Update from Pastor Ronnie
Dear Church family,
I have couple of important updates for you. This one will be a little longer- please read all the info.
Worship Technology
We have stopped taking donations for improving our worship technology. When I first began this project a few months ago, my goal was pretty minimal. I asked myself, what is the least we could “get by” with to improve our online stream to be adequate. But your generosity has allowed us to do much better than just to “get by”!
The total for gifts received as of this writing is $8,885. Gifts came in from people within our congregation and even viewers from other states.
Your generosity has been overwhelming. These gifts have allowed us to greatly improve the quality of what we are doing online- and I hope you have noticed a difference already. We still have equipment arriving and we believe it will all only get better with time. I know that some leaders in our church dreamed of making these technology improvements to our church a few years ago, but you have now made it happen (and for much less than the proposal a few years ago). We’ve tried to be good stewards of your gifts. Thank you.
I’m ending the fundraising for this because we believe we can slowly finish out the project with the gifts on-hand, and because we will be raising special gifts for a mission trip this fall to the Disaster Relief center in Louisiana (Sager Brown). We have a team of 12 going and we look forward to sharing more about it in the coming weeks.
COVID-19
I need to report an important but unusual positive COVID-19 case within our congregation. A little over three weeks ago a church member was feeling perfectly fine- but free tests were being conducted, so this person took one (nasal swab test). This person was in worship a day or two after that test (three Sundays ago) at 9:45, wore a mask, and practiced social distancing (all good).
A few days later, this person received the news of a positive test result- which seemed strange since still no symptoms. Could it be a false positive? Just to be safe, self-quarantine was imposed and this person has stayed home for a couple of weeks and has not returned to church (also good). As the days went by, it seemed more likely to be a false positive. But I got word this morning that symptoms (fairly mild so far) are now showing.
I went into this level of detail to stress a few things for you as a congregation.
When we opened up worship in June, it was with a few understandings about our local situation:
--Infection rate for our county was fairly low.
--Our facilities allowed us plenty of space to spread out for two services.
--We would practice social distancing and ask everyone to wear masks for singing.
Since then, the number of new positive cases for our county have risen dramatically because of increased testing but also since Memorial Day when people from all over the country have come here to our wonderful beaches.
We have now had three cases that have appeared from within our congregation, and I believe the reason we have not seen an outbreak within worship is because of the safe practices we have been asking of you.
Therefore, I cannot stress enough to you to please continue these practices if you come to in-person worship.
We continue to monitor information from our county health officials and our presence for in-person worship continues on a week to week basis. I know we are all eager to “get back to 100% normal” but we are not there yet- and will not be for some time. One of the last things I would want is to have to cancel in-person worship again, but I believe that can still be avoided if our worshipers will continue safe practices.
We in leadership are being pressed on many sides from groups wanting to go back to meeting as before. I sympathize. We have allowed a few groups to resume meeting (mostly some of our administrative committees) but I want you to understand the complexity.
The key factors we face are:
Room size vs number of participants
Down time between use/cleaning.
Each of these factors are critical. This is why we have not resumed Sunday School so far. Many of our classes have 12 or more people that would meet in a room which would place people almost elbow to elbow and does not allow any kind of distance. A couple of our classes and groups are having great success meeting online through various programs and apps.
Furthermore, our church is so large and busy under normal circumstances, that a typical room is often used multiple times during a given day. If this were not properly managed, we could have an outbreak.
I share all of this to ask you to continue working together with love and patience.
When we shut down in March, I began doing an almost daily First Light devotion online (now available on Facebook, Youtube and the church app). At first, I thought this would be for a month or so. We are now going on four months and I do not anticipate ceasing this work in the foreseeable future. Currently, we have somewhere between 40 – 100 people watch these devotions each week. I hope it has touched many people in a positive way.
The Stained Glass videos will also continue, but at a slower rate than before.
Thank you for your continued prayers.
Thank you for your generosity and faithfulness.
Thank you for your witness for the Kingdom of God.
Thank you for being The Church.
In Christ,
Pastor Ronnie
