Dear Cornerstone Family,

Our hearts are filled with gratitude to the Lord that even during this pandemic, much of our church has been able to gather outdoors to worship together, reconnect, and fellowship. The Lord has blessed us with a beautiful and spacious property that has given us the ability to have many ministry meetings and gatherings outdoors through the summer.

We fully appreciate that there are a number of our members and regular attenders who are still uncomfortable with gathering in a group. We don’t want anyone who is especially vulnerable to medical complications from the virus to feel pressured to violate their conscience concerning their personal safety decisions. We’re praying for you and we look forward to seeing you again!

The fact remains that messy weather and winter are approaching so we will need to move our worship services indoors.

Starting Sunday, October 4th, we will move Sunday worship back into the building. We will have two service times: 9:00-10:00 am and 10:30-11:30 am. We will need to try to balance the attendance between the services. We will let you know how we will try to do this.

As we have done through the last six months, we will heed the guidance of state and local health officials in order to minimize the potential spread of the virus. Governor DeWine has issued a state-wide mask order that applies to any indoor location that is not a residence. So the elders have agreed that for all ministry activity within our church building, everyone must wear a mask or face covering for the duration of the activity, including worship services, unless there is a short time allotted for a snack at a meeting (e.g. Women’s Ministry meeting, etc.). The mask order does not apply to those with medical conditions or disabilities where a mask should not be worn or to those who officiate religious services. Children aged six and up will need to wear masks.

We will arrange the chairs in the Worship Center to accommodate proper distancing guidelines. We will also deep clean our building prior to the start of services and each week going forward and we will disinfect high touch areas between services.

We are still working through what Children’s Ministry is going to look like. Bobette Hatteberg is gathering information from parents and Children’s Ministry workers and she will use that information to make plans for Children’s Ministry. We will let you know what to expect in the coming days.

Here are some practices we will follow:

• Please do not feel pressure to return to our worship gatherings until you are ready. You know your situation best and we fully respect your decisions about gathering together. We will continue to livestream our worship services like we have always done.

• If you or anyone in your household have any symptoms of illness or have been sick in the last 14 days, please stay home. If you have been exposed to anyone with COVID-19 in the last 14 days, please do not attend.

• If you are 65 years old or older, if you are immunocompromised, or if you are at risk in some way for complications from the virus, we fully understand if you would prefer to stay home and watch the service online. Please do not feel pressure to return until you are ready.

• If you start to feel unwell during a gathering, don’t worry about causing an interruption, we encourage you to exit and take care of yourself out of concern for you as well as others around you.

• Always cough or sneeze into your elbow or a tissue.

• Because of the way the virus spreads, please be sure to maintain social distancing guidelines. Remain at least six feet apart from those outside your household.

• We know this is difficult, but please avoid personal contact: handshakes, hugging, touching, etc.

• Please use hand sanitizer when you enter the building and when you leave the building.

• If you do come down with COVID-19, please be sure to let the church office know so we can do proper contact tracing.

We would all prefer that this virus would simply disappear and never return. We would all prefer not to have to wear masks. But we must realize that we are all interdependent with people in all spheres of our lives. We want to work hard to avoid a virus outbreak at the church that would then affect extended families and workplaces and businesses and schools and healthcare workers.

Let’s all be praying for great unity and joyful flexibility within our church family as we move forward in ministry this year. Let’s continue to pray for God’s providential protection over our church family. And let’s pray for great spiritual growth and ministry fruitfulness for the glory of our great Savior, Jesus Christ.

Yours in Christ,

Ed Fedor

Associate Pastor