Dear First Baptist,
We are looking at the possibility of starting up our ‘in person’ worship service, and want your input to help inform our decision. Our goal is to honor Jesus in any decision we make. Because our mission is to “lead people in an ever-changing culture to the hope of Jesus” we want our decision to be outward focused. Restarting the in-person service will require added energy, volunteer participation, and planning. The purpose of this survey then is to help us determine if the energy and time spent to make this happen helps or hinders our mission in discipling our people as we evangelize our neighbors.
Before you take the survey below, please take time to review the two plans for either an in-person worship service or continuing with an online service only. Each plan will begin with a brief description of why it is good to choose that option and will follow with a description of how the plan would be carried out.
If you already have a preferred option - “I REALLY want to reopen” or “I REALLY want to remain online only”, then I ask that you read the plan and reasoning for the opposite plan. How God speaks to the hearts of our members will inform the decision we make. Only after wrestling in prayer and contemplation and submitting your thinking to God, take our survey.
Reopening Option:
Why this is good to do:
Scripture teaches in Hebrews 10:24-25 teaches “Let us think of ways to motivate one another to acts of love and good works. And let us not neglect our meeting together, as some people do, but encourage one another, especially now that the day of his return is drawing near.”
Obedience to this passage is perhaps most pressing reason for why we should work hard to restart the in-person service. It is important that we see the reason given for the in-person service is not, that you might hear pastor Tim live, or that you can see your friends, or that you can sing in corporate worship. Those are all good things, but they are not the reason given in this passage of scripture. The reason to meet together is so we can “motivate one another to acts of love and good works” AND that we can "encourage one another".
We are better able to motivate each other to share Jesus’ message of love and repentance and encourage each other in difficult times with face to face encounters.
How it will be done:
We will do a single service at 10:30. Families will be seated together and all attendees will be required to wear masks. A six-foot separation will be kept between family units, much like is done in restaurants. To help ensure the proper seating/spacing we will have serve team volunteers usher people to their seats.
We anticipate that we can seat approximately 15 family units in the main level or our sanctuary. We would do this by putting two groups of 1-2 people in a single pew, or one group of three or more people in a pew. And then keep every other row empty. We could likely seat about 5 more family units in the balcony using the same spacing formula. This would allow us to seat approximately 30 to 40 people.
If it looks as though we have more people arriving than we can safely seat in the sanctuary we will set up extra chairs in our narthex for people to watch through the windows. (We’ve done this before during times of extra-large gatherings, such as Easter). If we overflow this space - then we will set up the youth room and will stream the service there.
Obviously, this takes volunteer strength and patience from our people. Some ways we anticipate an in-person service being different are:
Communion will be served by way of individualized, disposable, pre-packaged wafer & cup service. This is what the U.S. military uses in worship services in deployed settings.
Bulletins will not be printed or handed out.
We will not have children’s church, so kids would be in service. Children under 5 wouldn’t need to wear masks, but we’d encourage all older kids to do so.
Attendance would be taken so if we discover that someone who attended service tested positive for Covid-19, we could contact everyone who attended in person and password that they may have been exposed. We would keep such information “in-house”. We don’t foresee sharing church attendance records with a government agency.
We celebrate that online service is to remain an important aspect of our ministry. This is true for at least a couple of reasons. First, many of our members won’t yet feel comfortable returning to in-person service. Secondly, our congregation has grown by way of our Facebook service and we now have several families who make weekly worship with us a part of their Sunday routine, but who don’t live locally or are physically unable to make it to our building.
We are investing in equipment that allows us to both maintain a quality online worship service while also giving a quality in-person service.
We will not serve coffee, but folks are certainly welcome to bring their own.
We need a minimum of 14 volunteers each week. Our mathematicians will note that the numbers below add up to more than 14 people, but that is because some volunteers can wear a couple of hats.
4-6 people to open the sanctuary and disinfect the main areas.
3 people to run the tech side of things.
3 people to serve as ushers for seating/serving communion.
4 people to close the sanctuary and disinfect after use.
6 people to stand at the entrance to welcome, hand out masks, scan for temperatures.
2 people to disinfect the church restrooms after use.
A positive example of a church that has taken this approach, even at risk of civil penalty is Grace Community Church pastored by John MacArthur. You can read the detailed explanation from the leaders at Grace Community Church here: A Biblical Case for the Church’s Duty to Remain Open
Online Only Option:
Why This Is Good To Do:
Hebrews 10:25 does say we “should not neglect our meeting together”. However Greek word here translated as “neglect” carries the connotation of “abandoning” or “leaving in the lurch”. When seen within the context of motivating one another to acts of love and good works we can see that choosing not to meet so as to protect our at-risk population from a dangerous virus is actually the opposite of leaving people in the lurch. It is caring for them. This care is especially displayed when we consider how many of the volunteers running our church service fall within the at-risk demographic.
So then, rather than utilize the energy necessary to reopen the church to in-person worship, we would like to motivate people to acts of love and good works by continuing to fellowship by way of online service for our Sunday worship.
AND ALSO meet in-person in small group settings such as:
Joining an actual small group.
Inviting people to our homes for the online service.
Checking in on elderly and or lonely people in our church.
Continuing to invite people who aren’t yet Christians to join us for worship in our homes.
A positive example of a church that has taken this approach is North Point Community Church pastored by Andy Stanley. You can listen to a brief explanation by Pastor Stanley on why his church made that choice here.
Please use this link to fill out the survey on Google Forms by Monday, September 14th: Return to Worship Survey - First Baptist Church of Port Angeles.
Pastors Tim and Lynn and your church elders thank you for your time, consideration and input. We value each and everyone of you and strive to share Jesus’ love with you as we work together to share the hope we have in Jesus with our friends and neighbors.
Blessings!