L Greetings,
Every time I sit down to write this email, I am stopped by even more news and knowledge about the Coronavirus and its effect on our most vulnerable members of the community. It is very concerning. I am sure you understand, since you also hear and see the same reports that I do, and serve the public here within our building.
It is very evident that we should be concerned about reducing the impact of the Coronavirus in our communities. By reducing the impact of possible infections, we will assist our health care systems in caring for those who are most ill by keeping the numbers more stable and low. The CDC comes out daily with more ways to avoid the mass spread of the virus, and its hard to not be fearful. I prefer believing that we should be smart and proactive.
As joint users of our building, I wanted to share with you my current thoughts regarding the Coronavirus and reducing the impact here in our community. (I will not include here all of the possible practices I will use on Sundays when we have worship, though I do believe we will come to a point that we do not have worship on a Sunday.)
· It is clear that to stop transmission of the virus, social distancing is a must. I believe that we should limit all physical touching and also the touching of items between others. So, for the church community at Bay Shore, we will stop sharing all food, drinks, and the like at our gatherings. We also will stop passing the peace, and potentially serving communion.· Of course, if you are sick, or anyone you see is sick, he/she should go home immediately.· Please consider your plans for building usage here at Bay Shore. If you can do something remotely, you should do that. If you cancel anything, please email Kate ASAP so we are on top of it in the church office. When you leave for the day, you may want to take what you need to work from home so you don’t have to come back.· We have one custodian to clean our entire building, and he simply cannot be solely responsible during a “pandemic.” Please bring your own hand sanitizers and cleaning wipes, and wipe down surfaces that you use while you are here (I know some of you already do this, thank you!)· If anyone enters the building, and later you discover he/she has the virus, please notify me immediately. I will maintain confidentiality of names, of course, but I need to know.
If Whitefish Bay School District closes due to the virus, I will be closing the church building down completely. What does this mean? It means that all activities and building use will stop. We will ask our members with keys to NOT come to church for any reason. Signs on the doors will be posted. The only person we will have in the building will be our custodian (as long as he is well) and it will allow him time to clean and wipe down surfaces while we are closed. It will allow the virus to not spread.
I realize that this affects you and your business/organization/charity here at the church. But, for the safety of others, we will follow the School District and close down. Already, events and such are being cancelled. It is really only a matter of time before the schools close for a period of time, to also allow the custodians to clean and stop the spread of the virus. I have connected with a few of you about this already, and received support that this makes sense. I cannot tell you if and when this may happen, but if you see a notice from WFB schools, you now know it affects our building use, too.
If you have any questions about this, please connect with me directly. I respond quickly to email [email protected]
bayshorelutheran.org and my cell number is 414-902-0249. I appreciate you following our decision to close the building if necessary. These decisions did not come easily, but since our faith asks us to love our neighbor, I feel that by being proactive, we show love and care to our neighbor in our decisions. May God watch over our community and loved ones in the weeks ahead.
And as always, we are grateful to have all of you in our community family here at Bay Shore. Thank you for your support.
Blessings and peace,
Pastor Sarah
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