Greetings!
Last week, Governor Eric Holcomb announced that the state was ready to enter Stage 3 of his Back on Track Indiana plan. While we, the Evangelical Covenant Church of Lafayette, have never been
closed—
and therefore do not have to “reopen”—we do have a plan to resume our in-person corporate worship on our campus and we are looking forward to seeing everyone again as soon as possible.
Briefly stated, assuming the state is on track to enter Stage 4 of the governor’s plan on June 14, our intention is to resume worship gatherings on ECC’s campus on
Sunday, June 14, 2020, at 10:30am
. If, for some reason, we do not hit Stage 4 on that date, we will postpone these plans and notify you as quickly as possible.
We want to thank all of you who participated in the two-question survey we sent out last week. We had a good response. Approximately one-third of you hoped to return to ECC for worship in June; one-third of you stated that July was your preferred date to return;
about one-third stated another preference, including sometime later in the year
.
Your input has been very valuable in helping us better understand where people are in their thinking, hopes, and concerns on these things.
We realize that people are at different places on this topic and although we plan to officially begin meeting for worship again on June 14, our hope is that you and your household will return to ECC
when you feel comfortable doing so.
Going forward, we will continue to live-stream our worship each week, so that is always an option for those who are not yet ready to come together in the sanctuary.
Within the next two weeks, we will reach out to you again with more detailed instructions, but for the time being, here are some important bullet points as to what Sunday morning worship at ECC will look like on June 14:
- Initially, there will be only one worship service on ECC’s campus; it will begin at 10:30am and will last one hour.
- In order to ensure that we can observe good social distancing practices, we have determined that our sanctuary's capacity is about 140 people. Therefore, those who wish to attend will need to pre-register.
- Once 140 people have signed up, we have plans for overflow seating with the service live-streamed in the Great Room.
- There will be no nurseries, children’s or youth programming, and no adult CF classes on campus.
- We will observe a very carefully laid out plan for entering the building, being seated at a good social distance, and exiting the building when worship concludes.
- No bulletins will be produced, no offering plates will be passed. There will be a box for the offering located in the lobby.
- There will be no congregational singing.
- We strongly recommend everyone wear a mask, and masks will be provided for those who need one.
There is more to communicate about our in-person gatherings and we will do so in the coming weeks.
As always, please reply to this email with questions, suggestions, or concerns. In the meantime, please continue to pray for our world, our nation, our congregation, and our leaders.
We continue to offer many online options for connection and growth, including our Sunday morning worship service, each Sunday at 10:30am. You can join with us on our website (
ecclife.net/stream
) or our Facebook page (
facebook.com/ecclife
). To discover other ways to connect, go to
ecclife.net/connect
.
