MAY 22:
Download this Sunday's Announcements and Worship Lyrics here.
Dear Vineyard Family,
Good day dear friends. I am so
happy to report that God continues to fulfill His Psalm 91 blessing over
us. He is so good. It is such a powerful testimony that among so many of
us, not one person has contracted COVID19. Praise God for His mercy and
watchful care over us! We continue to pray earnestly for the whole church and
especially for those who are out there on the front lines.
While it is certainly not as good as
being inside, I have thoroughly enjoyed seeing many of you through your
windshields on Sunday mornings. Karen and I have enjoyed making our way to your
car and at least sharing a smile with you. We plan to continue to do that for
as long as we are in the parking lot. I keep consoling myself with the
knowledge that this too shall pass and that we will at some point be
worshiping together inside the building. I may not be able to hug you or
shake your hand for a while, but just seeing you is such a blessing to me.
We do not yet know on what date we
will reopen the building for worship services. We are prayerfully
assessing that as staff and elders and are as eager as anyone to get back
inside. We have, however, established some new ways of being together to
maintain the health and safety of everyone when we do return. For one
thing, when we come back into the building, we will be reducing the number of
chairs in the sanctuary by about half. This will allow us to space the
chairs to effectively maintain safe-distancing. Doing this will require
us to increase the number of services from two to three. So, just a heads
up, at whatever point we do return to the building, our service times will be
9:00AM, 10:30AM, AND 12:00 NOON. The services will continue to be 45-50
minutes long to give us time to cleanse and set-up between services. There will
be other details of our re-opening that I’ll be sharing with you as we get
closer. I just wanted to give you a heads up about the upcoming change in
service times.
One of the challenges we face in
re-opening is how to safely do children’s ministry. When we return, we
will begin with classes for children two years old through the second grade
only. By doing this we will be able to spread classes out into more
classrooms and keep the kids and volunteers at safe distances. To begin,
we will be offering children’s ministry at the 9:00 and 10:30 services
only. We will be asking families with children to please commit to a
specific service so we can be ready to accommodate the right number of children
on a weekly basis. If you have children registered in our children’s ministry,
someone will be contacting you to find out which service you will be planning to
attend. Thank you so much for your cooperation.
We plan on making one small change
in our parking lot services beginning this week. We recognize that staying in
your car, especially for worship, can be a challenge. If you would like to get
out of your cars for worship, then please feel free to do so as long as you
will stay immediately in front of your vehicle and practice safe-distancing
from all others. Out of courtesy to others, please do not approach
another person or vehicle, and please resist every temptation to congregate
with anyone other than the people in your own car. We also plan to again offer
in-car prayer ministry at the end of each service for those who might like to
receive prayer.
I know that for some of you the parking
lot church service is not a good option and I fully respect that. These
are uncharted waters and everyone must decide what is best for themselves. I
hope you are able to take advantage of our online options including being a
part of our services in real time on Facebook Live. I miss you and so
look forward to seeing you again when the time is right for you. Karen
and I continue to love and pray for all of you the same.
One thing is for certain – we are
one week closer to returning to some sense of normalcy than we were last
week. Please be encouraged in the knowledge that God is still in full
control. And until we meet again – live
by faith, and walk in wisdom.
Many blessings,
Pastor Tom
Grove City Vineyard now has a YouTube Channel. Visit it and subscribe today! All our videos can be easily accessed there. Also the middle and high school students have their own channel in which they can subscribe.
