Dear Church,
As you may recall from our December 21st email, we have been looking carefully at the hospital metrics to guide our worship plans. As of yesterday our local hospital Luminis Health (Anne Arundel Medical Center) has moved to contingency protocol. For the hospitals this means non-life-threatening surgeries scheduled for next week are going to be delayed for an undetermined amount of time.
In addition, due to the limited number of testing options available, the band and Pastor Sara cannot follow CDC recommendations for exposure and test in a timely fashion, and therefore cannot safely gather, as they were all exposed during recent worship times.
Therefore, we have made the difficult decision to offer only online worship until the hospitals are out of contingency protocol.
For us a a faith community, while worship is essential and needed for abundant life, worship can happen in many ways. We have learned over the many months of the pandemic how to effectively worship online. We will gather on YouTube only at 9:30 am on Sunday January 2nd. Due to the fact that we are all again online, and do not want to exclude anyone, we will refrain from Holy Communion. But please note this is not a forever return to online only worship. As soon as we are out of contingency status for the local hospitals we plan to offer in-person worship again.
May you continue to be filled with the hope of Christ at the very center of your lives, when the world gives us so many reasons not to be.
Stay well and see you soon!
