July 21 Church Update

FROM JULY 21:

  • Our pastors and elders unanimously agree that our current practices and procedures fall within the Mayor’s mandate without requiring masks.
  • From our pastors: The Mayor of Lincoln has issued a mask mandate for all public gatherings in Lancaster county July 20-August 31. There is much debate on whether this qualifies as a 4thCommandment issue. It is not our vocation to debate or enforce such mandates, but rather to preach and teach God’s Word in its truth and purity and administer His precious sacraments according to His command and promise. You are free in the Gospel to follow the mandate if you wish. Our policy at Good Shepherd remains the same: masks are encouraged but not required. Let your conscience be your guide. Please continue to follow the 6-foot social distancing guideline, so that we may continue to ease back to normal as the DHM’s allow. 

FROM EARLY JULY:

Starting Sunday, July 19, Family Bible Study will be available in-between services. The fellowship hall has been redesigned and approved by pastors and elders, in order to accommodate current social distancing guidelines.

  • The entire family is invited! One family unit per table in chairs facing the direction of the pastor at the podium. 
  • We have 22 tables set up properly, each distanced at a minimum of 6’ of other tables in every direction.
  • The tables can accommodate up to 5 people each. Come and see the new arrangement in the fellowship hall!
  • We have 110 chairs to accommodate the Bible Study, which is 50% of the capacity of the fellowship hall.

Stay tuned for forthcoming information on our other weekly Bible studies. We give thanks to God and look forward to share more of God’s Word with you!

FROM JUNE 7:

Beginning June 7, the following changes will take place for corporate worship services in accordance with updated social distancing guidelines:

  • Pre-registration for church service will no longer be required. Our purpose of pre-registration was to carefully monitor the number of people attending service. Average attendance on Sundays has been below the 25% capacity limit we have set. As of May 29, most public gathering capacities were raised by civil authorities to 50%.
  • Instead, handwritten attendance will be taken, similar to the pew attendance pads previously used.
  • Communion procedures will be the same, except the common cup will be offered (in addition to the small one-use cups) as an option to families. Between family uses of the common cup, the cup will be sanitized with a proper alcohol solution/wipe.
  • The longer read-along bulletin will likely be phased out in the future. A small number of the longer bulletins will be available for a few more weeks. We will be going back to the one-page bulletin to save on paper costs, and to save our secretarial staff from hours of work.
  • Sanitized hymnals will be available to use during the service, to be returned to a designated to separate table to be re-sanitized. We would like you to take the hymnal home with you! Just bring it back to church every week!

Guideline changes from civil authorities will continue to be monitored. We will continue to communicate updates to you.

We pray that this pandemic would be eradicated, so that all of God’s people may comfortably return to corporate worship services.

BACK TO CHURCH GUIDELINES VIDEO from May 6, 2020