Dear Grace Family: First of all, thank you so much for your faithfulness over the past three months! Many of you have been very generous with your giving, and your staff and the community appreciate it very much. I am also very grateful for our team of folks who work each week to put together our online service. Tom Black, Nick Barth, Mike Ferger, Matt Gleason, Pastor Beth Burton and Gary Burton and many others have been instrumental in the work involved behind the scenes. There are many hours involved in putting together a quality online service, and it takes a great team. Niki Hoyt does a wonderful job with our online children’s ministry.
This Sunday, June 14, our Cabinet of the Florida Conference of the United Methodist Church has put together a great worship experience. We will hear a variety of great music, some well-done virtual choirs, many scripture readings and ideas from all of our District Superintendents, and a brief message from our bishop. This is a chance to hear from our United Methodist leaders in Florida, and to see their diversity and special gifts.
Next week, June 21, we will offer an in-person worship service at 11am. Friends, we need your prayers, your patience, and your cooperation as we move forward. The survey we sent out indicated that less than half of those surveyed plan to return to in-person worship this summer. We will continue to offer online worship each week, and in fact, we recommend that anyone who is in a high-risk category, for any reason, consider staying home for the foreseeable future. The last thing we want is for someone to get covid because of coming to worship. For those who do attend, masks will be mandatory, and we will offer them at the door for those who did not bring one. But we encourage you to bring a mask with you.
I will provide more details about in-person worship in next week’s Gracevine. In the meanwhile, have a great weekend and God bless you! Pastor Steve Hart