Resuming In-Person Worship 9/12

Dear Parish Family,

Your Vestry and Clergy want to announce that we will be resuming in person worship on Sunday, September 12th.

The Vestry and Clergy believe it is important to communicate our stance in the past and what we plan going forward. Our baseline during the entire Covid pandemic has been to "be our brothers' keepers". This applies both to our congregation and our community at large.

Our recent shutdown came as a response from Midland Memorial Hospital. On a daily basis, through news media, the hospital described the Covid surge of admissions and the overload of stress and strain on healthcare workers and the facility. Our own Russell Meyers urged no gatherings indoors and the Vestry took that plea seriously. For our parish family, we wanted to protect each other from Covid breakthrough cases and our unvaccinated children.

As Vestry and Clergy have continued to visit, we came to some conclusions and solutions that we believe will honor doing our part to respond to our hospital as well as honoring the needs of our parish family.

Our conclusions are:

• Parishioners miss coming to church.

• Clergy and ministry team, while appreciating the ability to Live Stream, have found conducting our service lonely.

• Our Live Streaming attendance has dropped considerably since the citywide quarantine to around 10. This means a majority of the parish has not had Sunday worship.

• The majority of parishioners have been vaccinated and some have had/are pursuing booster shots.

• The loving hard work on behalf of our Sunday school kids to help with the Challenge Match was put on hold and could be scheduled for Sunday, September 19th.

Our solution arose out of the recognition that we have existing protocols in place for social distancing and safety. Our parish is compliant with mask wearing. We can forgo Fellowship for the time being and find ways to meet outdoors (as we will on 9/19 for the Bazaar).

The one area on which we'd like to improve is exiting church. We did have a crush of people as we left the Sanctuary through the Narthex and Welcome Center. We are instructing our ushers to take one row out at a time. Please be patient!

With this plan, we believe we can continue caring for one another, our hospital and the wider community.

We look forward to seeing you Sunday!

 

Joan Whitt

Sr. Warden