Love Out Loud 5

The End of August

A restful Sunday on-campus was had by most Trinitarians, as few students went home for the weekend. Monday, however, would begin a somewhat hectic week for Marc, between interviewing candidates for Ally's position at the Urban Coaching Institute, giving the invocation at the women's volleyball and women's soccer home openers, Wednesday worship, all before departing Milwaukee on Friday morning with his little family and a few friends to spend the holiday weekend in Ohio with the women's soccer team. First on that to-do list was a meeting with a modified version of his Super Six to evaluate and critique the first two weeks of activities and events for the PMA. Marc sat back while Alyssa led the group discussion.

Alyssa: Before we begin, I sense there will probably be a similar theme running through everyone's comments, that the campus shutdown made preparations and planning difficult to complete before we returned. Given that, how do you believe Move-In Day went?

Julie J.: You're right that being away from Trinity since the beginning of March hampered our ability to determine the necessary numbers and hall placement to make it a success. One positive is that we had already done it once, which meant we had history to look at in laying out how we wanted to staff it and where we would need additional help. It went as well as I could have expected given that we hadn't finalized the map and schedule until Wednesday morning.

Corey: I have to thank all of you for pitching in to help me deal with my needing to be in-and-out that week in order to support Ali.

Erin: Given the amount of loss and grief a number of us dealt with over the spring, it was only proper to take yours and Ali to heart and do our best to let you focus on her.

Alyssa: Anything else, or can we move onto the activities fair?

Hearing no additional comments, last Monday's activities fair was broken down. Steph felt like the scheduling could have been better and the pairings more balanced, but also understood the lack of time for their participation to be as creative or perfect as Erin and Cali might have wanted.

Alyssa: I'm going to speak on the first two worship services before opening the floor for your comments. As neither of them were particularly "normal", we might need to wait a couple of weeks to give a full critique on what's working and not. I feel that both services thus far were "looser" than what we started with last year, even if last Wednesday's had all the trappings of a traditional and stuffy liturgy and rite of consecration. Some of that is because a lot of us have had two years to figure out where to hold back and where to press forward with our personalities while up front, while a big piece is because Marc has allowed Steph and I to play with our portions of the liturgy as a trial run for what we might want to do in a future post.

Katelyn: I know the Monty Python gag wasn't cleared, but Dad thought it would go over well with this type of congregation, a slightly nerdy and more liberal gathering of believers.

Marc: It was fine, and I think took some of the edge off what was to come than if the procession ran strictly by the book.

Steph: What does Wednesday's service look like?

Marc: It will be pretty standard in form. The message will be the first of my series on Ecclesiastes 3, focusing on uprooting and planting. Katelyn, the schedule has you and Abby assisting.

Katelyn: We'll be ready.

Marc acknowledged Katelyn's response before stepping in and starting the discussion about Saturday's wedding.

Marc: The wedding. How does everyone think it went?

Steph: Chaos behind the scenes as always, but the on-stage presentation was on point.