A Message from Pastor Doug
Greetings and His all sufficient grace to you my dear brothers and sisters. First, let me start by reminding all of us that from EVERLASTING to EVERLASTING, He is God and His love for you endures forever! We will get through this TOGETHER and on the other side of glory this will all have faded into oblivion. Let’s all, TOGETHER, claim this promise from His Word:
For you have made the Lord, my refuge, even the Most High, your dwelling place. No evil will befall you, nor will any plague come near your tent. For He will give His angels charge concerning you, to guard you in all your ways. — Psalm 91:9–11
I wanted to send you a brief correspondence letting you know that your leadership desires strongly, and has been working tirelessly, to provide opportunities for those that want to to gather together this Sunday. Your elders have been in constant communication throughout the week, the entire Lead Team met early this morning to talk through the situation we are living in, and we have a message and music and prayer all planned and ready to go. In an effort to keep the group sizes smaller, we devised a way to make this happen as 5 different locations — rather than all in the Troyer home. However, as I mentioned on Sunday multiple times, the situation is very fluid and events late last night and early this morning in other states and locally are causing us to reconsider how best to show neighbor love even as we provide ways to love one another well. As a faith family, we believe strongly that the word of God conveys the gospel, but the one another's display the gospel. This is why your leadership team has worked for many hours to find ways to make gathering possible. But we must also balance our love to be together, and our belief that our togetherness is a witness for see His glory revealed, with being a good witness to the very people we want to show Him to. In other words, in our desire to gather to show Him off, we could be used to harden the hearts of the very people who need to see him. There are simply no easy answers here.
All that to say, no final decision about Sunday has been made. Your Elders meet tomorrow morning. Please pray for the godly wisdom from above we have been learning about in our study in the Book of James (see James 1:5 and 3:17–18) to be made manifest in that meeting.
We will let you know the plan for this Sunday as soon as possible. I hope you long to gather as much as I do. And I pray that you will trust the Lord’s hand is upon us, regardless of what occurs this Sunday. We will all get through this TOGETHER.
In the meantime, keep looking UP, keep pressing ON, and keep pressing INTO His Word.
The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever. — Isaiah 40:8
MUCH LOVE!
Pastor Doug