As you know by now, Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds recently gave the go-ahead to churches to resume meeting in traditional, face-to-face church services.
Despite the governor’s green light, here at New Covenant we’ve decided to take the month of May 2020 to re-organize again – a ramping up, if you will – outside of our church walls in an exercise we’re calling Multi-Site May.
We say it all the time: ‘Church isn’t a place, it’s a people’ – and that truly comes to life with Multi-Site May. Multi-site means gathering for church in your living room, or on your back deck. In your garage stall, or out on the front lawn. It can be anywhere that you feel comfortable gathering and inviting someone to join you for a New Covenant livestream church service – maybe a neighbor, maybe another family from church, or a coworker. Maybe you’ll invite people from your larger family circle. What your Multi-Site May “looks like” is totally up to you and your comfort level.
The point is this: for many of us, this is a time to use wisdom and to start easing back into safe, small gatherings to worship together.
Last week, New Covenant distributed a survey via our Facebook page, our Instagram account, and also in the e-newsletter, asking for your thoughts on the Multi-Site May concept. We were thrilled to receive right around 130 responses from you! And as expected, the answers ran the gamut from “Yes! I’m ready for this!” to “No way! This is not for me!” We genuinely appreciate your honest feedback. You’ll find some survey results added throughout this blog post.
We also know that at some point, we will resume face-to-face worship at the New Covenant campus, but we’re not ready to put a date and a definition on when and how just yet. We'd rather wait and do it well, rather than rush it and have it be a disappointing experience for all of us. We continue to closely follow the guidelines from Governor Reynolds and from the Linn County Department of Public Health, and we’re adhering to social distancing, sanitation requirements, and other best practices during this time.
Mostly, we want to keep the conversation open and ongoing with you about Multi-Site May. We want to hear how it’s going for you and see photos of where you’re feeling comfortable to meet. We’re busy gathering stories and archiving the photos you send our way so that we can tell bold stories of our good and gracious God during times of uncertainty.
God is moving in these times, and we believe He is using the Multi-Site May concept to reach new groups of people -- through you -- with the Good News.