I have exciting news to share. On Sunday October 4th Rock Church will return to offering in-person indoor worship. As I'm sure you can imagine, there will be certain guidelines in place. But with appropriate precautions, we can once again gather in our sanctuaries to enjoy the community of our church family and worship and praise the living God.
One of the most challenging aspects of returning to indoor worship is establishing the appropriate level of precaution. Ours is a large congregation with diverse needs and opinions. We have folks within our church family who need to be very cautious because of their own health, the health of someone they provide care for or because of their job. We have others within the church family who consider themselves to be low risk and are not as concerned about a high precaution approach to gathering.
We will not all agree on the best approach. But out of mutual love and respect we are attempting to develop a process that meets everyone's needs. So here's the plan. As an experiment, when we come back to indoor worship, we will offer three alternatives.
Option one. We will continue to offer an excellent online worship experience. This is the best opportunity for those who are having to observe the highest level of precaution.
Option two. We will offer a higher precaution in person worship service. Those who attend this HP service will wear masks throughout the service. The service size will be restricted to 30% or less capacity. This will be a no contact, social distance service (no handshakes, hugs, fist bumps, etc.)
Option three. We will offer a moderate precaution service. Masks will be worn until seated and then are optional (until exiting). Service capacity will be no more than 50%. At this service, permission-based contact will be acceptable. This means if you and another are both comfortable shaking hands, fist bumping, etc., that is your choice. But please do not initiate contact without permission and hand washing or sanitizing is recommended.
Here are a few more key details.
We are not allowed to gather in the lobby. As we pass through the lobby to the sanctuary, please maintain six foot distancing.
Registration will be required for all services. This is the only way we can keep attendance at the 30% and 50% levels. A link will be sent out on Wednesdays to register online for the service of your choice that Sunday. If you know of a church member that does not have internet access please let us know at this link so we can work out an alternative sign up process for them.
Schedule. Every campus will offer a 9:00 a.m. HP service and a 10:30 a.m. MP service. There will be a full cleaning prior to the HP service and a cleaning of high-touch surfaces just before the MP service. We want to stress that this is an experiment. We will run the schedule for the month of October. We may find there is a greater need for one or the other type of service. At that point we will adjust the schedule as seems appropriate.
We need all hands on deck. Since we don't know yet who will return in person and who will continue to worship online, we will need additional volunteers in every area including greeters, cleaning team, tech, musicians and more. You can see all the information and sign up to help at this link.
Most multi-site churches use a combination of in-person and video teaching. Beginning in October, we will be doing the same. I will be rotating across all three campuses. So every campus will have a combination of preaching from myself live, on video and the campus pastors live. Because preaching preparation consumes substantial time, this will free up time for campus pastors to do more in ministry development, leadership training, outreach, pastoral care and more.
I will be sharing all this information again, with more detail, in a Facebook live presentation this evening (Wed) at 7:00 p.m. As a live format, you can ask questions on the spot and I will do my best to respond.
I can't begin to tell you how excited I am to be able to come back together in our sanctuaries. I've loved the outdoor services, but there is something special about gathering in our worship spaces. I hope that many of you will be able to join us. But I also want you to know that if you are not yet ready to return in person we will continue to offer an excellent live stream experience for you.
Just a reminder that this Sunday we will offer an outdoor in-person service at our Sandown campus at 5:00 pm. Sunday September 27 will be an outdoor service at our new North Shore location at 5:00 pm. And of course, there will still be 9:00 am and 10:30 am online worship.
God bless,
Pastor Steve