Right now, the world is experiencing a pandemic caused by COVID-19, also known as novel coronavirus. We at Westlake Baptist want to strike a balance between faith in the sovereign God and appropriate precaution. As such, we are going to make some minor changes to our upcoming Sunday worship service. We will notpartake in the Lord’s Supper as part of our service, and we will not have a meal immediately following our 10:30 worship service. We will still have Sunday school at 9:30, and worship will be at 10:30. We are looking forward to this time of worship as we will have a special guest speaker from Gideons International, as well as, our children’s ministry will sing a song for us.
We want to encourage you to come and worship with us this Sunday. We understand that some people are nervous about going out into crowds with the spread of the novel coronavirus at this time. We certainly understand that, and encourage you to exercise what you feel is your best judgment. We at WBC are not doctors, and we do not want to tell you something that we do not know for a fact. We have been in contact with health officials in the county as well as we have been following closely the updates and information coming from the Virginia Department of Health and the Center for Disease Control. We want you to feel comfortable if you choose to come and worship with us this Sunday. Therefore, I want to assure you of precautionary steps that we have taken and will continue to take:
- All common areas and touch surfaces have been wiped down with approved disinfectants.
- All areas in the nursery, children’s, and youth area have been wiped down with approved disinfectants.
- We have both soap available in the restrooms as well as hand sanitizer in the church building.
While we cannot guarantee that this will keep people from getting sick, we are taking every precaution possible according to the VDH and CDC to help prevent the spread not only of the novel coronavirus, but also flu germs. For those who are coming to worship with us on Sunday, we would like to ask you to help us prevent the spread of any germs by doing the following:
- If you feel sick, we will miss you worshipping with us, but we would like to ask for you to stay home this weekend in order to rest and recover from any illness.
- If a child or youth has a body temperature 99.6 or above, we respectfully ask you to keep them home. It is best to wait until they are 24 hours fever free without medicine before returning to normal activities.
- Please wash your hands after touching common touchpoints. Proper washing of hands per CDC guidelines is using soap and rubbing your hands together for at least 20 seconds (sing the ABC song while washing your hands and you will be good to go).
- If you cough or sneeze, please do so into a tissue, and then wash your hands.
- We are going to practice fellowship from a distance for the next couple of weeks. This means we encourage you to smile at each other, nod at each other, and talk with each other, but not hug or handshake. If you want any contact with brothers and sisters in Christ, feel free to fist bump, elbow bump, or foot bump.
We understand that some will see the minor changes to the worship service and the extra precautions being taken as silly or overreacting, we want to look at for each person who comes and worships at WBC. While most people who get sick will recover, we believe that loving our neighbor is looking at for the “least of these” who worship with us.
While the world experiences this pandemic and many are scared, we want to give you hope by offering the following biblical insights that apply not only during the outbreak of the novel coronavirus, but these truths are still applicable in the best of times.
- God is in control. While it may seem as the world is going crazy, and we may not understand everything going on, we know that God does know what is going on.
- We are to live by faith, not fear. God is not the author of fear. When we remember that God is in control, it gives us confidence that nothing is going to come to us that He is not already aware of. As the saying goes, “I may not know what tomorrow holds, but I know who holds my tomorrows.” Fear and panic are normal human emotions and reactions to the unknown. However, just because we don’t understand doesn’t mean that God doesn’t understand.
- Racism or discrimination is never ok. During times like these, we often see the very best in people. However, we also tend to see the worst come out in some people. There have been many reports around the country of racism or discrimination towards Asian-Americans. Let us remember that all of mankind is created in the image of God, God loves them enough to have sent His Son, Jesus, to die for them, and He desires a relationship with each of us. No one in the Asian community caused this pandemic, and to take our fear or frustrations out on them is sinful.
- Our hope is in Jesus. Regardless of what is going on in the world, we can face uncertain days, because Jesus died on the cross to pay the penalty for our sins, and three days later He rose from the dead proving that death has no power of those who surrender in faith to Jesus.
As we go through these uncertain times in our nation, let us pray for our elected officials, doctors, nurses, research personnel, those who are sick, and the families of those who have died from the novel coronavirus. Let us pray that God will give a cure soon, and that we will not only draw closer to Him now, but that we would remain closer to Him.
In Christ’s Love,
Pastor Justin