ALL ARE WELCOME AT
St. Andrew's Episcopal
The Episcopal Church in Mountain Home, Arkansas
We will hold our annual parish meeting on Sunday, January 24th at 12pm (noon). Due to the reality that we cannot at this time safely meet in person, and the spread of the pandemic continues to increase in Arkansas, our Annual Meeting will need to be held via Zoom.
The only major action needed during the meeting is to vote for next years vestry members. Thankfully, Canon Jason has been working on a tool for people to vote electronically. For the few members we have that do not have access to computers or email, the church will contact them directly to submit paper ballots. I will be providing more information regarding the Zoom annual meeting link in the weeks to come. In the meantime, you can begin preparing by ensuring that Zoom is downloaded on your smartphone or computer if you are able to do video calling. For those that cannot attend in person we will have all the reports out the week before so that you can email us questions should you have any. Merry Christmas! To celebrate the birth of Christ as much as safely possible during the pandemic, here is what we have planned! We now move into the season of Advent. Due to the dangerously high Covid-19 case count in Baxter County, and very little being done to curb the spread, we will be doing online only worship for the foreseeable future.
We will live-stream the 10:30am service. As always you will be able to watch if afterwards as well. Here is the service booklet for today that is easy to use and also includes prayers of Spiritual Communion that we will pray after the consecration of the Eucharist. Liturgy Book link To watch the livestream of our services, please go to the Facebook page following this link: Click here to go to the live stream video If that link doesn't seem to work, just go to the St. Andrew's facebook homepage and the live video should be apparent. We have continued to monitor the infection rate and case count in Baxter County every since we began in-person worship again last June. Now, four and half months later, it is no longer a safe risk to encourage people to leave their homes and gather at the church. At this time, until further notice, we are suspending in-person worship. We will livestream services that can be viewed on Facebook. We will send out worship booklets and readings as we have been doing previously. The church is also exploring ways we can use Zoom to increase our social and educational connections.
Please stay home as much as possible. If you must go out, please wear a mask. This is how we continue to do as Christ commands us, to love our neighbor as ourselves, by making decisions that keep others from being infected. Finally, though our services may be online only for now, please know that your clergy and staff continue to work to ensure the ministry of this church continues and the home fires continue to burn. For information on Arkansas' case count go here: Arkansas Department of Health Covd-19 Cases For information regarding the policies of the Diocese of Arkansas on infection rate threshold, please click here. Dear siblings in Christ,
Previously we sent out a letter to members of the congregation explaining where we are at in terms of a plan to return to in-person worship. It was a rather lengthy letter, but sought to offer some of the guidelines we are working with and an understanding of what needs to be in place to return. The first thing to say is that we are still in the midst of a public health crisis. Regardless of how long it has gone on for or how tired of it we may be, we are still fighting a virus with no cures. In 5 months we have had almost 120,000 people die in this country alone. Reopening church does not mean it is safe to return, but that hopefully our medical infrastructure can now handle the amount of cases that will occur as we return to normal activities. I cannot overstate that attending church is one of the highest risk activities you can partake in. It is a large gathering of people from all over, who have been to many other places, possibly not those following standard safety procedures, and you are sitting for an extended amount of time in one room with all of these people. Unlike grocery shopping, where you get in and get out, this is a period of time where you remain in the same place for extended periods. In this communication, I want to outline the specific guidelines that will be enforced when we reopen. These guidelines are taken from the State of Arkansas Department of Health and the Bishop of Arkansas's directives, and are done so based on the most recent available research per the CDC. We will begin in-person worship on the weekend of June 27th-28th. There will be three service times: 5pm Saturday evening - Rite II 8am Sunday morning - Rite I 10:30 Sunday morning - Rite II (this service will be live-streamed)
We will be reaching out this week to begin the signup for the 27th and 28th. We will also need a reader to volunteer for each service. I am also thankful for those that have volunteered to help clean between services. A rota will be sent out soon for them. It will also be helpful to have ushers to assist in directing movement of folks. Together, we will get through this in the safest possible manner. ~Fr. Kevin |
Service TimesDue to COVID-19 in-person worship is suspended until further notice. Contact Us
870-425-3560 Email St. Andrew’s 511 Coley Drive Mountain Home, AR 72653 OFFICE HOURS Tuesday–Thursday, 8:30 a.m.–12 p.m. |