Dear Church Family,
In September, I met with the financial management board and the deacons. In both meetings we looked at how you’ve responded during this pandemic and we were amazed! During a season of uncertainty and change you’ve responded with great generosity. We are actually ahead in our giving compared to this time last year! I want to encourage you to continue with your faithful giving!
Also, we are seeing more and more people return to gathering in-person on Sunday mornings. We are currently averaging about 75% of our pre-pandemic attendance. In addition to the in-person attendance I want to encourage those of you who have been watching online. You have been faithful in staying engaged while sheltering in place. We will continue to provide our services online. We hope to be able to livestream our Sunday morning worship service soon. This will enable those of you who are watching from home to be able to watch the service on Sundays at 11am as it is happening. This is important because it will enable you to get back into the habit of worshipping with your church family on Sunday mornings.
The next step for us is to reintroduce our in-person Wednesday evening Bible studies. We will take this step on Wednesday, October 7th at 6:30pm. We will gather in the Social Hall for a time of prayer and Bible study. We will continue to incorporate a way for you to watch online through Zoom and Facebook. The youth will gather on the 3rd floor in the Youth Room for Bible study. As for the children, we are going to delay the relaunch of our children’s program until a later date. The reason for this is to enable us to launch an excellent children’s program that will minister to the families in our church and in our community. This program will be different than what we’ve offered before and I anticipate it will be a major emphasis of our Wednesday evenings. I’ve been in conversation with the families in our church and we’ve discussed some great ideas. I’m looking forward to how God is going to use Wednesday evenings to help children becoming growing followers of Jesus! With that said, if children attend before the launch date we will have an activity for them. Pray for us as we continue to put together this program!
One final thought, we are approaching the presidential election. In order to prepare for this national election as well as for our state and city elections we are going to do two things. First, we’re going to pray. During the month of October you will be provided with a small American flag and a prayer guide. I’m asking you to place the flag somewhere you will see it each day. As you see the flag I want you to allow it to prompt you to pray for our country. Truellen Baker has created a prayer guide for us to follow throughout the month leading up to the election in November. Both the flag and the prayer guide are available for you to pick up at the church. The second thing we’re going to do is walk through a sermon series entitled “The Elephant, The Donkey, and The Lamb.” Each Sunday leading up to the November election we will explore the relationship between Christianity and politics. The goal of this study is to help us represent Jesus as we engage in the political process.
In Christ,
Pastor Ron Jones
