Month: May 2021

After one week with services cancelled due to COVID, we were able to go online with a recorded praise time, sermon, and communion meditation. Thirteen weeks later we were able to begin broadcasting live, with 74 actually in the auditorium. We kept the doors open to facilitate airflow, taped off every other pew, placed communion in the pews and offering trays on tables, and encouraged people to wear masks. In September we were able to open our nurseries and resume Sunday School classes, youth meetings, and Bible studies.

God’s blessing and the faithfulness of His people was evident throughout the time of restrictions. Gratefully most of the restrictions have now been lifted, and we are looking forward to more freedom in worship and fellowship.

On June 6th the blue tape will be gone, and communion will be served. Folding chairs will remain behind the pews for those who would be more comfortable maintaining a little more distance than the pews allow. The communion will be served, but will remain double stacked, as we have become accustomed to finding it. At this time we are not planning to resume passing offering bags, but will keep trays available to receive tithes and offerings as you enter the auditorium.

A fellowship time between worship and Sunday School will also begin on the 6th. Since we will be honoring our graduate that Sunday, more than usual will be on the tables, but we are hoping to at least have coffee and donuts available every Sunday. Dave and Rhonda are trying to find a new source for donuts, and to avoid lines at the Keurigs we hope to find someone to brew coffee before church, as Jack Ruebush did for us for so many years. If you would be willing to be our new barista, please let me know.

I’m delighted that our “new normal” will differ very little from our old.

God Bless, Rick

Who would have thought a Mother’s Day column could be lifted out of an article entitled “What Makes Men Men?”, but that’s what I’m doing.

After referring to mothers and fathers as kings and queens, the author states:

“Comparisons of fathers and mothers with kings and queens seem naïve, nostalgic, sentimental, and exaggerated. They make us squirm. There are strong reasons for this reactions, but they are bad ones. How many parents have lost their regal dignity, disbelieve in their authority, and confuse the proper humility of their office with being self-mocking and ironic? We have turned husbands and wives into androgynous ‘spouses,’ fathers and mothers into interchangeable ‘parent figures.’ We approach having a child like acquiring a pool table or wide-screen TV. Would it be fun? Would it be tedious? Would it be worth the expense? Fathers and mothers have need of recovering their sense of regal calling, taking up their ball and scepter, and ruling their dominions with love for their precious subjects.

“May it be needless to say that mothers and fathers must also recover the conviction of their need for each other. They must do this not only for their own sakes, but also for their young. Every child needs both kinds of love. It is not enough to provide an intermediate love that is half motherly and half fatherly. Or an inconsistent love that is motherly at some times, fatherly at others. Even though the two loves resemble each other, they are distinct, and neither can be imitated by anything else. Yes, it may be true heroism when, through no fault of one’s own, a father or a mother raises a child all alone; yet it is better to not be alone. No woman can fully take the place of a father, any more than a man can substitute for a mother.”

I thank God for mothers…and fathers.

God Bless, Rick