternoon, too.