Community worship

One of the fun possibilities of summer is outdoor worship. We gathered in West Concord this weekend for the annual community celebration, called Survival Days, and it included a worship service on Sunday morning.

The band that helped lead worship was called Rise to LIFE, with LIFE standing for "Living in Faith Every day." They were a talented group of young men from the Kasson-Mantorville school district nearby.





Five churches joined together for ecumenical worship: Concord Church of Christ, Faith Community Church, West Concord United Methodist Church, Trinity, and Hegre. I was scheduled to lead worship at Hegre, so I got in on this event by default.

Unfortunately, it was my last Sunday at Hegre, so I missed out on saying a proper farewell. (The goodbye process is quite prolonged with eight churches.) One of the tricky things about juggling all these congregations is that sometimes details like this get overlooked until it's too late. Fortunately, there were some Hegre folks at community worship and it was a pleasure to see them again.





The festivities continued with food booths and entertainment. I did have coffee with some folks at the legion hall, where a breakfast was being served, then the real festivities started back up again at 1 p.m. with a parade, ice cream social, and other events.





We were lucky to have a beautiful day. I was actually a bit cool for the first time in over a week. It was a terrific change of pace from the stifling heat of late.