PASTORAL UPDATE FROM PASTOR LAURIE
REGARDING SUNDAY WORSHIP AND SPRINGHOUSE
May 27, 2020
Beloved members and friends of First Christian,
The world has had a long couple of months living through the Covid-19 global pandemic. I am beyond proud of you for continuing to be church even though we have not physically gathered as church. You have continued to worship online; attend meetings on zoom; play games by zoom; gather for coffee and happy hours by zoom; and you have made telephone calls to each other. There are cards that have been sent and received as well as prayers prayed. We have discovered that we do not have to gather at SpringHouse Ministry Center to be church, but I have a feeling that you already knew that.
There are parts of the country that are beginning to open back up and Minnesota is also beginning to open up. We have not reached our peak so the opening of any buildings and business is under strict guidelines. Gov. Walz has issued an executive order that allows religious communities to meet again at 25% capacity. There are 14 pages in the order that include everything from taking temperatures to how much humidity must be in the building at all times. During worship there can be no singing, masks must be worn at all times and there must be 6 feet between people. Family members can sit next to each other. If you will imagine our spaces at SpringHouse and remember that we are one of three congregations who own the building and worship there, you will realize the difficult task that is ahead of us.
A wise Methodist pastor shared with me that Methodist churches are considering the quality of worship before they begin to gather in person for worship. Since we have not hit our peak and we have not had 14 days of falling numbers of cases of covid-19 and 14 days after that for evaluation it is risky for many of our members to gather. If you are over 65 and have any medical conditions such as diabetes, asthma, heart conditions or if you are a child then gathering for worship could land you in ICU in the hospital. While we continue to live stream our services everyone is safe.
I say all of this to remind us that it will be a while before we gather back together the way we used to gather. We are looking forward to that day though. We have members who have joined together to create a task force to help us safely journey toward gathering back together. They take their task seriously and they too want us to physically be together again. They may discover that we have to do that in stages, and they will let us know what those stages will look like. At the same time, we will work with Salem Lutheran and Lyndale UCC to explore the safest way to open SpringHouse and the safest way to share the space in this time.
We have made it this far and that is due to the faithfulness and dedication of each one of you. Continue joining in worship and all of the other opportunities we have to be together and to serve the world around us. I am grateful to get to journey with you during this time as you continue to remind me of the grace, love and mercy of God. Much love and peace, Pastor Laurie
Through our FCC website, you can access online giving and Sunday bulletin materials. In the upper right-hand corner of the site, you will see a button that says “Give”. Click on this button to access the online giving portal. Under the picture, you see a series of icons. The 4th icon over is the place where the link to the Sunday Bulletin is located. Click on that link to download the bulletin.
To access our LiveStream channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPVqQ57szyEh8JCtF_8lhiw/live
To share prayer concerns for Sunday’s service, email Pastor Laurie or email Pastor Dan
