Dear Redeemer Family,
This coming Sunday, October 25th, we are going to shift from four services (8:30 a.m., 9:30 a.m., 11:00 a.m., and 4:00 p.m.) to two services (9:00 a.m. and 11:00 a.m.) with an all-parish outdoor Coffee Hour in the VMFA Sculpture Garden in-between.
The Sunday schedule will look like this:
9:00 - 9:30 a.m. — Family Service
9:45 - 10:45 a.m. — Coffee Hour in the VMFA Sculpture Garden
11:00 - 12:15 p.m. — Full-length Service
For many reasons, I am very excited about this move and I think it will be a healthy step forward for our community!
For the past few months, we have been learning how to worship together in person with all the extra restrictions that come with this season. I think most of us agree that it has been challenging, but overall worlds better than online services! Now that we’ve got a few months under our belt and many of us have acclimated to engaging the world with Covid-19 precautions, it’s time for us to take steps towards drawing back together as a church family.
I’ve been thinking recently about what this parish was founded on:
We’re a church that cares about musical excellence, but this church wasn’t founded on the quality of the music.
We’re a church that cares about faithful, Biblical preaching, but this church wasn’t founded on the quality of the preaching.
We’re a church that cares about doing things well, but this church wasn’t founded on the quality of the programming.
We’re a church that cares about the wisdom in our ancient traditions, but this church wasn’t founded on the traditions of church history.
No, I think what makes us “us” is you - the people. We are a church that gathers in order to be the church together. The music, preaching, programming, and traditions all serve a greater purpose in helping us be a church family. This is why the most common refrain I’ve heard from many of you since mid-March is “I just miss everyone.”
Friends, this is a painful-but-good sign. We should miss each other! We’re family!
Now, what can we do about this right now? I think we still need to offer two different kinds of services until we’re able to run Redeemer Kids ministry and nursery again (and it might be a while). So we still need to offer a 30-minute family service and a 75-minute full-length service. However, to help provide opportunities for us to be together, we’re going to provide space between the two services for an all-parish coffee hour outdoors on the VMFA lawn. You are welcome to bring your own coffee/tea/hot beverage or (if you feel safe doing so) you are welcome to help yourself to freshly brewed Blanchard’s Coffee which we will have available.
Now, lest you worry we are throwing caution to the wind, let me assure you that we will still be following all CDC and governmental precautions:
Everyone who enters our building will be required to wear a mask.
We will continue to have sanitizing stations available.
We will still tape off sections of the pews to ensure safe social distancing within the sanctuary.
We will still ask everyone to RSVP for services online in advance so that we can cap attendance at 125 (which is still less than ⅓ of our max seating capacity) so that we can ensure that our space does not become too crowded.
When we gather for coffee at the VMFA, we will remember our public witness and intentionally spread out so as not to create a densely packed group of people that appears (to those who don’t know us) to not care about the pandemic.
Folks, being a church together has never required more intentional effort, but it has also never been more necessary. Let’s not allow anything to prevent us from following our Lord Jesus as a community together. None of us can do this alone, we need each other.
In the Father’s love,
