First off, I hope you’ve been praying for the people of Ukraine.  As one of our PCA missionaries serving in Kharkiv wrote this week, “Nowhere in my seminary education is there a class called, “How to evacuate your church in case of invasion.”  His church was able to evacuate, but is now scattered in twelve different cities and five different countries.  Many are wondering if they will ever see their home or their church family again.  Please keep them in your prayers.

This Sunday we will be looking at Deuteronomy 10 and 11, which has a tremendous emphasis on God's love for us and our love for God.  Timely counsel for hard days.  One of the great benefits of “Knowing God” (our theme for Deuteronomy) is that we have the immense privilege of celebrating the Lord's Supper together.  And I’m pleased to announce that this Sunday we’ll be returning to our former practice of coming forward for communion.

However, knowing we have a number of immuno-compromised people and others who are more cautious, we’ve made some modifications in an attempt to accommodate everyone.  Also knowing that we haven’t done this for two years (really, two years!), it’s going to take a little while to get used to it again.

First of all, we’re going to have two tables (front and back areas) with the communion elements on them.  While these tables will have the traditional bread and juice on them, we’ll also have the prepackaged communion cups available.

Second, we’re going to use two ushers to send people by rows, so we don’t have the lines for the communion table get backed up.  For those who aren’t yet comfortable coming forward, the ushers will have some of the prepackaged communion cups to hand out.

Third, as we still have several families more comfortable wearing masks, at least two of the men praying with families will wear masks in order to better serve them.  We want those wearing masks to feel it’s okay to come forward.  Additionally, we won’t be huddling up, or putting our arms around people as we used to, but we’ll ask people to just stand in front of the one praying (at approx. arm’s length), again, so we can safely accommodate everyone.

It's going to take awhile to get used to our style of communion again, so be patient with everyone as sometimes things don’t quite go according to plan.  Yet, even with these simple modifications, I’m very glad to be able to again pray with you during communion.  I hope you are too.  See you at the Lord’s Table, Dr. Dave