Greetings Trinity Family,
I hope this email finds everyone doing well.
Tomorrow is our drive through Chicken Barbecue. We had so many preorders we have decided to prepare extra chicken and side dishes. So, even if you didn’t preorder of want more meals than you initially anticipated, please stop by the church parking lot between 4 and 7 pm. The menu is ½ of a barbecued chicken, mac & cheese, stewed tomatoes, corn on the cob, a roll, and ice cream. All of this deliciousness is available for the low, low price of $10 a meal. 😊
This will be our second Sunday to have in-person worship services limited to 25 people. The service will be held in our Education Building. We will also Facebook livestream our 10:15 am service and offer a service on Zoom at 11 am.
Dean is at home with Denise as he recovers from his accident and the surgeries that followed. We thank God for Dean’s strength and his amazing resilience in the face of this challenge. Please keep praying for the Clark family.
The church will be receiving new members this Sunday. If you are interested in “officially” joining our church, please let me know.
Although we are not all coming to worship in the same place, we will have a Virtual Harvest Home celebration on September 27. Harvest Home is our opportunity to share fresh produce and additional food gifts with the Daily Bread Community Food Pantry. You can drop your food items off at Trinity and our volunteers will deliver them to the food pantry. Here is an article about the Harvest Home tradition in Pennsylvania: https://goschenhoppen.org/harvest-home/
10:15 Facebook livestream Worship. You can find us at our "Trinity Christian UCC Skippack" facebook page.
11 am ZOOM worship. You can login at this link:
Amelie Sell is inviting you
to a scheduled Zoom meeting.
Topic: Trinity Sunday Worship
Time: This is a recurring meeting Meet anytime
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us04web.zoom.us/j/75566827269?pwd=WEhnUm11L0RvWTM5eXJaU2tFeCtHZz09
Meeting ID: 755 6682 7269
Password: 2HcmqK
We also have a Sunday morning Bible Study on ZOOM at 8:45 am. Here is the link to log in:
Amelie Sell is inviting you
to a scheduled Zoom meeting.
Topic: Trinity's Wired Word Discussion Group
Time: This is a recurring meeting Meet anytime
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us04web.zoom.us/j/76933813590?pwd=Nzc0MkthZFBkdmVNTGYycjVtRXkwUT09
Meeting ID: 769 3381 3590
Password: 7qLSWw
Ralien and Amey continue to bless our congregation and friends with a Wednesday evening puppet show on facebook. It can be watched on "Ralien LuAnn Besch" 's facebook page at 7 pm..
If you would like to join us in-person on Sunday, September 27, please RSVP on Monday morning. We will ask each attendee to come to church prior to 9:45 am so that we can watch Ralien and Amey’s hymn sing projected on the screen in the Education Building.
If you would like to attend, I am keeping a list of who RSVPs until we reach 24 attendees. You can contact me via email, at the church office (610-584-4054), or on my cell phone (314-680-0897).
Join us for our Sunday morning hymn sing at 9:45 am livestreamed from “Ralien Luann Besch” facebook page.
We continue to collect food and toiletry items and school supplies for the Daily Bread Food Pantry. They can be left at the doors of the church.
The Daily Bread's Current needs change every few weeks. This is their latest list of needs:
Personal
care: Laundry Soap, body wash, hand
soap, size 5 & 6 diapers, paper towels and napkins*
Food:
Jelly, tuna, side dishes (hamburger helper, Noodle Roni, Rice a Roni,
Cookie/brownie mixes, cookies, chips and canned tomato products.
And any other items you wish to donate would greatly be
appreciated!
*These
items can’t be purchased with Food Stamps.
If you would like to borrow a hymnal from the church, please let me know and I will arrange for you to receive one
Bill Vogl, our Consistory President, penned a letter to our
congregation about reopening. It will be
in our upcoming newsletter and I am also including it with this note:
What a year so far. I never thought that we would ever
have to close the buildings for anything but a horrible snowstorm, but here we
are closed for more than 5 months. What a situation we find ourselves in.
The Coronavirus has caused us so much change in our daily
lives. Between masks, social distancing, hand sanitizer, schools closing,
work environments changing, quarantine in our homes, it can be difficult to see
the good that is still around us. Some of the positive sides to our
situation are; Ralien and Amy’s Hymn Sing on Sunday mornings as well as Leo on
Wednesday nights, such a treat. I would like to thank them both for their
efforts, great job! We have the Adult Sunday school each week via
“Zoom”. This way of meeting is still very enjoyable but is very different
to not see people in person but seeing them relaxing in their homes.
Pastor Amelie has made sure we still receive the scriptures, message, and a
time of prayer each week via two forms of media, Facebook and Zoom.
The Sunday services on Facebook live broadcasts must be hard for
Pastor Amelie. She is speaking to a screen, looking at herself and being
able to receive any instant reactions from the congregation. The Zoom is
better for her because she can see people and speak to them and see their
reactions. The services have been able to reach not only our congregation
but out family and friends that would not normally be able to worship with
us. During this difficult time, we at Trinity appreciate the energy and
excitement you put into every service.
The changes we have had to deal with through this pandemic have
put us all in flux. I’d like to thank everyone who has continued to
support Trinity through this time. We are a strong and determined
congregation!
Let’s look forward to our future. In September, we will be
resuming in person services in the Education building with many regulations in
place. Temperatures will be taken prior to entering the building, wearing
masks at all times and social distancing. Hand sanitizer will be
available in the buildings for your use. For your safety as well as
others, we ask everyone to follow all these regulations as best as possible.
The buildings will be sanitized as well.
We will continue to have the services on Facebook “live”
broadcast as well as a separate Zoom service each Sunday. I’m glad to
inform everyone that we now have internet in the church building. When we
can move back into the sanctuary for services, we will still be able to stream
the services.
I hope and pray we can return to our sanctuary soon. I
know we all are praying for the health and safety for our families and friends
of Trinity Christian UCC.
Respectfully Submitted,
Bill Vogl, Consistory president
I am including the report of the reopening committee and my letter to the congregation about resuming in-person worship that we have prepared for our up-coming church newsletter. This report and letter contain more information about our reopening plans, our cleaning strategies, and our guidelines for who may come to in-person worship. Everyone who comes to worship in-person must be healthy. We will all wear masks, have our temperatures checked, and maintain social distance guidelines. We will worship in the education building because it is the easiest space for us to maintain social distance from each other. If you have any questions, please reach out to me or members of our Reopening Committee.
Here is
the report of the Reopening Committee:
Trinity Reopening
Committee
The Reopening
Committee has been meeting to discuss the logistics and concerns regarding
reopening our Church for in-person services. We’ve been reviewing statistics
for Montgomery County and Skippack, and are trying to keep up with the daily
revisions as far as local restrictions and recommendations. We’ve also been
assembling the various pieces of equipment and PPE (Personal Protective
Equipment) that will be needed to keep our Sanctuary and Education Building
sanitized and as safe as we can make them for in-person gatherings.
We have agreed on
a tentative reopening date of September 13, 2020. Whether we are
able to actually open on that day will be determined by what is currently
happening with the spread of the virus. Montgomery County is now in a fairly
good position – the number of cases/deaths has stabilized somewhat, though this
is still the tip of the iceberg and we hope to see much lower numbers in the
future. We must be more conscientious than ever, and we will need to observe
the following when we open for in-person worship:
- We will initially
be meeting for worship in the Education Building. That space is
more easily controllable as far as distancing, sanitizing, and air flow are
concerned.
- Masks must be
worn at all times while in the buildings. Please bring them if you have them.
- Distancing must be observed. While families may sit together, we will otherwise need to observe the recommended 9-foot distancing rule.
- Temperatures will be taken as you enter the building. If your temperature is 100F or above you will be asked to return home and contact your physician.
- We will not be singing. We will enjoy our hymns and special music via other means during services.
- Hand sanitizer and sanitizing spray will be available throughout the buildings. If you must use the restroom please wipe down the surfaces with the sanitizer provided there when you are finished.
- Every effort will be made to provide young children with take-home activities to keep them occupied during services.
- We appreciate
your patience and cooperation during this bewildering time, and we look forward
to seeing everyone in person again to worship together. Thank you in advance!
Please note that
our services will still be streaming live online for those
that would prefer to view them in the safety of their homes. Check our website
for more information and links.
Respectfully
submitted,
The Trinity
Reopening Committee:
Nan Burch
Pastor Amelie
Sell
Bill Vogl
Phyllis
Slotterback
Ethan Cornely
Here is my letter to the congregation from our up-coming newsletter:
The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart
trusts in God, and God helps me.
My heart leaps for joy,
My heart leaps for joy, and with my song I praise God.
Psalm 28:7
Greetings Trinity Family,
The past few months have been some of the strangest we have lived
through. When we received word in March we would have to temporarily
shut-down and shelter-in-place for a few weeks, I don’t think any of us could
have imagined the months of caution ahead of us.
Our Consistory created a committee to explore ways for our church to safely
reopen for worship services. Nan Burch is our leader and she has been
joined by Bill Vogl, Phyllis Slotterback, Ethan Coneley, and myself. We
hope to resume our in-person worship services in our education building in
mid-September.
Even after we start meeting in-person for worship, we will continue to offer
worship online. Our facebook livestream will continue and we will also
have ZOOM worship.
We
humbly request that our members and friends who are more at risk because of
underlying health conditions stay at home. Over the past few months, we
have learned you are more at risk for Covid the older you are. Also,
people who have cancer, chronic kidney disease, COPD, who are
immunocompromised, who have a BMI of 30 or higher, who have serious heart
conditions, and who have type 2 diabetes are also more at risk. Please
stay at home if you are in a higher risk group. As your pastor, I feel
responsible for the members of our congregation. I don’t want anyone to
come to church and put yourselves at risk for becoming sick.
I know
we all hunger to see each other and spend time together. Please reach out
to each other over the telephone. Please send notes to each other.
As much as we hunger to be together, we need to remain patient and cautious.
May God
bless you all in this strange and wearying time.
Pastor Amelie
The
prudent sees danger and hides himself, but the simple go on and suffer for it.
Proverbs 22:3
We are taking a break from collecting casseroles for the homeless shelter at Old First. We will probably resume this ministry in the fall. In normal seasons, church groups bring dinner to the shelter guests and eat with them. If you are interested in doing this next fall or winter, let me know. The members of the group will need to be aged 14 or older.
In order to keep our members as safe as possible, our Consistory also decided not have food booths or our flea market at Skippack Days. We have accumulated some donations on the stage. If you would like to see these donations before we donate them to Liberty Ministries or the Care and Share, let me know and I will show them to you.
Many blessings!!
Pastor
Amelie
No comments:
Post a Comment