Update on church re-opening
Dear Church Family,
I form light and create darkness; I make well-being and create calamity; I am the LORD, who does all these things.
Isaiah 45: 7
If there is one thing this verse teaches us, it is that the Lord is sovereign, and without him, nothing happens. In this, we can therefore trust that the Lord’s hand has been at work over the past months.
And whilst we may not understand why God allowed his Church (buildings) to close, we trust that according to his will, his Church (people) have been refined and built up during this time.
We are sure you will all agree that one of the major things we have all missed as a result of the lock-down is the fellowship that comes with being able to meet together in the Church building, as a family of believers with a common purpose of worshipping Christ. To be able to commune together, and to pray and worship together is central to being part of a Church family. It allows us to encourage and build one another up.
As you will all be aware, the government announced that place of worship could begin to re-open from mid-July. As a result, the Elders and the Trustees have been looking at when and how we will be able to get back into our Church in order to meet.
We are provisionally looking to have our first Church service back in the building on Sunday 16th August.
We do not fully know yet what ‘Church’ will look like. We are currently digesting all the guidance to see what we can and cannot do, particularly given the fact that we are only allow to have 50 people in the building at one time, and still with social distance measures in place.
To date, we have been devising one-way systems, installing hand sanitisers, installing signage and working out plans for keeping the building clean between meetings.
We hope that by letting you know our current plans and progress, that you will continue to pray with us for the Lord’s guidance in all things. We also hope that by letting you know these plans, this will encourage you that we will soon be able to meet again (even if it still doesn’t feel ‘normal’).
We will seek to keep you informed over the coming weeks about these plans, and closer to the time of being able to meet, we will issue some guidance on how things will happen when we do meet.
We hope that this is exciting news for you. However, as with all things under God’s control, these plans may change, depending on what we think we can achieve within the guidelines. Therefore, please take this and pray continually for the plans.
Thank you
The Elders also wanted to take this opportunity to publicly thank everyone who has worked tirelessly over the past months to ensure we were still able to meet ‘virtually’ as a Church. This is not just meeting on a Sunday, but includes those who have connect with everyone in the Church, whether through phone calls, emails, whatsapps or even socially distanced waves through the window – the effort put in by so many of you, has ensured that we continue to remain connected to each other through these uncertain and unusual times.
For fear of missing anyone out, we won’t (and probably can’t) name all the names of everyone who has served the Lord by helping us to stay together. However, you know that the Lord rewards those who work for Him – Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ – Colossians 3:23-24.
Again, we say thank you to all of you.
We also wanted to thank everyone who has continued to pray for the Elders over this period. This has been a very challenging and testing period for everybody, and as Elders, we have had to face situations that we never thought we would need to deal with. These situations have caused us to spend many hours with the Lord in prayer, and many hours searching the scriptures for answers. However, we can confidently say that without your prayers for us, this time would have been much more difficult.
We encourage you all to persevere through the coming months. So let’s not get tired of doing what is good. At just the right time we will reap a harvest of blessing if we don’t give up – Galatians 6:9
Yours In Christ,
The Elders