The Good Lord willing and the Creek don’t rise, we are planning the Re-Entry into Worship for Sunday, June 7! The first Sunday in June will be our attempt at “wading” back into the full flow of worship. The next few weeks you can expect a barrage of information coming your way about the process and the plans! Someone say “Amen!” I know that you have more questions than I can possible anticipate and answer in this article. So, we will be sending out letters, emails, and directions to our website, our Facebook page, smoke signals and any other way we can help communicate the plans and strategies.
Our staff has been “going to school” over the past months trying to learn as much as we can from leaders from all disciplines. We have heard from medical, legal, church, State Convention, Charleston Baptist Association, several churches of all denominations on James Island, professional preschool and children’s leaders, political figures and on and on! We have done about as much research as we can to prepare for re-entry back into worship.
We have put together JIBC teams in what we believe are the most necessary places and have assigned staff members to lead and assist in seeing these teams help our re-entry process go as successfully as it can. Our Re-Entry Teams include: Preschool; Children; Worship; Sanitation/Medical; Online Presence; Leaders who are influencers; Greeter/Safety Teams; and communication.
For the next 3 weeks, we would welcome any questions, thoughts, observations that you have. Send them to the church office and Neale will make sure we see them. The goal this week was to make the announcement that we are planning to re-enter worship on Sunday, June 7. Each week we will address more and more questions. You may have noticed that even on a national level, things change quickly: wear mask/don’t wear; gloves one week/gloves are bad the next week; 6 feet social distancing/18 feet distancing. So, my goal is not to criticize what anyone else is saying or doing. My goal is to plan as carefully and thoughtfully as we can, prepare as well as we can and be ready to adjust where we can. We do suspect there will be major adjusting from week to week. That is ok; we are a resilient group of people.
Now, hear this: there are some people who perhaps should stay home for a while longer. If you are in an at risk group, why push your luck? You have our blessing to stay home until a later date. By the way, we are investing in better equipment so we can Live Stream for anyone who cannot join us physically. What a great team we have!
We will be sending more information as soon as we can. Please don’t hesitate to send your questions in. Just remember, be kind. No one has all the right answers except our Father.
See you real soon,
Pastor Tom
