" Sunday worship!"
"It's time to meet, brothers and sisters!"
"Thank the Lord! Finally, we can come to church."
"The first Sunday since the pandemic, thank you!"
"We witnessed to the first Sunday in 2020 and it happened to be Trinity Sunday. God blessed us with grace and glory!"
On June 7, many churches resumed on-site Sunday services. Many brothers and sisters recorded the memorable day through texts, pictures, or videos.
Sister F, a co-worker of a church in Hangzhou, said there was a church in a village in the suburbs of Yuhang District, Hangzhou. Things went smoothly. There were two different times for Sunday worship services, one in the morning and another in the afternoon. My heart was full of gratitude and rejoicing. The brothers and sisters rejoiced too, and some were even moved to tears.
Sister L of a church in Anhui shared it was His grace that our church has resumed onsite service, for many elderly brothers and sisters could not meet through the Internet during the COVID-19 pandemic. The resumption allowed them to return to God and receive pastoral care.
She said, "God has good intentions for everything. It’s important to resume church services, but more importantly to keep up spiritual practices every day. Each of us should establish a good relationship with God, fix our eyes on Him, and glorify His name. At present, the pandemic has not ended completely. Therefore, we paid special attention to the prevention regulations when the church reopened."
Sister M in a church said that in order to attend the Sunday service, Brother Zhang who ran a big company rushed back from Beijing last night and returned to Beijing to work again after today’s worship. We could see his reverence to God and the commitment to the church.
For the church that planned to reopen on June 14, it is necessary to make adequate preparations. It is also necessary to communicate with brothers and sisters who had concerns.
According to Brother Z, a co-worker in Henan, the church was still in preparing to reopen on June 14. However, some of the co-workers were worried and did not want to resume the meetings.
The main anxieties were: the epidemic was not over; the church could not adjust to many prevention requirements; the church was unwilling to register ID and telephone numbers.
The church where Sister G has attended was also scheduled to reopen on June 14. She said: "Hopefully everything goes smoothly and safely under God’s protection and the guidance of the Holy Spirit!"
According to Sister G's feedback, the church has started small group meetings, but younger brothers and sisters did not want to transfer from online to offline and found various excuses to avoid group meetings. Some older sisters did not participate in group meetings because of fear and were hindered by their families from doing so.
In view of the above situation, we could only call them at the beginning but now we can pay a visit at home.
- Translated by Elaina Wu
