Covid-19 March 17, 2020

Message From Pastor Scott

First Baptist Rockport is cancelling all weekly activities, including all Sunday activities, until March 30. At that time, we will reevaluate the status of things and make decisions accordingly.

We made this decision because:

1. It is the right thing to do.
2. First Baptist Rockport involves many people in a variety of leadership and ministry settings, and we do not operate well on the fly. We need to let people know how to plan well for the next few weeks.
3. We want to support/encourage our local leaders who are making the same kinds of decisions for their areas of responsibility.

First Baptist Rockport is going to be part of a larger effort to encourage people to practice social distance and thus “flatten the curve,” or slow the spread of the virus enough to accomplish two things:

• First, we want to protect the most vulnerable people in our communities from the spread of the virus as much as possible; and
• Second, we want to protect medical personnel and facilities from being overrun by critical care patients infected with the virus as much as possible.

It does not appear that we can stop the spread of the virus, so we want to do our part in the hopes of slowing it down through our social distancing for two weeks.

During that two-week period, we will live stream a worship service every Sunday morning and Wednesday night.

LIFE Groups

Since our church isn’t meeting for the next two weeks, we know you will want to stay connected to your Bible study group.  You have here some simple options that will be quite effective.

Remote Teaching – We are working to help classes that want to teach, do so remotely through video conferencing software.

Children’s groups may not be able to meet this way, but LifeWay is providing free family Bible study materials that parents can use with their children.

E-Mail and Phone Calls – Stay connected to class members and how they are doing.  You can still get together in small groups and pray, meet, eat and share concerns.  If you need a class phone list, contact the church office between 8am-noon at 361-729-6382

In-home groups – Just because your group can’t get together on a Sunday doesn’t mean that you cannot break your group into smaller sub-groups!

LifeWay is working quickly to respond and help churches deal with the effects of COVID-19. Here are some things they are doing to help:

• LifeWay Kids has created free at-home supplements for families impacted by COVID-19.  Our church will be putting out information concerning this later this week.  We will also send this to families.
• We provide free podcasts each week for Bible Studies for Life, Explore the Bible, and Gospel Project. They relate to the study taking place that week, and the links can be shared with teachers and group members. Click one of the following links depending upon which curriculum line your group uses:  Gospel Project, Bible Studies for Life (scroll to the bottom of the page), Explore the Bible (click on an individual session and scroll down for the podcast).