Routines are being disrupted in nearly every area of our daily lives. That is now true for our life together as a church as well. As your pastors, we lament this with you. As Christians, coming together to hear the voice of Jesus in His Gospel and to receive His own body and blood for the forgiveness of sins is the very center of our lives. But thanks be to God! This has not changed and is not going away! The gates of hell cannot prevail against the church of God, and neither can COVID-19. Here is a guide to help you stay connected to our church, and even more importantly, stay connected to Jesus and His gifts.
- Participate in worship
While
our present situation makes corporate worship difficult for many, we give thanks
to God that we live in a time when it has never been easier to stay connected
to hearing God’s Word!
Our Wednesday Midweek services will be livestreamed at 6:30 pm on
our church’s YouTube channel, which you can find on the front page of our website.
If all weekend services are cancelled, we will livestream our service on Sunday at 9am. If weekend services are not cancelled, we will still record the weekend service and it will be available on YouTube for you to watch if you are not able to be with us.
The Livestreams are also recorded and available to replay whenever you wish. The next four Sundays of service details are included with this newsletter so that you can worship from home. If you’d like to borrow a hymnal from the church, stop by the church office during office hours and we can loan one to you. Bulletins with the full order of service and hymns will be also available on our website for every service so you can sing along and participate at home with us!
You can also watch Main Street Living on KDLT on Sundays at 10am or on their website mainstreetliving.com. Many of you have already been enjoying these televised worship services from our district!
- Be in prayer
In this time of social isolation, it is easy to feel like there is nothing you can do to be beneficial to your neighbor. That’s not true! One of the most important things we can do, even if we can do nothing else, is to pray. James 5:16 says, “The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.” As baptized Christians who have been made righteous by the blood of Jesus, we know that God delights to hear and answer our prayers! He is interceding for us and the world in this time of global pandemic.
To that end, we’ve included in this newsletter a brief order of daily prayer that you can use every day of the week. It is also available on the front page of our church website. You are of course free to use this for yourself and your family for daily devotions and prayers individually.
We are also going to offer Livestream prayer services Monday through Thursday at 9am through our church YouTube channel. We will simply pray through the daily prayer together, along with a psalm, a reading from Holy Scripture and a brief devotional message. Our goal is for this to take no more than 15-20 minutes. Join us live and we can pray together for our church, our community, our nation, and our world. The link to our YouTube channel is available on the front page of our website.
- Take communion
This will become difficult, especially as more of our weekend services may be cancelled. However, we would still like to offer the Sacrament to those who desire to receive it. If you are interested in having a brief private communion for yourself and your family with either pastor, email us to set up an appointment.
pastorbrown@zionmitchell.org pastorgrimmer@zionmitchell.org
- Let us know what you need!
If you are sick, in need of prayer, encouragement, comfort, basic needs, please contact the church office or either pastor! We want to care for you and provide for you as we are able. If you are admitted to the hospital, the current policy at Queen of Peace is to allow only ONE visitor. As we expect a family member will most likely be that visitor, please call us to let us know you are in the hospital, and we can call you on the phone and pray with you regularly.
- Give your offering.
We know that this is a very difficult time financially for many people as well. We have no reason to expect the church to be immune from the economic impact of this pandemic. Please give generously as you are able. We want to continue to support the work of the ministry of Zion even in this crisis and we need your help! Now is a great time to consider online giving. Go to our website and click “Give” in the upper right-hand corner. You can also mail your offering to the church office, 620 E 3rd Ave, or drop it off during office hours. To assist you with that, we’ve included two stamped and addressed envelopes in this newsletter. Please feel free to use them to mail your offering. If you don’t intend to use them, they need not go to waste! Return them to the office and we can reuse them.
If you have other suggestions about how we can stay connected, we’d love to hear them! This is not meant to be an exhaustive list, but to point you to some of the things we are going to do together to continue to hear the Word of God. Thank you for your patience and prayers as together we learn what it looks like to continue to live under the grace of God in these times. The core of who we are as baptized children of God in Christ Jesus has not changed. We continue to live in the mercy of Christ Jesus who died and rose again to give us life, peace, and salvation.
Pastor Grimmer
Thank you, Pastor Brown and Pastor Grimmer for all you do. It is very reassuring to be reminded that we are not alone…you and God will see us through this difficult time. Bless you.