From Erik: Worship Resources for Sunday; Event Updates; Service Opportunities

Hey, Friends.

These are unprecedented times. And these times will require unprecedented faith and love from God’s people. We will not resort to bland bromides or faithless alarmism. Instead, we will hold fast to our fundamental comfort: that we belong, body and soul, to our Lord Jesus Christ. Secure in that steadfast hope, we can respond to the present crisis with prudence and prayer, with love and care.   

While it’s likely you’ve read a bunch on the COVID-19 pandemic already, I recommend this lucid and cogent piece from Andy Crouch. In a measured and thoughtful way he shows how we, as followers of Jesus, can respond redemptively to this disruption of everyday life.

Already the COVID-19 pandemic has forced us to evaluate our habits—around hand washing, social contact, and daily life. As Christians we should be eager to evaluate and adjust our regular habits of love for God and loving service to others. I’m confident that many of us may look back on the Spring of 2020 as a time when we established new individual and corporate habits of our spiritual formation.

Worship
It was a really hard decision to cancel corporate worship. Worship is what we do as a church. This is the first Sunday in my 12 years at City Church that we will not have a large group worship service. We didn’t make that decision lightly. But we are convinced that early and decisive action (especially related to large gatherings where unintended transmission may occur) is essential to disrupting the advance of this disease. If it doesn’t feel like over-reaction, it is likely not enough. 

While corporate worship is cancelled, we encourage you to worship on Sunday with your household, with a small group of people, or individually. To that end we have prepared this Guide for Home Worship. We’d like for as many people as possible to use this guide for a time of home worship at 4pm tomorrow, acknowledging our habit of worshiping together at that time. 

Other Activities
In an effort to honor the instructions of health and government officials to practice social distancing to control the spread of COVID-19, we are suspending most City Church-sponsored programing for the week of March 15th. This includes postponing the Visitors Dessert and the Women’s Dinners, and canceling the Women’s Bible studies. While we don’t yet know how long these precautions will be necessary, the staff and leadership are developing longer-term contingency plans to continue the work and ministry of the church in the midst of these new global circumstances.

As you feel comfortable and able, please continue meeting together, as households and in small groups. As you do so, follow the health guidelines that are widely available. We recommend meeting in groups of 10 or fewer and modifying certain social habits accordingly, especially around personal contact and food service. This will be difficult because it cuts against years of habit and it counteracts our theological commitments to incarnation and relationality, but it is the right thing to do.

Service
City Church recognizes this unprecedented moment as an opportunity for Christian witness by our loving service of others. First, we will care for each other, particularly attending to the needs of the most vulnerable within our congregation—those who live alone, older people, those with compromised immunity. We will develop structures to help you let us know your needs—food, supplies, visitation, childcare, health care—and for us to care for each other well.

Second, we want to care for our city. To this end, Jim, alongside our deacons, is coordinating our involvement in the city-wide effort to ensure that families who depend on the school system for adequate nutrition receive the meals they need. City Church has volunteered to lead the food distribution at George Wythe High School, one of 20 such sites across the city. We need volunteers over the age of 18 to sign up for 4-hour shifts (7:30-10:30am; 10am-1pm) Monday through Friday over at least the next two weeks. We have committed to recruiting 8 volunteer slots per shift, for a total of 16 each day. RPS will be providing the food; volunteers will pack and distribute it. There are more details at the registration link here. Please be sure to sign up for George Wythe and to share this link far and wide.

Of course, there are many other ways (big and small) to serve our city. We encourage you to get involved in whatever ways you can and continue to share opportunities with us. 

Would you take a moment now to pray for our church and our region? We all need to remember God’s promise to Jacob, kept for us in Jesus Christ:

“Behold, I am with you all and will keep you whoever you go, and will bring you back to this land. For I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.” (Genesis 28:15)

For the staff and leadership,
Erik