Dear Friends,
I’ve come across two new words that fascinate me.  The first is a slang term used by a South African friend of Dutch descent.  The second I encountered at a Webinar.

Plonking

• a practice of allowing each day to unfold as it will, with its stresses and opportunities, and in resilient fashion, making the best of things as one is able and has energy – with an attitude of relative calm and acceptance that living involves “making do,” without any particular need to measure or assess productivity or progress, whatever those terms might mean to others in the larger world context.

• an open-ended time-management, goal-setting and coping style, perfected by retirees (and some others), elevated to more common practice during pandemic living

Multi-channel ministry

• the practice of serving, developing and tending spiritual communities, in multiple ways, via multiple formats facilitated by technology, all of which are centered on the characteristics of flexibility, resilience and adaptation, designed to be responsive to rapidly changing community circumstances and congregational needs.

These are crude definitions I have fashioned.  The charm I find in the slang term “plonking” is the kind of randomness if captures that I experience in my own daily function in pandemic life.  In a world where available information changes daily, as a “plonker,” I respond to current pressure points and essential decisions, as required, and otherwise meet core needs for food, sleep, exercise and social connection. Most days, I invest limited effort in long-term planning.

I understand multi-channel ministry as a label that describes the ministries Rev. Rita and Macey Forsyth are creating and fulfilling for UUFM, during this health crisis.  Channel 1 is face to face.  Channel 2 is on-line.  Beginning in March, 2020, our congregation and leadership gradually adapted to share worship and provide pastoral care in new ways that protected the physical health of members.  In 2021, church leadership everywhere has begun to realize and accept that many in our communities will need/want/expect continued availability of on-line access as an essential form of participation in congregational life.  I doubt Rev Rita studied multi-channel ministry in seminary: “What it Means?” or “How to do it?”  We are re-inventing.

I can’t help but wonder if plonking and multi-channel ministry are opposite sides of the same coin; a certain yin and yang relationship?   What do you think?  Let’s talk over coffee after worship.

Penny