LETTER FROM LEAD PASTOR CAMERON:
Dear New Day Family,
Our God is AMAZING! And our church is AMAZING! And I am so blessed to serve as your pastor. Today the world finds itself overcome by fear of the coronavirus. But God’s Word says, “Fear not, for I am with you; Be not dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you, Yes, I will help you, I will uphold you with My righteous right hand.'” Isaiah 41:10
We can hold fast to the truth that God’s “Perfect love casts out fear” (1 John 4:18) in the midst of the swirl of information, opinion, and genuine concern about this health crisis. The Church throughout the ages has been, and continues to be, the instrument of God to bring hope and healing in the midst of crisis.
You and I are the church. As believers living in faith in our communities we are the ones that can touch lives, and make a difference. Our weekend gatherings are times to encourage and equip us, but we are the Church 24/7, 365 days a year. After much prayer, thought, discussion, and input from respected leaders, the staff at New Day has decided to cancel weekend services (Saturday @ Vine, Sundays @ Nichols and Vandalia) immediately through the end of March. We will re-evaluate at that point to determine if it is wise to resume gathering. We are also cancelling the physical gatherings of Community Groups.
We are not doing this out of fear, but out of care. Most people will not be adversely affected by the virus other than a cold or flu-like illness at most. But everyone exposed increases the risk for those who are vulnerable -- the elderly, pregnant mothers, and those with compromised immune systems. While so far cases in children are not severe, as we all know children are hands-on with life, and can spread sickness to those who are vulnerable. As the spread of this virus works its way through the population the severity will decrease. Slowing the spread of the cases that end up severe is the point of reducing exposure.
Gatherings will be put on pause, but the Church will continue! We encourage you to be active in prayer, worship, and reading and living God’s Word. We are also working on the following:
We will develop ways to continue caring for the members of New Day using various online forms and personal contact.
The pastors of New Day will begin contacting members of each congregation.
We will live stream our sermons this Saturday & Sunday, using Facebook. Vine will air at 7 PM on Saturday, Vandalia at 10 AM, and Nichols at 11 AM.
We will also upload the sermon from Nichols to our YouTube channel as we have been doing. The YouTube version is a higher quality and offers closed captions.
Recording worship songs is much more complicated so at this point we will simply do the sermon, or possibly include a short acoustic worship service if we can arrange it. We are also looking at a number of other ways to provide community and pastoral care during these next few weeks. We will be informing you as we develop these in the days to come.
Online teaching is no substitute for being together. It is unlikely that this will be necessary for long. We fully intend to restart services as soon as it is wise to do so.
Sincerely,
Pastor Cameron