We have been meeting in our current fashion for nearly five months now, and we are so grateful for how our church family has responded to this abnormal season. At the same time, we’re glad to announce that we will be making yet another transition soon that we hope will serve our members, guests, staff, and pastors well!
Service Times
Presently, we gather for two services each Sunday: one at 10am and one at 5pm. While a few members prefer the evening service, most of our members cannot consistently attend an evening service, so we’ve run out of space in the morning while the Sanctuary is half-empty for the evening service. In addition, the large amount of time between services makes it difficult to schedule volunteers for any given service. As such, beginning on Sunday, November 1st, we will transition to two morning services: one at 9:15am and one at 11am.
By making this switch, we can more evenly distribute the number of people attending each service and will not ask people to RSVP if they will attend each week. No more Monday emails; no more responding by Thursday! You can simply arrive on a Sunday morning for the service your household is scheduled to attend.
Service Assignments
We will, however, have to continue the Red and Blue Week rotation, so you will be assigned to attend every other week in the Sanctuary. Our first week of the new schedule (November 1st) will be a Blue Week. We will need to move a few people in order to balance out family sizes, so please do not be surprised if you switch from a Red to a Blue week or vice versa! As usual, the color of the upcoming week will be announced in the weekly News & Updates and available on the Breeze calendar. Since you will not receive an email from the church office on your assigned week, we encourage you to put it in your personal calendar as well!
You will also be assigned to attend the 9:15am or 11am service on your given weeks. We anticipate some of you would prefer a 9:15am or an 11am service over the other. Please know that we will take these preferences into account, but we likely will not be able to accommodate each one.
If your work prohibits you from attending one service or rotation over the other, please reach out to Adrian by Sunday, October 18th to let him know. We will communicate the new service assignments by October 26th.
Sunday Mornings
Though we will not require an RSVP each week, we do still have to practice social distancing within the Sanctuary. As such, we will continue to assign seats at the door to maximize the number of people we can have in each service. We will do our best to accommodate special requests regarding where your household sits, but options are limited, and seating will be dependent on the needs of others, the number of people in your family, and the time that you arrive for worship.
When you arrive on a Sunday morning for your scheduled service, please continue to park in the Upper Parking Lot and enter through the south Lobby doors. A staff or volunteer will meet you at the door and assign you seats in the Sanctuary.
Seating will be first come, first served, so early arrivals will get seats first. Late arrivals may forfeit their seats if none are available by the time they arrive. Please plan to arrive early for your scheduled service so that you will be able to join us in the Sanctuary!
Please know that we may ask you to move after you’ve been seated or to shift seats as needed. We will attempt to keep these shifts to a minimum, but as always, we ask for your flexibility and patience!
Guests
One consistent challenge has been making accommodations so guests can still join us for worship! We want guests to be able to sit in the Sanctuary on their first few visits with us, so we will continue to ask guests to register online to tell us they’re coming. This will allow us to save seats for them in the Sanctuary, marking them as “reserved for a guest”. We will, however, release any reserved seats if the guest has not arrived by the start of the service and if members assigned to that service still need seats.
Overflow & Livestream Options
We will continue to provide a livestream of each service for anyone who needs to remain at home. In addition, we have two Overflow options during both services for those who want to watch the livestream alongside other church members or who arrive late and do not get a seat in the Sanctuary.
First, we will continue to provide a Fellowship Hall Overflow Room. While you are welcome to bring your own seating, you may also use the plastic chairs available in the Fellowship Hall. When you plan to sit in the Fellowship Hall Overflow Room, please park in the Lower Parking Lot and enter the building through the Fellowship Hall entrance.
Second, beginning November 1st, we will open a second Overflow Room in Rooms 200-202 (upstairs in the education wing). Anyone may sit in this second Overflow Room as desired, including those who cannot wear a mask. The Clay County Public Health Center has provided a full list of those who may go without a mask. You do not need to bring your own seating for this room. When you plan to sit in this second Overflow Room, please park in the Upper Parking Lot and enter the building through the Education Wing / Childcare entrance.
Family Rooms
The Mothers’ room will continue to be available for nursing mothers upstairs outside the sanctuary. In addition, we will continue to livestream the service to the Family Room downstairs in Room 101. Any parent can utilize this space with his or her children. Finally, we will continue to make Room 100 available as a Cry Room as needed.
Continued COVID Precautions
We will continue to require social distancing and masks throughout the building, and we will continue to clean between and after the services. As always, please wash your hands regularly and make use of the hand sanitizer provided throughout the building.
Serving
This transition opens up the opportunity for serving in a more structured way. If you are not already serving again, we could use your help! The church staff and Ministry Team leaders may contact you soon to get you plugged into a serving opportunity that fits your new rotation and schedule. We need volunteers to serve in Connections, Cleaning, Overflow, and Registration at the moment.
Childcare & Equipping Groups
We are not yet able to open up Liberty Kids or Sunday morning Equipping Groups. We do, however, anticipate that this shift will pave the way for us to open Liberty Kids again! We look forward to making that addition in the coming months, followed sometime later by the return of Sunday morning Equipping Groups.
Socializing Outdoors
While you are welcome to socialize inside, we will continue to encourage anyone who is able to socialize outdoors. Once outside, you may remove your masks, but please continue to maintain appropriate distance between households.
We hope to occasionally put up tents and space heaters on the lawn to allow for more comfortable socializing as the days get cooler.
FAQs:
Why are we doing this?
This should feel more like our “normal” worship gathering schedule.
This will be better for our church staff, pastors, and volunteers.
This will help us more evenly distribute the numbers of those who attend each service and will allow us to mix members again, so that we can see different members than those we’ve seen over recent months.
This allows us to eliminate the RSVP system! Come if you’re able, and stay home if needed.
This will allow us to interact between services with members. Members can socialize outside after the first service and before the second service as desired.
This will enable us to add children’s activities in the near future!
Why November 1st?
We know it can be difficult to make changes, so we opted to make this move on a date when the time is already changing! Daylight Saving Time ends on November 1st, so everyone will hopefully gain an hour of sleep that day. We know this can be a difficult transition for many little ones, but we do hope that this will help many of those scheduled for the 9:15am service to begin making that transition.
Why 9:15am and 11am instead of 9am and 10:45am?
While we used to meet at 9am and 10:45am, we shifted both services up 15 minutes to 9:15am and 11am for two reasons. First, we hope everyone will arrive 15 minutes before their assigned service begins. If you attend the 9:15 service, we encourage you to arrive by 9am! If you attend the 11am service, we encourage you to arrive by 10:45am! This will provide you with plenty of time to park, find your seats, and socialize before the service begins. Second, we desire to make the earlier service doable for any of our attendees. Bumping it back by 15 minutes gives everyone an extra 15 minutes to arrive for worship. The 45 minutes between services will also allow volunteers to clean and reset for the second service and will give everyone sufficient time to exit the Sanctuary or Overflow spaces after the first service before newcomers arrive for the second service.