News from the Red Doors - July 3, 2020
Remembering Fr. Eyrick
On July 4, 2020, the Rev. B. Linfred Eyrick would have been 100 years old! Fr. Eyrick faithfully served St. Paul's from 1956-1992. In celebration of his legacy at St. Paul's, and his wonderful family, let us pray:
Almighty God, we entrust all who are dear to us to thy never-failing care and love, for this life and the life to come, knowing that thou art doing for them better things than we can desire or pray for; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (BCP pg. 831) And we pray especially for Fr. Eyrick on this July 4th, the celebration of what would have been his 100th birthday. Amen.
This Week at St. Paul's
- Mother Michelle Walker
Dear St. Paul's Family,
LaPorte County NEW COVID-19 cases, July 1, 2020
My heart is full today, just full. Tuesday I was so busy and excited writing to you all with the good news of our ability to regather for in-person worship. I was energized and ready to take on the world. Our usher team had just met for a wonderful (re)training regarding our new guidelines for in-person worship. It was a terrific day. When I arrived home that evening I soon discovered that LaPorte County had 19 new COVID-19 cases on the day. I nearly sat and wept. That number, when added to a couple other days late last week that were a little high, was enough to push us past the "go" into the "no go" status of in-person worship. As I pondered the burden of this news, I was reminded of a portion of our Gospel passage for this coming Sunday.
“Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” Matthew 11:28-30
I thought about that burden (in this case the burden of excitement and communication) and remembered I don't shoulder it alone. My yoke is easy and my burden is light, especially when I share it with the Lord and the wonderful leadership at St. Paul's. It's just one more week ... or maybe several. In the grand scheme it is nothing compared to everyone's health and safety. Breathe. Pray. Rest your soul Mother Michelle!
So, after our grand announcement on Tuesday of regathering for worship this Sunday we are revising it to say that we will still have in-person worship, but for the allowable 10 people only. And should the numbers not improve for a week, or several, we will rotate those 10 people until each of you who desire to attend have been offered the opportunity to do so. This is not forever, it is only for now.
Friends, I implore you keep praying for the health of our parishioners, our county, and our nation. I implore you to think about the challenge I offered in last Sunday's sermon to preach the Gospel at all times, EVEN using words when necessary. And I implore you to invite your friends to our online service. The seeds we plant now might just yield reward in the future that we could never imagine.
Stay healthy, wear your masks, and share the LOVE of Christ.
Blessings!
Mother Michelle
priest@stpaulslaporte.org | 219-575-0226
July 2, 2020 Determination Letter
I am incredibly thankful to the Diocese, and to Canon Terri specifically, for putting together a clear go/no go path forward to all of our faith communities regarding in-person worship. While we at St. Paul’s will not be able to have our previously planned 30 or so attendees this Sunday, we will continue with our 10 in-person attendees and pray for better numbers next week.
- Mother Michelle
One thing have I asked of the LORD; one thing I seek; that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life; To behold the fair beauty of the LORD and to seek him in his temple.
Psalm 27:5-6
My Dear Kindred in Christ,
Many of you have put in long hours working out the details of your re-opening plans, training your teams, re-arranging your worship spaces and communicating with your congregations. You will not fail to receive your reward for this loving care you have taken for the people of God. Because I share with you both this labor and this longing to return to in-person worship, it is with a heavy heart that I regard the current and coming surge in COVID-19 cases.
As you know, an important part of the care we are taking for our people is monitoring the number of COVID-19 cases in our counties. Here is their current status:
Those of you who draw your congregation from a cluster of counties will want to consult other situations as well, but the baseline for your decision making should be the situation in the county in which your building is located. The attached spreadsheet provides you with the details supporting your status designation.
We, as a diocesan staff, have made every effort to continue reviewing the ways in which we assess our situation, both according to the information being reported by our health departments and according to the changing reports about factors affecting that reporting. We have also been listening you your concerns about the differences among the situations in your various counties. As a result, you will notice a few differences between this spreadsheet and the model we showed you a few months ago.
First, we are now using a 7-day rather than a 5-day rolling average. As with the 5-day figure, the 7-day average adjusts for the fact that different people will be tested at different stages of illness. The 7-day average further allows us to account for the differing availability of testing throughout any given week.
Second, having heard your concerns about the differences in population density in different counties, we have adopted a population-sensitive severity scale used by the CDC. Different colors designate different saturation rates in the county:
Green: averaging ≤ 1 case/day per 100,000 people
Yellow: averaging 2-10 cases/day per 100,000 people
Orange: averaging 11-25 cases/day per 100,000 people
Red: averaging >25 cases/day per 100,000 people.
We have averaged the number of cases in your county for the past 14 days, compared that number with the population of your county, and assigned your county a corresponding severity color. Faith Communities in counties with an orange or red designation should not gather for in-person worship, even if they have experienced a 14-day decline in cases.
Faith Communities in counties with a yellow designation should be exercising caution. This means not gathering for in-person worship if the county has experienced a 14-day increase in cases. The exception we are making to this is in counties where the population is so small that a single case would show up as 3-4 cases per 100,000 people. In order to adjust for this, we have marked counties remaining below 5 cases/day as both yellow and green, meaning that faith communities should remain watchful with regard to a rising number of cases, but may still gather for in-person worship.
We are issuing this information on Thursday afternoon so that you have time to take appropriate measures before Sunday. What this means, however, is that we will be using, at best, the data from Wednesday. It is therefore your responsibility, as clergy and lay leaders, to continue monitoring the situation on Friday and Saturday and to cancel services if there is a sufficiently large spike in cases as to change the profile for your county. You always can call me at 574-850-5722 in order to consult if you are in doubt.
We realize that this situation will require you to deliver unwelcome news to people who are longing to return to worship in a beloved and comforting setting during troubled times. Know that you are in our prayers, for strength, courage and patience now, for the health and safety of your counties to improve soon and for an ongoing renewal of faith as together we walk the path God has laid before us.
Your sister in Christ,
Terri
The Rev. Canon Terri L. Bays, PhD.
Missioner for Transitions and Governance
Emergency Response NGO/Government Liaison
Worship Options Beginning Sunday July 5th!
Greetings! I’m Mother Michelle Walker, Priest-in-Charge of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church and I’m thrilled to share that we will have TWO worship options beginning July 5th: in-person and online! With careful planning and a downward (or stable) trend of new COVID-19 cases in LaPorte County, we are ready to begin offering both in-person and online worship.
Beginning July 5th you may join us in-person for our 9am service. Masks are required. Social distancing will be enforced. Frequent hand sanitizing is encouraged. And please only attend if you have no signs of illness. If you do plan to attend, please register here. (Due to limited seating, we are registering people. Registration will close in the event we reach out seating capacity.) We also request that you review our regathering guidelines and take a peek at our seating capacity chart so that you may be best prepared to enjoy our service.
We are equally thrilled to share that we plan to continue live streaming. If you’ve already logged into and enjoyed our live streamed services, feel free to continue to worship with us that way. We realize not everyone is ready to be in public and we’re happy to offer our live stream option indefinitely. You can find us at St. Paul’s Facebook for LIVE from St. Paul’s on Sunday mornings beginning at 8:50am for our organ prelude and at 9am for Morning Prayer.
Please note July 5th will be a service of Morning Prayer with Holy Eucharist offered July 12th and beyond.
We also offer weekly:
Sunday 10am Virtual Coffee Hour via Zoom (connection details available from priest@stpaulslaporte.org)
Thursday 9am Morning Prayer & Bible Study via Zoom (connection details available from priest@stpaulslaporte.org)
Daily Office offerings at the Diocesan Virtual Worship Facebook Page
Stay tuned here for future updates. We recommend you check weekly for our service offerings as we continue to monitor the COVID-19 cases in LaPorte County.
Blessings to you during these times. You are in our prayers.
In abundant gratitude,
Mother Michelle Walker, The St. Paul’s Regathering Team, and The Faithful at St. Paul’s
LIVE from St. Paul's - June 28, 2020
https://youtu.be/ItMFf-o-xRI
News from the Red Doors - June 26, 2020
Diocesan eNews - June 2020
In case you don't receive the Diocesan eNews on a monthly basis, here is a link.
This Week at St. Paul's
- Mother Michelle Walker
Dear St. Paul's Family,
Saturday evening at 4:44pm CDT we all, unknowingly, transitioned from Spring to Summer as the Summer Solstice occurred. For the Northern Hemisphere this means the sun has reached it's highest and most Northern point in the sky. Saturday was the longest day of the year, in terms of the number of hours of daylight, with the shortest night. It happened with or without our knowledge. The season has changed. It doesn't seem possible
To be honest, it's a bit startling to me. There's a part of me that's still sitting back in the second week of March wondering what's going on and what is all of this talk about a pandemic! Our world has changed so much since then. It's been a whirlwind. And here we go with another change ...
I'm delighted to share that Bishop Doug has provided his approval for in-person gatherings at St. Paul's beginning July 5th. As long as the number of new cases remain low, we will be able to worship together, although differently. It's going to be wonderful AND a challenge, I have no doubt. Wearing masks. Sitting in only designated locations. Leaving your offering in a plate on the way in. Not being able to sing. Restraining ourselves from running to hug our neighbors. It's all going to feel strange.
However, our gathering together and offering prayers that are familiar to us - that will be the same. Sitting in our beautiful church and listening to the amazing way the organ fills the air - that will be the same. And seeing our fellow St. Paul's family - that will be same. It will be wonderful AND different, even if you are joining us via live stream!
On Tuesday June 30th there will be a special edition News from the Red Doors detailing the guidelines and necessary information for regathering. Please look for it and prayerfully consider your readiness to join us on the 5th.
Until then, happy Summer my friends. And we hope you can join us this Sunday, and every Sunday, for our live streamed service beginning at 8:50am with our organ prelude. Have a wonderful day.
Blessings!
Mother Michelle
priest@stpaulslaporte.org | 219-575-0226
LIVE from St. Paul's - JUNE 21, 2020
News from the Red Doors - June 19, 2020
This Week at St. Paul's
- Mother Michelle Walker
Dear St. Paul's Family,
One of the components we included in the Tech(nology) grant was the purchase of two 10" tablets. The intention was to download our Sunday services to the tablets and then share them with our parishioners that have no internet access (and who are unable to come to church once we regather). I'm pleased to share that we deployed them on June 7th and after a bit of a learning curve we are having pretty good success. So far the two tablets have been shared with three different households. Before and after each use the devices are carefully cleaned to ensure they are as germ-free as possible.
This is already a wonderful ministry. The recipients have enjoyed the services. Several were especially delighted when I added a few extra videos from John's organ recordings! I'm extremely thankful to Sandra Provan who has been helping with the delivery, the retrieval, and the cleansing of the devices. Not only does it allow our parishioners to enjoy the service but it also gives them/us another point of contact. I'm also happy to say that because of this ministry we were able to discover the assisted living facilities are beginning to allow visitations IF you schedule ahead of time and are willing to sit outside, socially-distanced, and with a mask. Sandra and I visited someone on Friday afternoon this way. It was delightful.
If you know of anyone who would like to be included in sharing the tablets please let me know. Everything is loaded locally so no internet/wifi is needed. We are thrilled to be able to provide this ministry.
In other news, the vestry voted last evening to regather for in-person services beginning July 5th. The first week will be morning prayer. Subsequent weeks we intend to offer Eucharistic services. The graph below demonstrates the NEW COVID-19 cases for LaPorte county, which have declined to under 5 and seem to be remaining there. Praise God! A comprehensive Regathering Plan was developed by our Regathering Team (Mother Michelle, Sandra Provan, Tom Konieczny) and submitted to our vestry for review. With the vestry's approval last night the plan will be submitted to the Bishop for approval, at which point we are eligible to regather! (Please remember, should the cases begin to climb again, we will have to stop in-person services until that normalizes. I hope this does NOT happen!)
Regathering IS exciting! And everyone who is healthy enough to feel safe being out in public (and has no signs of illness) is welcome to attend, even if you're 65+ years old. Because we delayed until July there are no age restrictions. Although everyone is welcome, we are also perfectly happy for you to continue worshiping from home via our live stream, which we intend to continue indefinitely. Do NOT feel pressured to come to church. Feel welcome to come when it's appropriate for your health and life circumstances. And when you do come, BRING YOUR MASK and be prepared for social distancing! (We will have a few masks available if you've forgotten yours.)
Our Regathering Team also met yesterday and walked through the nave reviewing seating. There is a diagram below the COVID chart giving you an idea of how we will handle seating. Once we are at our seating capacity, we won't be able to let anyone else in. We will likely implement a simple registration system to help be prepared for our attendees and to hopefully reduce the possibility of having to turn anyone away. It's all going to feel rather awkward for a while, no doubt. We will happily change our plans along the way as necessary. We are excited to be taking these steps.
In our Bible study on Thursday mornings we are making our way through Corinthians. Thursday morning we studied Chapter 9 and talked about the rights the Apostles had to live and earn a living. In past weeks we've talked about some of the interesting things the early Christians had to do, or NOT do, in order to be faithful. I bet they never had to measure distances from the center aisle with a 6' long stick. Or insist people wear masks. Or remind people to stay away from each other. May our efforts at regathering provide us with the safest and most hospital environment we can provide during these odd days.
And don't forget ... if you'd like a prayer or some time to chat, give me a call and meet me at the benches! Have a wonderful day.
Blessings!
Mother Michelle
priest@stpaulslaporte.org| 219-575-0226
LaPorte County COVID-19 NEW Cases, by day. The blue line represents actual numbers while the red line is a rolling 5-day average. As long as our daily cases stay at or under 5 we are good for regathering.
Forgiving my rudimentary design skills, this picture depicts the seating availability for people coming to church on or after July 5th.
Green pews are available for seating and will either accommodate one person or a couple from the same household.
Attendees will need to stay 6' from other attendees not of their household and, of course, wear masks.
You'll see that if everyone comes as an individual, we can only seat 21 or so people. Our full capacity during this time is around 28.
Please be advised, your regular pew may NOT be available for seating! (That's a bit of church humor in case you missed it!)
Bishop Sparks' Video from June 2020 Diocesan eNews
Please enjoy Bishop Doug Sparks’ video update that appeared in the June 2020 eNews.