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Dear CGS Family --
I want to take a moment and share with you some of the plans and preparations to which your Teaching Elders and Session are currently attending --
With Respect to Last Sunday's Worship Service:
Thank you - all of you - for your participation in our worship service this past Sunday, Sept 27 - whether you joined in-person in our sanctuary (some of us) or at home via livestream (most of us)! We appreciate your collective patience and cooperation (both from those who endured the inevitably awkward COVID constraints of our in-person service, as well as from those who displayed forbearance with the video glitches that occurred during our livestream). We learned valuable lessons from both aspects of the service, and expect to provide all of you - regardless of venue - a more seamless and worshipful experience this coming Sunday....
With Respect to Upcoming Sanctuary Worship Services:
We feel that we will be able to safely extend sanctuary seating to 150 persons for this coming Sunday, October 4. And we anticipate gradually expanding our total number of Sunday sanctuary invitations towards what appears to be our eventual maximum safe capacity of perhaps 175 - 200 persons (depending upon the "group configurations" of those who sign up to attend on any given week):
As we go forward these next months, opportunities to register for each week's upcoming Sunday service will be made available beginning on Monday of each week:
However, rather than imposing an arbitrary "alternate week" sign-up rhythm, we are going to merely ask that i) those persons who were able to attend the previous Sunday's worship service defer registering for the upcoming (subsequent) service until Wednesday of each week, in order that ii) those persons who were not able to attend the previous service have first chance to secure a seat for the upcoming service.
Once we have evolved to our maximum safe weekly sanctuary capacity -- if we discover that the number of persons wishing to attend in-person services each week consistently exceeds available seats - we will implement additional contingency plans...
With Respect to Resumption of Communion and Baptisms:
Our hearts long to resume the observance of baptisms and communion, and preparation for these forms of covenant celebration are now underway in earnest. With respect to communion, specifically, final decisions about how to best gather for these observances will be influenced by a number of factors, such as:
1) Our sanctuary's maximum safe seating capacity (given our particular congregational groupings and "seating configurations")
2) The total numbers of persons expected to consistently attend communion
3) The proportion of our congregation that may only be comfortable receiving communion in gatherings of less than 50 persons
4) The frequency of such communion services that can be accommodated logistically (e.g. availability of deacons, servers, and other volunteers, etc), given the above considerations
We need your input to assist us in best caring for all of our people: Please anticipate receiving a questionnaire regarding these matters next week.
With Respect to ReOpening our CGS Campus to Small-Sized User Groups:
In addition to the cautious resumption of in-person worship, we are also actively exploring options to allow resumption of a moderate number of small-sized group meetings within our facility during the midweek. We are attempting to do so in i) a manner that is safe, and ii) in a manner that is deferential to vulnerable groups within our church who perhaps face greater obstacles in maintaining degrees of community during this protracted COVID season, and iii) in a manner that is most congruent with CGS' overall mission goals of discipleship, evangelism, and community outreach.
Just as there are far fewer seats safely available weekly in our sanctuary than there are people wishing to worship in-person, so too will there be far fewer meeting "slots" available midweek in our facility - at least initially -- than there will be groups wishing to have access. This means that triage will be necessary (based on CGS' mission goals, above), and such triage will persist as long as does COVID...
There are considerable pragmatic constraints involved in safely opening our facility for serial small-sized mid-week meetings at CGS. These constraints differ substantially from those that govern our weekly use of the sanctuary, and are logistically more complicated. Expect to receive more detailed information regarding these matters next week, including instructions as to how to signal potential interest on behalf of your particular user group...
Parting Thoughts --
We as a church family remain in flux - in our personal and family lives, in our vocational lives, in our community lives, and in our congregational lives. Most of us have long previously resigned ourselves -- yet with optimism in Christ -- to the realization that our rhythms of gathering and communing may not approach the "previous normal" until next summer, if then...
As part of that realization, I ask you to please recognize that even the tentative steps we are now taking to "re-gather" on Sundays and (to a lesser extent, mid-week) are subject to disruption and alteration any given week. So let's lean into this uncertainty with our faith, and celebrate with confidence and adaptability our utter reliance upon Christ: "Blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in him." (Jeremiah 17:7)
So please continue to undergird your CGS leaders -- and each other -- with daily prayers. And thank you for your continuing patience and grace...
Godspeed to all --
Glenn Jordan
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