January 4, 2021
Dear Church Family and Friends,
Even after almost twenty years of
service to this church, new things continue to happen. This past Sunday, in a perfect storm of cold
and alternating freezing rain and rain, we called off church in the sanctuary literally
in the last hour. It was a combination
of two considerations. The first was providing
for safe access into the church in the frozen mess coming down, and the second
was the consideration of how much worse it could be by the time church was dismissed.
In
years gone by, calling it that late in the game would have been well nigh
unthinkable. Waving people away from
church as they drove up…that is unprecedented in my experience. To gather the faithful who have come out and
then trust in the Lord to get them home safe would have been the game plan. But against the pandemic of COVID and the
preciousness of life against a disease that maxing out our hospital capacities,
there is trusting the Lord to protect us and there is tempting the Lord to adjust
the odds so they may be in our favor.
Weather
permitting, we are going to celebrate Communion together in the sanctuary this
coming Sunday, January 10, 2021. The
remote service is not going to include the liturgy of the Lord’s Supper because
that was made available for this past Sunday.
The ‘regular’ liturgy will be shared instead online.
As it
turned out, from feedback I received from those who’d driven home safely, it
looked like a good call on our part to pass the Sanctuary service by. Prayers went out to those who were in
accidents and those who found themselves in close calls. If the weather had warmed so that everything
turned to rain, the feedback might be different.
I found myself wondering why we did
not have a formal protocol set in place for the ‘last minute’ scenario. We do have a process for calling church ahead
of time, in case of a State-wide emergency or other conditions that warrant
safety for our membership, but that presumes 12-24 hours lead time. It was a matter of sending out a text to as
many folks as I could and be present for the rest. Well, hey, looks like we just wrote a formal
protocol…
It is a
hard call to cancel because worship is the center of our church life. Praising the God who sent us, who came to us
as our Messiah, as our Lord Jesus Christ, thanking the God who sent us, who
came to be Jesus indwelling us as the Holy Spirit, honoring the God of Creation
who has saved us from our sins and made us, by divine mercy, to be worthy of
heaven; that is not something to be surrendered lightly.
The remote service was available and
I hope people were able to use it for their own times of worship and praise to
our God. It was dropped for Sunday
instead of ahead of time so that we that the opportunity to participate would
begin for us all at the same time. But
we shall live and learn.
May the
Lord keep us safe and may we add to our prayers the safety of our presence to
worship the Lord through the season of winter and through the pandemic.
Peace,
Pastor Peter
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