Trinity Grace Cancels UWS Service

So, who showed up to church yesterday only to find out it was canceled? If you attend Trinity Grace's Upper West Side service, it's possible you were left stranded at church. Only about an hour before the 10:30 am service was supposed to begin did the church administrators discover that they would have to cancel their regularly scheduled service. Service is supposed to resume as scheduled next Sunday.

According to Pastor Jon Tyson's email at 9:40 AM on Sunday, the service was canceled "due to a problem at Emily Dickinson School," where the church holds its services. A phone call from one of the leaders in the church revealed that the service had to be canceled because the hired security guards did not show up or respond to calls about their whereabouts. Because the church holds its services in a school they are responsible for hiring security guards as a precautionary measure for the school and those who use it during the week.

A flurry of emails, phone calls, and text messages went out to alert the congregation. Missional community leaders were instructed to tell all the people they could think of that the service was canceled for that day and to tell those people to tell their friends so that everyone in the congregation would know that the service was canceled.

How did this viral communication work out? Is everyone at Trinity Grace so tightly interconnected to the community that they all received multiple phone calls and text messages that the UWS service had been canceled or did some people unwittingly show up for the service?