“I was glad when they said to me,
‘Let us go to the house of the LORD.’”
Psalm 122:1

Even though all of us know that the church is not the building, I am also confident that all of us are anticipating the day when we can return to our building for
worship. We treasure the places we worship because for us our churches are sacred spaces. Our churches are the places where (as seminary professor Tom Long has said),

          People have prayed. Vows have been made, the gospel has been heard, hymns have been sung, marriage promises have been spoken, funerals have been held, sins have been confessed and forgiven. This place is the theater of God where God’s people have gathered to perform every week the great story of God’s redemption of all creation.

Because it is often comforting and therapeutic to merely to sit in our sacred space, and because it doesn’t appear that we will be returning to in-person worship services in the foreseeable future, our Governing Board has agreed to allow two individuals (only) to come to the sanctuary and sit (with masks and socially distanced) in the church as we record our worship on Saturday mornings at 10:00 a.m. Access to the sanctuary will be by “invitation only,” and masks will be required.

While our Governing Board realizes that this small gesture can never substitute for our “normal” congregational worship service, we do hope that it will provide a sense of peace, a time of renewal, and an experience of “being home.”

Please await your invitation for the opportunity to “go into the house of the LORD” and share with us as we seek to nourish our hunger for worship and fellowship which many of us may have previously taken for granted. And then, perhaps, we will also experience the Spirit of God anew.

Blessings,

tom