The Church in the Corona Era

Dealing with the times we live in

Permits

With the new laws taking effect we had to jump through some hoops to get a permit to have more than 10 people at our church services. That was a lot of stress for me and a lot of going back and forth with the bureaucrats in the civil law office of the county. Thank God we got the permit last Friday.

We had to measure how many single people we can have in the building with a distance of 1.5 meters (5 ft) between the chairs and 2 meters (6+ ft) from the pulpit. We can have 16 people. When couples or families come they can sit together and thru that we could have up to 22 and still have the distance but the law is no more than the singles number. We can have one person playing an instrument and maximum of one person singing. Masks should be worn all the time except the preacher and service leader. So we hum with the music. We can have no coffee or tea afterwards and we are not to socialize afterwards.

We are thankful that we can still meet and with technology those who have decided not to be bodily present can also be part of the service.

Feburary

I thought you might like to know what else is up in the church.

One man, Lutz, who came out of the cult: New Apostolic Church, has a webpage to help with people who are in that cult and searching. The NAC started in Germany in 1853 and has 330,000 members in Germany (the Baptist have 80,000). He has articles about the Bible and apologetical issues. Some people contact him as to how to get out and help. The webpage has been hacked several times but he has been able to stop the hacks. Our co-worker, David, has been helping with the English translation correction. And an elder in the church, Uwe, offers life coaching on the webpage (he is trained in this area).

Uwe also works as a call center prayer/life coach on Monday evenings for a Christian TV program. People who need to talk someone are routed to him and he talks with them and prays with them on the telephone. Pray for him as he helping/comforting/strengthening people who are struggling.