Guidance for In-person Services

We are continuing with a “hybrid” service, combining in-person worship with Zoom. As we continue to gather with those of you who feel ready to return, we are doing so with the necessary precautions and respect for one another, knowing that COVID-19 is still present.

With that in mind, we are continuing with caution as we follow state requirements and what we believe is best for us as a church. Here is what you can expect at our in-person worship as of January, 2023.

• Masks are optional during Sunday worship. We will continue to have some available if you choose to wear one.

• Children are welcome to worship with parents and we have a fully staffed multi-age Sunday school available. We also have an unattended “cry room” with the service piped in if families prefer.

• The video feed of the Zoom service is projected on the front wall of the sanctuary.

We will continue to monitor official decisions on COVID and will keep you updated on adjustments to these practices. Increased vaccinations and lower infection rates have allowed us to return to more traditional in-person services while continuing to provide the worship-at-home opportunities that are meeting the needs of many members and friends.

Coming Together While Staying Apart

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, we are not currently meeting for in-person worship. Instead, we invite you to join us on Sunday mornings at 10am, via Zoom. The Zoom link can be found every Sunday morning under the heading of any page on our website, by clicking the blue banner that reads, “Join us for worship on Zoom, Sundays at 10am.”

If you would like to receive a weekly invitation to worship via email, as well as our newsletter and other information related to life at EPC, you can join our mailing list by clicking the ‘Sign Up’ button found at the bottom of our home page. You can also send your email address to info@epcbothell.org and we will manually add you to our distribution list.

If you have questions, prayer requests or are in need of pastoral care, please email Pastor Dave Rohrer at daver@epcbothell.org. Please note that our office is not currently staffed with any regularity, so email is the best form of communication.

We encourage you to check this space for announcements about upcoming events and possible changes in the ways we meet together as our Session continues to evaluate and deliberate our response to the pandemic.

Return to Normalcy?

One of my best friends during this time of crisis in our world has been the study of history.  When I look back and see that there have been other times in history when we have walked a similar path, I tend to turn down the volume on what I am feeling in the present.  I step back from the tendency to catastrophize and stop using words like unprecedented.  I have heard it said that those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it.  Frankly, I think the better way to state this maxim is that those who study history know when we are repeating it.

With all the talk these days about “opening things up” and “getting back to normal” I’ve been thinking about an obscure detail concerning the 1920 presidential campaign. 100 years ago Warren G. Harding and James M. Cox were running against each other for president.  Their running mates were two future presidents, Calvin Coolidge and Franklin Roosevelt.  In 1920 the nation had just emerged from two major crises, World War I and the 1918 flu pandemic, and Harding’s campaign slogan was “Return to Normalcy.”

Sound familiar?

Return to normalcy.  It certainly expresses our heart’s desire these days.  We’re tired of being cooped up in our homes.  We’re oppressed by the loneliness of it all.  We’re fearful about the economy.  We desperately want to get back to the way things were before we shut ourselves in as a result of this worldwide outbreak of Covid-19.  Our souls are sated with the bad tasting food of crisis and we want the sustenance of something more savory.  So let’s get back to the way things were.  Let’s return to normalcy.

Of course the problem with this desire is that we can’t fulfill it.  It’s as difficult to go back to what was as it is to predict what is ahead.  We can only be where we are.  We can only live faithful lives in the present that are  fueled by gratitude for and wisdom born of past experience and hopeful anticipation and educated guesses of what might be best for the future. Nostalgia about the past and fear about the future have not proven to be the best foundations for decisions we have to make in the present.   

A big part of the Biblical narrative grows out of the theme of what happens when we human beings emerge from a crisis.  The expulsion from the Garden, the release from slavery in Egypt, 40 years of wilderness wandering and the entry into the new land, the destruction of Jerusalem in 587 BC, the end of 70 years spent in exile in Babylon and a return to the rubble that was once a great city, the crucifixion and the resurrection of the one who turned out to be a very different Messiah than the one who was anticipated, all give witness to this theme.  At each of these moments of transition the story tells both of the longings and sadness the people have as they look back to what was, as well as the fear and the hope they experience as they anticipate something new.  And at each of these moments the Bible acknowledges our feelings and gives us songs to sing that put words to them: Wailing laments that long for the restoration of what was and hopeful hymns as we search the horizon for the signs of God’s presence.

Yet there is another song that we are given as well.  It is the song that sings of the one constant that endures even in the face of uncertainty and change.  There are many versions of it in the Bible but one of my favorites is Jeremiah’s song in Lamentations 3.  It faces into the loss and embraces hope.  It does not deny the pain and yet sings of something that transcends it.  It offers no rosy promise of a return to what was, only a celebration of what remains true.  In the wake of destruction and the throes of exile Jeremiah gives us a word for today:

The thought of my affliction and my homelessness
    is wormwood and gall!
My soul continually thinks of it
    and is bowed down within me.
But this I call to mind,
    and therefore I have hope:

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases,
    his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
    great is your faithfulness.
“The Lord is my portion,” says my soul,
    “therefore I will hope in him.”
(Lamentations 3:19-24)

David Rohrer
05/06/2020

Waiting

While staying with them, [Jesus] ordered them not to leave Jerusalem,
but to wait there for the promise of the Father.
“This,” he said, “is what you have heard from me; for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.” 
So when they had come together, they asked him,
“Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?”
Acts 1:4-6

“Wait there for the promise of the Father.”  It’s not the first time the faithful were told to wait for something.  In fact, I suppose one could say the invitation to wait seems to be one of God’s favorite invitations to us.  This is probably why one of the favorite questions in the Psalms is: “How long, O Lord?”
 
Here at the beginning of the Luke’s account of the doings of the early church in Acts we have a bit of a different prayer that we pray the midst of enduring the wait.  The disciples essentially respond to Jesus’ admonition with the question: Are we going to get what we want at the end of that wait?  “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the Kingdom to Israel?”  To put it another way: Do you want us to hang out in Jerusalem so we can watch you kick Roman butt and be ready to take on our roles in your transition team?
 
Jesus responds to their request, “It is not for you to know the times and the periods that the Father has set by his own authority (Acts 1:7).” In other words: Don’t get ahead of yourselves.  For now, let’s just say stay in Jerusalem and wait for the Spirit of God to reveal what the Spirit of God will reveal.  Wait.
 
Waiting is never easy work.  Whether we are weeping alongside the waters of Babylon longing for the end of captivity (Ps 137), or on tiptoes of expectation joyously anticipating the coming of the King of Glory (Ps 24), waiting means delaying gratification and that is not something we enjoy.  But if the truth be told, waiting is the norm.  The Scriptures tell us again and again what Mick Jagger wails in the Rolling Stone’s song: “You can’t always get what you want.” 
 
Covid-19 is also teaching that lesson.  We’re all waiting for things to “open up” again.  We want freedom from this stay at home order.  We want things to get back to normal, and as the end of the Governor’s order looms, and we’re all talking about what “opening things up” looks like, we are all hoping that we can get back to the way things were.  But of course there are all sorts of reasons why the definitions of “opening up” and “normal” are a bit ambiguous.
 
The disease that early on was manifesting itself primarily as a respiratory disease with a 14-21 day life cycle spread by cough delivered droplets is now known to attack other parts of our bodies as well and spread in more subtle ways.  Fulfilling the amount of testing needed to define more clearly who needs to stay sequestered and who should be able to go out, is something that has been added to the list of things we are waiting for.  The predictions about resurgence once this current spread has abated seem plausible as we look at places like Singapore and China seem to be engaging round two.
 
So we probably can’t get everything we want and at some level will need to continue to wait. Yet in the waiting there is some Biblical advice that turns waiting into something active rather than something that is merely passive.  Waiting in a Biblical worldview is largely about living in hope: holding on to what we know to be true and looking for the signs of God’s presence in the midst of our wait.
 
Waiting informed by hope is more than standing still and lamenting all that isn’t.  It is about pivoting.  If we can’t move forward in the direction we want to go, we can pivot on one foot, change our perspective and ask ourselves what we can see, what we can know, what we can do in the space where we have to remain.  It’s the invitation that Jeremiah called the exiles in Babylon to consider:

Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce.
Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease.
But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare. (Jer. 29:5-7)

Pivot.  Change your perspective. Take in where you are and do what you can do in that place.  Live in hope and not just in a state of longing informed mostly by despair.  We all have our own versions of what such a pivot might bring into view and many of us are acting on the invitations that have come into view.  Some of those invitations that have come into view for us at Emmanuel are:  caring for a portion of our grounds and so participating in the stewardship of an important part of the gift we give to our neighborhood especially in this time when parks are closed, living in the hope of the harvest we will reap at Emmanuel Farm by taking some time to help out with the tilling and tending of our garden, making cloth masks for the season when we can  get “out there” again but not without some protection and the continuation of our need to give each other space, and using our building to distribute food to Maywood Hills Elementary families who without the school food program find it hard to feed their families.
 
Pivot.  Take in what you see.  Ask God to show you what you have not yet seen.  God’s love has not stopped.  God’s presence is still something on which we can rely.  Let’s give witness to both of these truths as we seek the welfare of this city to which God has sent us.

David Rohrer
April 29, 2020

Easter Sunday Worship

“Simon, son of John do you love me?”   Peter said to Jesus, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.”  
Jesus said to him, “Feed my sheep.”
John 21:16

A commonly used exaggeration we often deploy in the midst of some discomfort we are enduring is the phrase, “This is killing me.”  After the long hike we say “My feet are killing me.”  After a hard day at the office, “This job is killing me.”  Or at the end of an afternoon spent bending over to tend the garden, “My back is killing me.”  When we use it in this way, the phrase is rarely accurate.  But in these days of our isolation due to Covid-19 it seems appropriate.  We are daily aware of something that is killing us.  And it’s hard to get our minds off of it. This novel corona virus is making many of us very sick.  It is easy to catch and hard to fight, and our response to it is causing all sorts of collateral damage.  So maybe in this case it’s not so much of an exaggeration to say, “This is killing me.”

Yet even so, even if it is true that Covid-19 is killing us, perseverating on this fact is also something that will rob us of life.  To survive this scourge and thrive we’ll need to do something more than work to avoid contracting this disease.  We’ll need to adjust our perspective and widen our angle to take in a bigger picture.  We’ll need to set this disease in a broader context.  And I propose a question posed by Barbara Brown Taylor in one of her books to help us do this.  She asks her readers the question: “What’s saving your life right now.”  

Easter Sunday is a good day to contemplate Taylor’s question to us.  On this day when we celebrate the truth that evil will not have the last word, it is good for us to contemplate what is saving our lives rather than what is killing us.  On the day when the ugliness of that Roman cross is fading into the background, it is good to look forward in hope and contemplate the life and light that flies in the face of death and darkness.  How is Covid-19 failing to get the last word even though it is still raging among us?  Truly living is not just about not dying.  So what is helping us to live?

At one level the post-resurrection encounter of Jesus and Peter in John 21 is an example of this work of reframing life’s central question.   While lounging on the shore of the lake after a big breakfast, Jesus asks Peter to think about what will foster life.  He asks the question three times.  Each time Peter answers the question in the affirmative.  Each time he responds to Jesus, Peter becomes a bit more irritated.  But Jesus is calmly persistent and offers the same rejoinder to each of Peter’s answers.  “Do you love me, Peter.  Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.  Then feed my lambs. . . , tend my sheep . . ., feed my sheep.”  In essence, Jesus says to Peter: “If you love me, then love as you have been loved.  Pass on what you have been given.  Reflect the light that has been poured out on you.”  

The contradiction to the finality of the Cross that occurs on Easter morning initially brings the disciples up short.  In all of the stories of encounters between the resurrected Christ and the disciples, they are rubbing their eyes and pinching themselves wondering if they are just having a dream.  Once they figure out he is alive and that they can believe their eyes, there is great joy and relief.  The snare of the fowler was broken (Ps 124) and death didn’t have the last word.  What they all knew was the exhilaration of being saved from the crushing grip of an oppressive opponent.  Yet once the adrenalin secreted by this awareness began to subside, there on the shore of the lake with full stomachs and the comforting presence of Jesus there was space to ask another question.  Just beyond the relief of being saved, the question that presented itself was, “Now what?” What does this mean?  What does it tell us?  What impact will this have on the way we live our lives?  Now that we know we’ve been saved from evil, what’s next?  What have we been saved for? 

Notice that Jesus’ encounter with Peter in John 21 doesn’t answer this question with the command to develop strategy for a worldwide movement or to begin work on a theology that explains it all.  Jesus simply calls Peter to continue to do what he had already called him to do.  Follow me, Peter.  Abide with me.  Let me love you.  Then go in the strength of that love and love others.  Feed my sheep.  

Now what?  Basically it boils down to a one word answer: Relationship.  Love as you have been loved. 

Many years later St. Paul effectively said the same thing in his letter to the Colossians:

As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, 
clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. 
Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; 
just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. 
Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. 
And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. 
And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly;
teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts 
sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, 
do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.
(Colossians 3:12-17) 

David Rohrer
4/12/2020

Lenten Morning Prayer -- Thursday, April 9th

Join us at 7:00 AM on Zoom for our weekly morning prayer time during Lent. This will be the last Morning Prayer Service during Lent but we may continue the service as long as we are unable to meet together in during the Covid-19 stay at home order. If you would like a link to this service please email Dave Rohrer at daver@epcbothell.org

Not Neglecting to Meet Together

Dear Emmanuel Family,

This morning I have been thinking about the phrase, “The New Normal.” If the truth be told, it’s a euphemism we use when we are experiencing some kind of loss: The unknowns ahead that are being faced by someone who has just begun her cancer treatment, or the grief one is experiencing in the wake of the death of a loved one, or the dread one feels when he finds out he has lost his job, or the emptiness we know when we’ve been abandoned by someone who we once called friend, are all times when I have heard people speaking about their “new normal.”  

Yet here’s the thing: we experience these new normals as being entirely abnormal.  They are a sudden dislocation from what we had come to know as normal.  It’s not normal at all; and it may not ever feel normal.  But it is real and it needs to be dealt with in ways more meaningful than pronouncing it normal or worse yet, good. You know: “The dog died last week, my neighbor is filing a law suit against us, our son and his wife are divorcing, and on top of all of this I just lost my job, but . . . it’s all good.” 

No!  It’s not “all good” and it’s far from normal.  

While the ever deepening isolation we are being called to as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic may be a reality we need to accept, it is not a normal to which I want to accommodate.  I hope we are able to reconnect in person soon.  But until that green light is given, we are working at finding ways to both join with the fight in preventing the transmission of this disease by keeping our distance from one another, and at the same time adopting new ways of staying in touch. 

We’re well on the way with our new worship format.  Over 70 virtual sanctuaries came together in the same place to worship this past week, and in many of those “sanctuaries” there were gatherings of more than one person using the same computer or tablet or phone.  On Monday night our session used the Zoom platform for its monthly meeting.  We could even break up into three groups in virtual break out rooms so that each of our session commissions could discuss their particular issues.  So we are not neglecting to meet together, but we can get better at this and there are additional ways we can connect using Zoom.

What if we were to form groups of folks during the week to encourage one another through scripture, prayer and fellowship?  It’s not difficult and it’s free on Zoom as long as you keep your meeting to 40 minutes.  If you are interested in pulling together a group or being a part of a group that meets in this way on Zoom, shoot me an email (daver@epcbothell.org).  I’d be glad to train folks to use Zoom and also prepare a weekly devotional for you to use as a group.  The material I prepare will probably make use of the Psalms and be concise enough to both fit within the Zoom time limit of 40 minutes and allow for the needed time of informal conversation these groups would require.  Of course you don’t need me to make this happen, but I want you to know that I am available and will help to “grease the skids” to get this going.

What is normal to me is being a pastor.  I want to keep at that calling in whatever ways I can during this abnormal time.  The tools I need to use to do this work right now are not normal.  So bear with me, work with me, let me know what’s on your mind and let’s together find ways to meet together and encourage one another.

Dave

3/25/2020  

Thoughts before our next worship gathering (via Zoom)

Dear Emmanuel Family,

A week of not having worship in the sanctuary on Sunday and not going into the office at the church has me thinking about all the things I took for granted about my job as your pastor.  Before the sequestering experience caused by the virus I could make an assumption that I was going to see most of you on Sundays.  And if I didn’t see people in worship I could make a mental list of those whom I needed to check in with. I had a certain rhythm in the way I organized my week and each day had its list of tasks.  I could talk with Sue Hendrix or Marin Kaetzel or Sharon Concha by simply getting up and walking to my office door or making a trip down the hall.  My commute home from the church in the afternoons gave me a built in buffer between work time and home time.    

All of these things have gone away.  Their loss means that I am now thinking about new ways to stay in touch with you, administer the workings of the congregation and lead us in worship.  Like it or not, my cell phone and the Zoom video conferencing platform have become my primary tools.  They are a distant second to the joy of personal contact, but they are what I have and I am glad I have them.  

We’ll have our second worship gathering on Zoom on March 22nd at 10am.  We’ve spent a good bit of time this week trying to address the glitches of last Sunday.  There will be some new things we’re doing and I’ll be interested in your thoughts about our gatherings so that we can continue to improve what we are doing.  I’ll be sending you the link to the meeting in an email tomorrow.  All you need to do is to click on that link and it will take you directly to the meeting.  If you have never used Zoom before it will take a little extra time to download the application.  

I also want you to know that even though I am not in my office and not booking lunches or making pastoral calls to people’s homes I am available to engage with you as your pastor.  We can easily schedule a phone call or a face to face meeting on Zoom or on Face time.  Just send me an email (daver@epcbothell.org) or give me a call or send me a text on my mobile phone 206-715-3007, and we can set up an appointment to get together.  

My hope is to write regularly about what God is teaching me in this time.  I’ll send you those reflections via email and post them on our website on the “Coming together while we’re staying apart” page (https://www.epcbothell.org/covid19).   You can reply to those posts either by replying to the email or leaving your comments on the website and I will respond to those emails and comments.

Finally, I need to continue to ask for your help in staying in touch with the people of our congregation who will neither have access to this message nor the ability to view our worship gatherings because they either have no computer or limited connectivity to online resources.  If you know of someone in that category please tell me and we will make sure that they are receiving a regular phone call from someone in the congregation.  Thanks for your help.    

Dave

Worship Service on Sunday, March 15th

Dear Emmanuel Family,

As you know the Session at Emmanuel has been engaging in discussions about our communal response to the spread of the Covid-19 virus.  Given both Governor Jay Inslee’s orders to close schools through April 24th and to cancel gatherings over 250 people and the guidelines issued by King County Public Health regarding safeguards that need to be in place for gatherings under 250, the Session at Emmanuel has decided we will not have a worship service in our sanctuary this Sunday, March 15th.  

We will however, offer our church family an opportunity to be a part of an online video conference via a platform called Zoom.  If you would like to be a part of that gathering you will need to have a computer, phone or tablet that has a camera and a microphone.  At 10:00 am on Sunday, March 15 access this message (or an email that you may have received with this same information) and click on this link: https://zoom.us/j/489844680.

Once you click on the link you will be given a series of prompts that will connect you with our meeting.  Initially your microphone will be turned off, but you should be able to hear me and when it comes time for prayer I will be able to activate the microphones of those who wish to offer a prayer request or share a word or gratitude or praise.

This is, in my mind, a feeble replacement for in-person worship.  Yet given that we had less than 50% of our normal worship attendance last Sunday, it is clear that many of you think it is prudent not to attend public gatherings at this time.  Thank you for your patience and perseverance.  Thank you for loving your neighbor by becoming a part of helping to contain the spread of this viral infection. 

Yet it must be said that these actions bring with them the unfortunate experience of isolation. In a congregation like ours where the majority of our members are over the age of 60, worship and fellowship over the internet will probably not be sustainable because it will not be something that sustains. I know that many people in our congregation will not even receive this email, and many who do will not have the means of connecting to our meeting this Sunday on Zoom.  So we need to work at staying in touch with one another and so mitigate the isolating effects of this pandemic.  

In light of this, here are some of the things we are doing or thinking about doing in the near future.  Already there is a team of folks who are working at calling people in the congregation who have not been in worship over the past few weeks, and they are now looking for help to expand the call list to include the whole congregation.  If you are interested in being a part of this team to help out with making these calls, please email me (daver@epcbothell.org) and I will put you in touch with the people who are organizing this.  Second, I am exploring ways that small groups of folks can meet outdoors on a variety of days and times for shorter services of worship, communion and fellowship.  These meetings would be in compliance with the King County Health Department guidelines for small meetings.   Stay tuned for more information about these gatherings.

I will stay in regular touch via these emails, but I continue to ask your help in spreading the word to those people in the congregation who are not in this communication loop.  Thank you for continuing to care for one another and to look for ways that we can love our neighbors in this challenging time.

Dave

Important Message Regarding Worship

Dear Emmanuel Family,

The events of this past week have delivered us to a place of deepening concern over the spread of the novel Corona virus, COVID-19.  Many congregations in our area are choosing not to meet for worship tomorrow. However, as I have been in discussion with our Session over the last three days, the discernment of the majority of the Elders is that we should offer a public worship service on Sunday March 8th at our normal time of 10am.  So as of this writing (at 8:00am on Saturday, March 7th), I can tell you our doors will be open for worship.  

As we gather it is important to restate a few things. People need to exercise their own judgement about whether or not they think being in worship is a good idea for them.  If you have a health condition that makes you more susceptible to contracting this virus you are advised to stay at home.  If you are showing any symptoms of cold or flu please stay away from public spaces where you could inadvertently share your illness with others. Wash your hands regularly and avoid touching your face.  And if you are out in public it is best to keep a safe distance from others and not shake hands or hug.   

Here are a few things to be aware of in the coming weeks. As this public health concern continues to unfold we at Emmanuel will be doing the following things:

• While we are holding worship this Sunday, March 8th, we may be asked to refrain from holding public gatherings or find it necessary in coming weeks to stop offering public worship. So until the crisis is abated, the Session and I will be in communication each week to determine whether or not worship will happen.

• We will offer neither beverages nor food after the service. We will not pass offering plates or attendance pads.  And we will ask folks to offer peace and greeting to one another by some means other than the physical contact of handshakes and hugs.  Greeting one another with the “holy kiss” described in the Bible is probably not a good idea. 

• I have given the staff the option of not being present on Sundays if they choose. Volunteers in children’s ministry have the same option. This may mean we are singing a'capella during worship or that we have no children's programming during the morning worship hour or that we have no sound and recording support for worship.

The bottom line as we engage all of this is that before, during and after this crisis there is a constant that brings us confidence, Jesus is Lord.  Nothing we do or don’t do will shake this rock solid foundation. So let’s rest in this certainty and allow God’s peace to displace the anxieties that this virus might cause.  

God’s Grace and Peace to You,

Dave