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Dear CGS Family -
I am preparing a simple "Worship ReGathering Survival Guide " for you, which is intended to complement/supplement the information that has already been provided to you by Pastor Chuck regarding our upcoming embodied worship service on Sunday, September 27. Look for that tomorrow (Friday, September 25).
Today, however, I want to take a moment to ask for your grace and forbearance. And more particularly still, to ask for your ongoing prayers for all the worship services that lie ahead:
We are beginning a gradual, diminutive, and (in many ways) awkward effort to re-gather. We are attempting to do so in a worshipful yet safe manner, and it is precisely this conflation of "worshipful" with "safe" that creates tension for all of us - individually as well as corporately.
We are beginning gradually, in order that we can identify potential problems early and correct them before subsequent gatherings.
We are beginning diminutively, in order that we can learn to anticipate the natural configurations in which our members will arrive for worship (i.e. the proportion of singles / couples / extended family groupings / etc.). As we become more knowledgeable about feasible seating patterns, we hope and expect to be able to safely accommodate more of us in worship on any given Sunday...
We are beginning awkwardly - not by desire, but certainly by intention - because best-practice safeguards are inescapably awkward when applied to worship services... Spatial distancing. Masking. Truncated personal interactions. Altered approaches to singing. "Assigned" seating. Brisk, non-lingering exits. All very awkward indeed...
Yet it is instructive to remind ourselves that our brothers and sisters in Christ have often worshipped in far more constrained circumstances -- whether in the subterranean catacombs of ancient Rome, or in hushed whispers within persecuted rural present-day Chinese home churches. And they manage(d) to do so with joy. Surely we - under much less duress - can as well...
Parting Shots -
As Pastor Chuck has pointedly reminded us, our resumption of embodied worship services at CGS is - and will presumptively continue to be for many more months yet - a very imperfect facsimile of our former corporate worship rhythms... Ezra, returning to Jerusalem from Babylonian exile, observed a similar sense of joy admixed with distress as the Jewish remnant labored to restore the temple:
But many of the priests and Levites and heads of the fathers' houses, old men who had seen the first temple, wept with a loud voice when the foundation of this temple was laid before their eyes. Yet many shouted aloud for joy, so that the people could not discern the noise of the shout of joy from the noise of the weeping of the people, for the people shouted with a loud shout, and the sound was heard afar off. (Ezra 3:12-13, NKJV)
We are grateful that many of our people will be able to return to sanctuary worship, and we celebrate God's kindness towards us in that regard. But we also lament, because (at present) a large majority - approaching 75% -- of our church family will not be able to worship in our sanctuary on any given Sunday...
It is your pastors' earnest prayer that our church body will remain one in spirit throughout this continuing COVID-imposed journey:
We trust that those who are able to gather in our sanctuary will lift up in prayer those many who are not... And we pray that the much larger number among our church family who worship from home will prayerfully undergird their "representatives" seated in the pews...
And we pray that we may all be able to recognize - with gratitude -- God's hand of sustaining mercy and grace in this moment, whatever our individual circumstances...
Godspeed -
Glenn Jordan
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