Dear LBC Church Family,
The 25th July marks a significant change for us for a church family. It is the first time in over 16 months where we can open the building freely and where corporate sung worship to the Lord can once again take place. There are now no legal restrictions on communal worship.
Rules are now making way for advisory guidance, restrictions for best practice. As a leadership, we will continue to encourage everyone to help limit the spread of the virus by taking note of the government’s regularly updated advice. Please don’t come to the church building if you’ve either been told to isolate or are displaying any symptoms.
We’re also very conscious that the end of restrictions will bring a whole host of emotions from us and we are all at very different stages of that journey. Let’s take this opportunity to show love and care to one another, thinking about how we can actively demonstrate Christ’s love in action.
Over the summer we want to offer worship both in the LBC church building and at home that blesses as many people as possible. From the 25th July to the end of August we will be following the pattern as laid out below. Sunday services will continue to be at 10.30am and we hope to be able to offer the following different ways of gathering:
- Live in Millington (main church). We will be able to sing freely, share prayer and worship together and hear from God’s Word. Rows will be more spaced out than previously, we’ll keep all the windows and doors open so please come prepared if it’s cool outdoors. There will be no booking in system so please attend freely.
- The Quiet Space – live link into the lounge, using the entrance through the front fire door. We’re going to set up seats around tables along with sofas. This space will be set out with distancing (1m+) and we’ll actively encourage the wearing of masks, it will be a hosted event, with someone ready to welcome and drinks will be served before the service (from the new coffee machine if you arrive early). We do want to keep this room relatively quiet so if you have younger children who love to make noise (which is great!) please use one of the other available spaces. Again, just turn up, no booking in system and we look forward to welcoming you.
- Creche and Pre-School – moving into one of the larger upstairs rooms, the service will be streamed upstairs. Families are welcome to be in Millington and then move up to Creche, or to spend the whole service in the creche space. This will remain an unmanned creche and parents/guardians will need to look after the children in their care.
- Primary children – During part of the service there will be combined activities taking place throughout the summer in the basement.
- Streamed into your home. We will continue to stream the service on YouTube both live and for catch up. If it feels right for you to stay at home, we’d love to have you joining in with us.
Throughout the building we’ll continue to clean to all the Covid protocols and ensure that we have hand sanitising stations around the building. We will also continue to serve drinks outdoors after the service and where possible to operate a one-way system through the building. If you have an NHS app, please scan the QR code upon arrival.
We also now urgently need people who can steward and help serve drinks. If you can offer to do this even for one Sunday over the summer, it will enable us to keep open as we hope to. Thanks for continued support and please do pray for us, this is a totally new chapter in this pandemic and we’re all on a very steep learning curve as we seek to be faithful to the Lord and caring of each other.
To help us plan well, please could you fill in this 1 question Survey Monkey which can be found here: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/23J5ZLY
God bless,
Jonathan (on behalf of LBC leadership team)