Pastor Tom Jones relayed a tale from two years ago when he was visiting a friend in Florida and saw a peculiar sign outside a local house of worship.
“It read drive-thru imposition of ashes and free coffee,” Jones remembered. It struck him so at the time that he took a photograph to remember it by.
“Who on Earth would do drive-thru ashes,” he thought to himself.
Two years later? Well … COVID, right?
Thoburn United Methodist Church in St. Clairsville is offering drive-thru imposition of ashes at 7 a.m., noon, and 7 p.m. on Ash Wednesday, February 17 at the UMC’s 209 E. Main Street location.
“Now I’m looking back and, you know what, it’s about accessibility,” Jones admitted. “For years, churches talked about accessibility and it consisted of ramps and wheelchair access and handicap bathrooms.
“But I’m suddenly realizing it now means putting things where people can get to them, whether that’s online, or broadcasting in a parking lot, or even a drive-thru.”
Last year, ashes were received the old-fashioned way, inside the church during services. But that was right before pandemic restrictions shut nearly everything down. Methods have slowly changed and adapted since.
“In Ohio, churches were exempt from the requirements put out by the governor, but for most Methodist churches, the bishops encouraged them to close and they did close through June,” Jones recalled. “We returned with drive-in services and then eventually went to two in-house services each Sunday with an hour in-between to allow time to sanitize the facility for the next service.”
Pre-COVID, Thoburn offered three Sunday services, plus a midweek service on Thursday. Now, it’s reduced to twice a week.
“Attendance is probably half of what it was, but sometimes it’s a bit more,” Jones said. “Plus, any service we provide in-house, we broadcast in the parking lot on a short-range FM transmitter so people can sit in their car, turn on the radio and listen to the services. We also post services online.”
Anyone is welcome to receive the ashes as you don’t have to be a member of Thoburn UMC to partake.
Taking to the Drive-Thru
Sometimes when you embrace change, you embrace it whole-heartedly.
It’s not just drive-thru ash imposition that’s being conduct at Thoburn UMC.
Jones recalled an earlier drive-thru soup dinner held at the church. Members of the congregation and other interested parties could drive thru and receive homemade soup, provided they agreed to take an extra serving and give it to someone. That good deed of paying it forward was the cost paid for the soup by each recipient.
Safe to say it went over well.
“We went through seven roasters full of soup,” Jones said.
The drive-thru spaghetti and meatball meal also went well. Jones recalled having 30 pounds of spaghetti and meatballs and planned to be serving it for approximately two hours. The church staff ran out after 75 minutes.
“We’re going to be offering that again this year the day before lent,” Jones said. “We’re just trying to provide options at various levels so people can feel comfortable and also at the same time, feel a little normalcy in the middle of this situation we’re in.”
For more information, visit Thoburn UMC online or stop by its Facebook page.
