This week’s message will be a bit different from most of my messages. Today will be a history lesson of how Covenant evolved since COVID hit us in early 2020, including some positive changes that occurred at that time that still are with us today.
I am sure we are all painfully aware of the memory of COVID hitting early in the year 2020, and the decision made by local, state, and federal governments to close most activities, including church attendance. [How can we ever forget Stop the Spread!] Covenant Church certainly complied with that directive, and closed its doors in early 2020. As the months slowly passed, Covenant was eager to re-open as soon as possible. Pastor Carl Romey expressed much interest in re-opening, an opinion also shared by the Trustees. The Trustees and Pastor Carl developed a plan to set up chairs 6 feet apart, have hymnals and Bibles on chairs throughout the church, and to place bulletins on the chairs rather than greeting people at the door and handing out the bulletins. We also agreed that Covenant would only be open for Sunday church services until further notice.
This plan was reworked until we were all comfortable, and Covenant Church was one of the first local churches to re-open only for Sunday services on June 7, 2020. We had about 20 people attend that first service and our summer attendance averaged about 15-20 people. We were pleased to see that this many people were comfortable returning to church, yet we realized that there were also a lot of people who were not yet comfortable coming back to church.
We believed we needed a plan to also reach out to our many members and friends who were not yet comfortable returning to church to keep them involved with God’s Word. So we developed a plan to provide a weekly message emailed to those members and friends for whom we had email addresses. The people who volunteered to write and send these messages included Pastor Carl, Madge Bush, Edwina Hope, Michelle Miller, Rose Morgan, Tina Pinkoson, and Ron Marks (I apologize if I left off anyone else who volunteered). This process worked well throughout the summer.
Eventually, we felt the need to continue weekly messages because folks appreciated receiving God’s Word even if they were not yet comfortable returning to church. We started the plan by sending summaries of our church services each week to everyone on our email or snail mail lists. The continued evolution of this plan led to Tina and Ron each agreeing to produce a weekly message to send out to all members each week on Wednesday and Friday. That plan led to the start of Tina’s Woo Hoo It’s Wednesday message, which officially kicked off on August 5, 2020, and my TGIF message which kicked off three weeks later on August 28, 2020.
I am sure that Tina and I thought we would do these messages for a few months until everyone returned to Covenant services certainly by the end of 2020! Instead, this August Tina and I will both celebrate the four-year anniversary of sharing these messages with our church family and others. It is amazing how God has used both of us to share His Word with folks in need of hearing it, but have not been able to return to Covenant church services during this time.
Proverbs 3:5-6 – Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. 6 In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight.
Cindy and I will be gone the next two weeks for our annual family vacation to Hilton Head, so I will not be sending out any messages for the next two weeks. When I return, I plan to share with you my first two TGIF messages that I originally shared with you on August 28 and September 4, 2020. Those messages will be shared on August 23 and 30. I hope you will enjoy seeing some of my early work on writing a weekly message. I have spoken with Tina about these plans, and I believe she is also planning to share some of her early messages with you as well. I hope you will enjoy reading some of the early messages to our Covenant family!