Well, I was about to press ‘send’ on Sunday to Sunday when the texts started coming in about the ACT going into lockdown.
From 5pm today we will be in lockdown for seven days which means that next Sunday’s service, Sunday 15th August, will be entirely on Zoom (apart from a small team in the church). You will be able to access that from the usual link in the bulletin.
Sadly, this means no Family Church this Sunday or walk after church, and the church meeting next Sunday, 22nd August, will be postponed until it can be conducted safely and effectively.
Cecelia and I will be contactable during our usual office hours (Cecelia: office@canbap.org or 0421 814 548 / Belinda: belinda@canbap.org or 0400 010 144) but if you need to contact me outside of those hours – please do. If I cannot help, I am sure that within this community there will be the resources to assist because we are a church!
As I said last Sunday, “In this amazing place called the church (Ephesians 3:6) we have become co-heirs of God (we are part of God’s family), we have become corporate (we are parts of one body), and we are co-sharers of the blessings that life in God brings.”
I am going to scrap the Sunday to Sunday I was writing earlier today and just leave you with the prayer I started the service with last Sunday.
The church is not a place; it is a people.
The church is not a steeple above the treeline, streets, and cars.
Rather, it is a people proclaiming to the world that
we are here for the work of healing and of justice.
The church is not walls built stone upon stone, held together by mortar
but rather person, linked with person, linked with person:
all ages and genders and abilities—
a community built on faith, hope and love.
The church is not just a set of doors open on Sunday morning,
but the commitment day after day, and moment after moment,
of our hearts creaking open the doors of welcome
to the possibility of new experience and radical welcome.
The church is not simply a building, a steeple, a pew.
The church is the gathering together of all the people, and experiences;
the fear, and love, and hope in our resilient hearts;
gathering, however we can, to say to the world:
welcome, come in, lay down your heartache, and pick up hope and love.
For the church is us—each and every one of us—together,
a beacon of hope to this world that so sorely needs it.
~ written by Rev. Margaret Weis (altd. Belinda Groves)
I am glad to be part of this church and that we can be God’s church together in this place at this time.
Belinda
Rev Belinda Groves