Pastoral Statement on Resuming our Corporate Gatherings

COVID-19 - Our plan to meet together again.

A Message from the Pastors

As the children of God, we long to see each other face to face and to be able to worship together, serve one another in love, and avail ourselves of all the corporate means of grace.

We understand that the spiritual health of Christians heavily leans on the means of grace released as the people of God gather together in unity to worship Jesus.

However, this season has obviously presented and still presents many challenges to gathering together in one location and in large numbers.

Our Plan to Gather

With all that being said, our plan for resuming the corporate gathering is as follows:

We will, Lord willing, gather in corporate worship at Woodland Heights Resource Center beginning June 7th, 2020. We think it wise to wait a few more weeks to resume gathering for a few reasons:

  1. Because we rent a facility, we are very limited in what we can do regarding space and time. We would not be able to have multiple services and do not have enough space to practice precautions.

  2. We have a large demographic of babies and small children. We would like to wait a few weeks to see what happens regarding the virus’ spread before opening the nursery. With that said, asking a large number of small children to sit through an entire service when they are used to being in a nursery seems unreasonable.

  3. We aim to have a massively high view of the preached Word, and we do not think it best to sacrifice the church’s ability to hear the preached Word in edifying ways for the sake of fellowship, though we absolutely love fellowship. Therefore, by waiting until the 7th, we can hopefully resume our children’s ministry in the nursery. Until then, the preached Word is more likely to be heard fruitfully in individual homes.

However, because we love fellowship and believe the NT ethic of love is most fulfilled as the people of God come together, we are going to ask those who feel clear in their consciences to do so to gather in groups of 15-20 to watch the services online together and take the supper in individual homes.

This, while not the same as the official corporate gathering, will at least allow the brothers and sisters to serve each other and take the supper together, which are primary means of grace for enduring faithfully to the end.

If you are not a member of the church but are interested in joining one of these groups, please contact Pastor Kent at kentthecross@gmail.com

Blessings,
The Elders