We are happy to announce that next Sunday, April 18th, we will return to in-person worship in our sanctuary. Easter Sunday we had a wonderful service on the lawn, but we had huge technical problems webcasting from outside. Our board has met and reviewed the many issues involved, and has voted now to go back to in-person Sunday School and worship on a regular basis, using all recommended safety procedures.
Bear in mind that this will not be like flipping a switch. It will be gradual. There are many people who will still not feel safe coming out for in-person worship, and we will be working to make sure that the webcast is easily available for them. We will not be having child care or Coffee Fellowship at first. Go ahead and bring the children to worship, bring a blanket and some toys, we have activity bags for them. We’d love to have them. As time goes on, we will organize a new child care team and will announce later when that will start up. We’ve done our best to keep everything in the century-old building working, but we may run into some problems as we use equipment that has not been used for an entire year.
The six foot social distancing requirement limits the number of people we can seat in the sanctuary. We will need to seat some folks in the balcony, and if there is a Sunday that we max out, we will be prepared to stream the live service to the screen in the Reich Fellowship Hall and use that as an overflow area.
At first, we will have to limit the amount of singing that goes on. This is probably the hardest part of COVID restrictions for Moravians, but there is good science behind it. We will have instrumental music, solos, and limited singing by our choir — wearing specially made “singer masks.”
