RCUMC’s COVID-19 Response – letter #2

I want to thank everyone for being part of our Online worship experience. We are grateful for your participation and heart of worship. We also are thankful for members who shared this experience with their loved ones and spread the hope, as we are facing this unknown challenge. Please continue to be connected to our Lord, and keep each other in your prayers! I would also ask you to check out the ‘Lenten Prayer Video,’ which will be sent out to your email, along with the Daily Devotion, every morning at 6:00 AM. Click here to tune into today’s prayer video

Online Worship will continue till March 29th, 2020
We are receiving newly updated information regarding the response directions from our Annual Conference.  The latest update directed all Virginia United Methodist Churches to worship online till March 29th, 2020. We are to cancel all gatherings over 10 people. 

Therefore, our online worship will extend from two Sundays to three Sundays. 
We will continue our practice to have a minimum number (under 10) of worship leaders to lead live worship at 8:30 AM. Following the Live worship, you will see the rebroadcast of the worship available for you to tune in anytime. 

Please remember to let us know you tuned in and share your experience with others. 

Executive Council’s decision regarding COVID-19
I wanted to use this opportunity to share some of the decisions, our Church’s Executive Council made, responding to this time. 

1. Stay Connected with each other – We would like to encourage you to stay connected with each other. Please use various communication tools to keep each other accountable. We also want to share that this might be a great time to pick up the phone and actually talk! See how your family in Christ is doing. See if there is anything we can do for each other. See what prayer request we might have. Share and even pray for them. 
Please remember that we have a particular group of members who might need additional assistance. Feel free to contact us if you are in need of help.
We are also working on a phone tree to help our members to be connected. Also, let us know if you can help with contacting our members. 

2. Approval of funds to be reserved to share with communities response to this pandemic
We have decided to allocate a certain amount of funding to assist the community in its response to this pandemic. We are doing research to see the immediate need that might be dismissed during this time. As soon as we identify the need, we will make a donation to support the effort of recovery. We will also make a plea to our congregation, so we can double our impact. 

In the meantime, our Missions Committee requested that we donate remaining canned food, in our food pantry, to Kid’s Soar to assist their effort in distributing food to children and youth in their program. 

3. Office Hour for our church – For the next couple of weeks, we will change our church office hours from 10:00 AM – 1:00 PM. This is our effort to limit any personal contact, but have our church opened to continue our work in this community. 
However, our staff members will be working beyond the church office hours. They will continue their work, with being respectful of the need to ‘social distance.’ 
We decided to change the church’s main office number, 540-344-6011 ext. 0 to a 24-hour hotline. If you are in need to contact the church, we are will assure you that someone is monitoring the church office number 24/7, so we can respond quicker. 

Please be safe and healthy during this time we are walking together. 
Please continue to pray for each other and help us to extend the care of our Lord to our community. 
Also, remember the ABC’s and the Prayer of Pandemic, I shared in the previous letter. Click here to see the previous letter. 

We will continue to pray and we will continue to trust!

In Christ,
Rev. Seungsoo Jun