It’s time. That’s the sentiment I’ve heard from every one of you I’ve talked with the past few weeks. With the 7 Day average rates of new Covid-19 infections in the southern part of our county continuing to drop we are confident we can meet together safely for worship beginning this Sunday, September 13.
Why am I smiling? Because in the midst of a pandemic, and after our church hasn’t been able to gather in person for many weeks, your gifts to our annual World Missions Offering have surpassed last year’s giving. As of Thursday morning you’ve given the most ever to World Missions: $84,400.
I am so grateful for your generosity. As our world languishes in this semi-isolated existence you continue to have an outward focus, remembering the needs of others. I’ve seen it in many ways even before this offering – in the care you give one another through Small Groups, the food drives where you donated thousands of pounds of food, the stories of “Pray for One” encounters as you’ve shared the gospel with others, and your faithful financial support of our church budget. I’ve seen it in the way you cooperated with all the social distancing guidelines we put in place to protect others during the brief time we came back for in-person services. (By the way – we are diligently working on plans to reopen soon.)
I always look forward to the spring. We celebrate Jesus’ resurrection at Easter, BPF’s birthday (our 19th) on April 15, and give away big gifts for missions through our World Missions Offering (WMO). But this spring was different.
We celebrated Easter on-line, skipped over our birthday and postponed the offering. Realizing we’re in this “new normal” for a while we’ve decided to go forward with our WMO now because our mission hasn’t changed and the offering’s recipients are in greater need of our generosity than ever.
This year has been a roller coaster experience; but not the fun kind. I love roller coasters, except when they make you sick at your stomach. That’s how I felt this week when we decided to once again suspend in-person services for the rest of July. We made this decision to do what we could to help stop the rapid spread of the coronavirus in south and central Brazoria County. Hopefully, we can resume in-person gatherings Aug 2. That of course depends upon the “numbers” going back down significantly.
