Virtual Only - Sunday July 26
Dear Church Family,
The gathering scheduled for tomorrow, July 26th, will be cancelled in-person and moved to a live-stream format only.
A member of our church family has tested positive for covid-19, and due to their exposure to other members of our church and staff we will not regather until all affected parties have negative test results. We hope to regather next Sunday, August 2nd.
We've consistently asked that our church respond to these constantly changing circumstances with flexibility and grace. We understand that last minute changes of plan are not ideal, but we have invested significant time and energy in developing our live streaming capabilities in order to adapt to situations like this rapidly.
We ask that all Mill City Members stay home and tune into our live stream in the morning for a time of Worship and a message from Matthew.
Please be praying for those impacted by COVID-19 in the last two weeks. Remember, even though we won’t be gathering this week, we will continue to be what we’ve always been: a gospel-centered community on mission.
Regathering and COVID-19
Mill City Family,
We have seen a range of different responses as we have prepared to gather in-person for worship on Sundays. This is honestly a reflection of how our culture has responded to the whole country reopening. Some voices have advocated that doing anything outside your home in the vicinity of another human is gross negligence, while others have called the virus a hoax. We have seen and heard the range of responses on Facebook, at kitchen tables, in work settings, etc.
In hearing some of our own church family respond, we want to clarify some things as we get ready to incorporate in-person gatherings again. Firstly, why gather in person at all? Why encourage groups to figure out social distancing in an effort to gather? This goes back to what we have said since the beginning. We stopped gathering in person because our governing authorities and health officials recommended we stop in order to give our healthcare system enough time to adjust to the pandemic.
There was quite a bit we did not know about this virus and it would have been unloving to our neighbors to risk lives with the possibility of overrunning the health care system. Now that the governing authorities have a better understanding of the virus and our healthcare capacity, they have allowed us to wisely approach reopening along with businesses, recreation centers, and other organizations. And that is what we intend to do as we continue to follow best practices of social distancing and safety.
However, we will not be able to guarantee that gathering in-person, for worship on Sunday or for groups, will be completely safe (read that again). We can practice every safety guideline, we can check every box, and the possibility will remain- you could still get Covid-19. This is why we invested in live streaming technology, so that those of our church family that are most at risk (the elderly and those with pre-existing conditions) could participate from home. It is up to you to make the decision that is best for you and/or your family.
These decisions are difficult to make, which is why we want to give grace to one another while also collectively repenting of self-righteousness and pride in our approach to others. Your brothers and sisters in your church family don’t “hate their neighbors” if they choose to attend on Sundays, nor are they “blind” or “sheep” if they decide to stay home. Now is not the time for disunity. We don’t have to be uniform in our individual decisions in order to be unified in our collective response.
These are difficult times filled with fear, confusion, and uncertainty, but our call to love one another with a fierce love and empathetic understanding remains the same. We will take every step together, walking as wisely as possible. Sometimes that’s calling an audible like we did last Sunday when we didn’t get Covid results back for two of our pastors (which, praise God, they don’t have Covid). Other times it will be continuing to gather in-person, even as folks in our church family contract Covid and stay home. We need wisdom, we need grace, and we need to remember that while we have a diversity of opinions on this in our church, those are secondary to the unified faith and love for one another that guides us.
So in closing, let’s move forward in unity. If you feel comfortable coming on Sunday, we look forward to seeing you in person. If you don’t feel comfortable attending in person, join us via the livestream. Let’s be a church that embraces our present reality with humility and grace, unified in our desire to be a gospel-centered community on mission.
See you this Sunday (online or in-person)
What does generosity look like right now?
We wanted to take a couple minutes to answer the question: “What does generosity look like right now?”
Update to Continued Social Distancing
Here is an update on Gatherings and Community Groups with the current guidelines for social distancing.
Christianity in the Midst of Suffering
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Some timely encouragement from Tim Keller in his book Walking with God through Pain and Suffering:
In ancient times, Christianity was widely recognized as having superior resources for facing evil, suffering, and death. In modern times — though it is not as publicly discussed — it continues to have assets for sufferers arguably far more powerful than anything secular culture can offer. Those assets, however, reside in robust, distinctive Christian beliefs.
The cross also proves that… God is for us.
The first relevant Christian belief is in a personal, wise, infinite, and therefore inscrutable God who controls the affairs of the world—and that is far more comforting than the belief that our lives are in the hands of fickle fate or random chance. The second crucial tenet is that, in Jesus Christ, God came to earth and suffered with and for us sacrificially—and that is far more comforting than the idea that God is remote and uninvolved. The cross also proves that, despite all the inscrutability, God is for us. The third doctrine is that through faith in Christ’s work on the cross, we can have assurance of salvation—that is far more comforting than the karmic systems of thought. We are assured that the difficulties of life are not payment for our past sins, since Jesus has paid them. As Luther taught, suffering is unbearable if you aren’t certain that God is for you and with you. Secularity cannot give you that, and religions that provide salvation through virtue and good works cannot give it, either.
But resurrection is not just consolation — it is restoration.
The fourth great doctrine is that of the bodily resurrection from the dead for all who believe. This completes the spectrum of our joys and consolations. One of the deepest desires of the human heart is for love without parting. Needles to say, the prospect of the resurrection is far more comforting than the beliefs that death takes you into nothingness or into an impersonal spiritual substance. The resurrection goes beyond the promise of an ethereal, disembodied afterlife. We get our bodies back, in a state of beauty and power that we cannot today imagine. Jesus’ resurrection body was corporeal — it could be touched and embraced, and he ate food. And yet he passed through closed doors and could disappear. This is a material existence, but one beyond the bounds of imagination. The idea of heaven can be a consolation for suffering, a compensation for the life we have lost. But resurrection is not just consolation — it is restoration. We get it all back — the love, the loved ones, the goods, the beauties of life — but in new, unimaginable degrees of glory and joy and strength. It is a reversal of the seeming irreversibility of loss that Luc Ferry speaks of.
natural evil… confounds those who don’t believe we are all sinners needing salvation by sheer grace.
If one does not find consolation in these Christian doctrines, then I think total disbelief in God is better preparation for tragedy than the thinned-out, secularized belief in God that is so common in our Western world. Many people today believe in God, and may go to church, but if you ask them whether they are certain of their salvation and acceptance with God, or whether the idea of Jesus’ sacrificial death on the cross is real and profoundly moving to them, or whether they are convinced of the bodily resurrection of Jesus and believers — you are likely to get a negative answer, or just a stare. Western culture’s immanent frame weakens intellectual belief in God, and it makes heart certainty even more difficult to come by. But this partial Christianity or theism is far more difficult to hold in the face of horrendous suffering than is atheism. As Taylor has shown us, natural evil offends those who believe in a God who exists for us, and confounds those who don’t believe we are all sinners needing salvation by sheer grace.
Atheist writer Susan Jacoby wrote in The New York Times that “when I see homeless people shivering in the wake of a deadly storm, when the news media bring me almost obscenely close to the raw grief of bereft parents, I do not have to ask, as all people of faith must, why an all-powerful, all-good God allows such things to happen.” She is right, of course, at one level. If you don’t believe in God at all, you don’t struggle with the question of why life is so unjust. It just is — deal with it. But you also have none of the powerful comforts and joys that Christian belief can give you, either. Jacoby says atheism makes you “free of what is known as the theodicy problem” not needing to “square [terrible] things” in this life “with an unseen overlord in the next.”
But as we have seen in philosopher Charles Taylor’s writing, the “theodicy problem” is largely the product not of a strong belief in God and sin, but of a weaker form of belief. It is as we get larger in our own eyes, less dependent on God’s grace and revelation, and surer that we understand how the universe works and how history should go that the problem of evil becomes so intolerable. And it is only as God becomes more remote — a God who is all-loving only in the abstract, not in the sense of having suffered and died for us to rescue us from evil — that he seems unbearably callous in the face of pain. In short, theism without certainty of salvation or resurrection is far more disillusioning in the midst of pain than is atheism. When suffering, believing in God thinly or in the abstract is worse than not believing in God at all.
How to Prepare During Social Distancing
Here is a quick update on how our church family is doing and how you can be preparing for what may be on the horizon as we face a growing number of Covid-19 cases.
Community Group Virtual Rooms
We’re working hard to give you the resources you need to continue to be church family even in the midst of a global pandemic. Access to these Virtual Rooms will give you and your Community Groups the ability to meet, catch up on life, pray, encourage, and serve together.
Please email Raz if you have any issues and we’ll try to get technology back on your side!
All Mill City Activities Cancelled Through March 31, 2020
Due to the recommendations given by the President and the CDC, we will be canceling all meetings through the end of March.
We are asking our Community Groups to not meet during this time as well. Not meeting in person is a short term response to our current situation. The church is a family, and we are meant to be around one another. While this is true, we wish to avoid causing an increased risk to one another and those in our community.
Those who study these types of diseases advise that we can currently fight the spread by avoiding one another. This will keep the strain from increasing exponentially for hospital staff, and we believe that to do this, we ought to comply with these current safety recommendations. The coronavirus has been spreading exponentially and experts are advising that social distancing is one of the best ways to combat its continued advance. Christ calls us to love others as we love ourselves. One of the ways we can accomplish this currently is by simply staying home and avoiding contact with others.
To some this may seem like a response from fear. I can assure it is not. We are the recipients of eternal life and hope in Christ. There is nothing to fear, for ultimately nothing can harm us.
To others it may feel like overreaction. We hope you are right. Our goal is to love our neighbors well as good missionaries. As we move forward, this same call will continually be put in front of Christ's Church - to love our neighbors and be good missionaries. For now it means stay home, avoid contact with others, but in a few weeks or months this same call may mean that we step out into risky, potentially contagious situations to love and serve others and share the hope of the gospel with them.
We have always said that Church is not a meeting or a building, but a people. This is true. We are still the Church even in this season where we cannot gather together. So as we are unable to meet together in person, we encourage you to keep in contact with one another by the means you have available. Stay connected with one another - call, text, Facetime, and use GroupMe. Try to get your group together through a Zoom meeting or Google Hangout. We pray this season will not last long, but while we're in it, let's do what we can to stay connected.
During this time, I am reminded of something I heard often growing up in my home church. "We do not know what the future holds, but we do know who holds the future." Jesus is King. He is our King. Ultimately we serve him. May we do that lovingly, graciously, and courageously in the coming days.