This week sees the commencement of some drastic church measures regarding COVID-19 (a.k.a. the Coronavirus). In following the Morrison Government’s stipulations this week, Archbishop Glenn Davies made the difficult decision to cease all public events at Sydney Anglican Churches until further notice. As such, Earlwood Anglican has had to cease our Sunday services, and children’s and youth ministries.
To begin with, please understand this does not mean church is cancelled! All churches are currently in the process of determining what our fellowship will look like for the coming weeks or months, given these new measures. Our goal is to continue Christian fellowship in some form, while devoting ourselves to the public reading of Scripture, to preaching and to teaching (1 Tim 4:13).
Second, we are asking for your patience and support in this. Not everyone will agree with all our measures. Furthermore, there is a fair amount of work involved in getting our ‘new normal’ up and running. Our current plan revolves around Bible Study groups. If you are not currently in a Bible Study group, the ministry staff will be in contact with you soon to discuss your options.
Thirdly, times like these are excellent opportunities to make Christ’s love shine. Please be thinking of new and novel ways we may be able to love those in our church or wider community and pass them on ‘respectfully’ (see today’s sermon) to the ministry staff.
And finally, revivals have historically grown out of a time of social crisis just like this one. We cannot look at something this impactful and think God is simply asleep at the wheel. He is doing something enormous in this pandemic! What he wants from his people is (i) to love our neighbour as ourselves, and (ii) to pray for Him to use this situation to glorify His name and increase his kingdom. So even though public services have ceased, let’s pray God does something truly miraculous with our church.
