Game Plan for ACG – COVID19

Introduction

Dear ACG family, as you may have already heard last Sunday (March 15), the Session (Pastor-Elders) of GracePoint announced that our services will go online starting from March 22. The first stage of this transition is that Community Groups will be gathering in small decentralised clusters and worship together with the assistance of the online streaming. And the second stage, in the event of a total lockdown, is that families can worship in isolation with the aid of the livestream. This was a very difficult decision to arrive at – so please pray for the Elders of our church, that they, under God, will continue to lead us well.

Now, this obviously impacts us as a ministry. Firstly, because it means that we shouldn’t be meeting together on Fridays as we normally do – fitting 60+ people into our hall where we’re sitting in close proximity is against the social distancing recommendation. Secondly, because we don’t have a normal Community Group to meet together with on Sunday.

Therefore, let me inform you of how this will impact you.

Friday Night Gatherings

Beginning from this Friday, March 20, ACG will go online as well. In effect, what we’ll do is that we will get together online (via Zoom) at 7:45pm. We will begin with a time of small group discussion with your micro groups (in a separate virtual break down room). After that, we’ll all come back together and I will give an exposition of Scripture. We will then have a time of open Question and Answers where you can ask any question you like from the exposition or from the text. And then lastly, you’ll break off again into your micro groups (in virtual break out room) to discuss some application, pray, and encourage one another.

And you can join us in two ways.

1. Depending on your micro group leader, you can still meet up in your micro groups in person and join our online session. The benefits of this is that you still get contact with your micro group, have discussion in that way, and enjoy fellowship in person. It is important to note that this depends on your micro group leader, because there may be a variety of reason for why this may not possible. For example, your micro group leader may not have a space to host a group together or your micro group leader may feel physically ill and wants to quarantine himself/herself. If those two example arise (or others similar to it), then you’ll have to join purely online. However, if your micro group leader is able to host a gathering in-person, then you’d be very welcome to be a part of that. Your micro group leader will inform you of what the plan is for your group.
2. Join us online. This is the most straight forward option. And to prepare, you can go ahead and download the Zoom App, and be prepared to receive a unique code which will give you access to our chat room on Friday.

The plan is to do this at least for the next 3 weeks. Our Elders and ACG leaders are constantly monitoring the situation and so we’ll give you an update if anything changes.

Sunday Worship

The next question you may have is: ‘what about Sunday worship?’

That’s a really good question. For starters, if you are reading this and you recently joined the workers group, then things will be easy for you: join your CG this Sunday for gathered worship with the aid of the livestream.

For those who are not part of that, then you have 4 options.

1. If your parents are part of GracePoint and they plan on worshipping at home with the livestream, you can join them in that. This would be a great opportunity for you to be discipled by your parents (and vice versa!), and join them in worship.
2. If your parents are part of a CG and they’re planning on worshipping in the home of another CG member, I’d encourage you to join them in that as well. This would be a great chance to get to know the other members of their CG, maybe get to know their children better, and perhaps even serve by looking after the younger kids, facilitating worship by playing an instrument, etc. The opportunities to serve are limitless!
3. If none of the above apply to you, we will be hosting a few ‘worship hubs’ for ACG members. If you would like to join one, please drop me a line on FB or email by Thursday (March 19), and we can arrange for you to join one of these hubs.
4. If you have issues with travel or your parents prefer that you do not come in contact with people during this period, you can just join in the worship purely online as well. This will be streamed on Zoom and on FaceBook live.

I know this is a challenging time and there are some uncertainties. But we praise God that none of these things are a surprise to Him. And regardless of what happens, He remains in control. Pray for your leaders as they continue to assess the situation in order to lead us well, and encourage them because they’re in unchartered territory.

If you have further questions, you’re welcome to either direct them to your leader or to me, and we’ll do our very best to answer them.

Thanks!