Dear fellow Children of God,

By now we expect that many of you are aware of the most recent and alarming spike in COVID in Michigan, and in particular, Macomb County. Cases are on the rise, even within our membership, of which all are in our thoughts and prayers.

In consultation with our synod leaders, health experts, and our church council, it has been decided that we will once again halt our indoor, in-person worship services and ministries inside our church building until it is safe for us to resume. This decision is in effect immediately. Please know this decision is not made out of fear or a feeling that we weren’t being safe enough. It comes out of our Christian duty to love one another and do our best to keep each other safe and healthy as much as we can.

Across our synod, we have now had positive COVID cases in many of our congregations. And while we believe the precautions we have in place have been largely effective in preventing the spread of the disease during worship, the levels of infection in our communities have now passed the benchmarks set by health experts and medical professionals at the start of the pandemic. We follow the guidelines established by www.globalepidemics.org that recommend suspending in-person activities when case counts go above 25/100,000 (red). Macomb county is already very red. Again, I believe that as Christians we are called to care for our neighbors and the most vulnerable among us, including those who work to care for the sick, the medically fragile, and those whose health is already compromised. This is not an easy step to take, but it is the right one.

Everything I have personally read and researched suggests these next weeks and months to come will be very difficult and frustrating, disappointing and maybe even depressing. But we are not alone in this. As we will soon be celebrating in the season of Advent, which comes right after Thanksgiving, Jesus comes to walk with us in the midst of the darkness of life.

Please do all you can to be safe in the holidays to come. Remember, it will not always be this way. With God by our side, we will get through this together.

While we will not be having in-person worship for now effective THIS weekend, we do encourage you to join us as our Livestream Worship continues on Sunday mornings with music beginning at 9:00 a.m. and the worship portion following at 9:30 a.m. As always, the video link is available on our church website (www.koklc.org).

In Christian love,

Pastor Dave Parker

and the King of kings Church Council