A little history
Dear First Pres SLO Family,
Grace and peace to you in the name of Jesus the Messiah, the one who saved and saves us, sometimes even from ourselves.
A little history is in order. This is a longer-than-usual Midweek.
Today marks three years since I had to make a big decision. It was a Sunday, and we’d been tracking reports about a dangerous pandemic that was moving quickly around the country and around the world. It was just my tenth Sunday at the church—I was a part-time sabbatical replacement, and still getting to know you. We’d heard about the first COVID-19 cases in SLO, and needed to act to keep everyone as safe as possible. When the first service was finished, we decided not to stay open for the second.
Here was the first note that went out on March 15, 2020:
Update Regarding Today's Services
Dear First Pres SLO Family,
Due to the positive test for the Coronavirus in SLO yesterday, we are limiting our services today. The first service will go on as planned. It will be recorded and distributed through a YouTube link on our webpage and through email. The Second Service today is cancelled, and so is our Adult Education class. We will have a plan in place for next week, and distribute it via email and the webpage. Thank you for your patience and prayers as we deal with a situation that is changing very quickly!
Blessings to you, and please follow the guidelines for staying healthy!
John D'Elia
It wasn’t long before we understood that the decision to close would carry on longer than we expected or hoped, and so two days later I sent this note, which turned out to be my very first Midweek Reflection:
Dear First Pres SLO Family,
Grace and peace to all of you as we navigate some truly unexpected times. So much of what we’re doing is completely unprecedented, but I’m happy to say that the church staff and leadership are working hard to serve this wonderful church.
I’ve been working with our staff and talking through the things we need to do to serve our congregation and offer a weekly time of worship.
Some updates about our work at the church. Please read them all!
I’m going through the church directory and calling older members who live alone, with help from Jenifer and Kenneth. I’ve been working my way through the list today (I think I’m up to the “Ds”), and will continue until they all receive a personal call. If we contact someone who has a particular need, we’ll do our best to meet it.
Our worship leading team met today and planned this Sunday’s service. We’re going to record it on Friday, and have it ready for upload to YouTube on Sunday morning. It will have liturgy and music and a message, along with time and instructions for making an offering. The link to the service will be available three ways: by email, on the church website, and on our Facebook page. Ideally, we will try to send the order of service out by Friday—bear with us as we try to accomplish everything we want to do with quality and excellence.
We don’t know how long these restrictions will last, but we should all be prepared to share in recorded worship services through and including Easter.
Until further notice, all music rehearsals and Sunday morning singing are suspended. The same is true for all ministries, meetings and gatherings.
We prayed through the list of requests from Sunday’s service, and we will communicate a way for you to submit prayer requests even if we aren’t going to meet in person for a while.
Please remember to continue to support the church financially! You can mail checks to the church office, or use the online giving function on our website.
Keep us in your prayers, and please be patient as we learn to do some new things quickly. We’re committed to doing our very best to serve the people of this church and to provide a meaningful worship experience online.
Blessings to you all,
Pastor John and the First Pres SLO Team
I’m sharing this today because I think it’s important to mark important dates in our history, but I also want it to be an encouragement to you all. We’ve come through so much in the last three years, and we’ve also accomplished some great things together.
We posted a recorded service on the very first day we were closed. Within a week we were prerecording our Sunday worship services and posting them on YouTube and our website. Later we moved to Zoom services, allowing us to connect in real time—that was such a joyful moment. When we re-opened, we kept those other technologies, which allowed people to make choices for themselves about returning to public worship when they were ready. Our services are still in-person, livestreamed, and shared via recording.
Along the way we made use of Zoom not only for church business and leadership meetings, but also to stay connected. Bible studies, coffee gatherings, Bingo games, and even Christmas caroling—we stayed connected, even if the pandemic kept us apart.
I said then and I’ll say again: Never forget how creative and flexible and adaptable we were during the pandemic, because those skills and habits are going to help us grow now that it’s (mostly) over.
It’s been a very challenging three years, and through it all we learned new ways of being the church, with and for each other. As we move into this next season as First Pres SLO, my prayer is that we’ll approach it with the same creativity, flexibility, and willingness to adapt that we learned in a time of crisis.
Through it all, the call on us is to love each other and our community, and to be an honest reflection of Jesus to the world. May that be so, today and always.
Blessings to you all,
Pastor John