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Level 5 – Our Collective Response

Level 5 – Our Collective Response

Ireland is moving to Level 5 at midnight on Wednesday night (21st October). As a Seventh-day Adventist church community, what does this mean for us?

The Irish Mission Pastoral Team

Ireland is moving to Level 5 at midnight on Wednesday night (21st October). As a Seventh-day Adventist church community, what does this mean for us?

Churches & Pastors

While our church buildings and community centres cannot be physically open our churches can still continue to:

  • meet for online worship services, Sabbath School’s, Adventurer/Pathfinder Clubs etc
  • run an ACS soup kitchen/homeless outreach service following current guidelines

Pastors can still continue to:

  • conduct online prayer meetings
  • do online bible studies
  • run online administrative meetings (board, elders etc)
  • do online or phone visitation, crisis management, counselling etc
  • conduct funerals with up to 25 mourners
  • perform wedding ceremonies with up to 25 guests
  • meeting with 1 household outside so long as both are within their own 5km radius
  • work from home

Pastors can travel to their churches to carry out essential maintenance (e.g. fire alarm maintenance)

Pastors cannot:

  • visit with members in either of their homes
  • travel outside their own 5km radius (unless performing a wedding, conducting a funeral, carrying out essential maintenance at a church building, or in the performance of an essential service)

Members

Although we cannot meet in each other’s homes or meet up outside with more than one other family within our own 5km radius, we can continue to:

  • pray for our families, friends, neighbours, community contacts
  • study the Word of God and allow him to guide our lives
  • share family worship times together with the members of our own household
  • meet outside with 1 other household, so long as both are within their own 5km radius
  • reach out to and serve those within our own 5km radius (outdoors only)
  • can shop for an elderly neighbour
  • small groups can continue to meet online
  • witness, share literature, and share God’s love within our own 5km radius
  • keep in contact with older people and those that may be lonely through phone calls etc
  • phone other members, people who we haven’t seen in a long while at church etc
  • record goodwill messages online to our fellow church members

While we may be bound to our home and local neighbourhoods, there is so much we CAN STILL DO as God’s people, called to be the salt and light of the earth. The New Testament Christians were Christians who impacted their local neighbourhoods and workplaces; we can be the same as we think outside the box about how we can be God’s people in a stressed and worried world.