Dear church,
Thank you to everyone who filled out the survey from the Reopening Team and special thanks to Evan Nielsen for putting it together for us. As you might expect, the results show that our congregation falls across a spectrum of readiness for in-person meetings. We want to carefully start offering some options for in-person gatherings for those who are ready, while also maintaining virtual options for those who are not. Also, we want to be careful not to develop “two congregations” – an in-person one and a virtual one. God has called us to be a church family together and we want to find ways to keep us all connected to one another. The days ahead will be, I trust, another way God continues to teach us to love one another.
We are taking our reopening in steps. In this letter, I want to let you know about the first step: in-person, outdoor Communion Services. These are not replacements for Sunday morning worship, which we will continue on Zoom for now; these are supplementary to the Sunday morning worship. Having the Lord’s Supper together is a physical, in-person sign and seal of the communion Jesus has established between us and himself and also the communion he has established among us. [more details, including a sign-up, were included in the original letter]
In Christ,
Pastor Jeff, for the Reopening Team