Message from Pastor Erin First, a word about the past several days. Over the past week, if you're like me, you've seen images of protests, experience a city-wide curfew, and continued to live through a pandemic. You also might have donated to causes and communicated the values of social justice in new ways. While it's been a tough week to be a person in the world and a Chicagoan, we continue to work together to bring about God's Kingdom and follow our call as disciples of Christ. This week the mutual aid society using our space for cleaning and distributing items gathered more supplies for those having trouble accessing necessities because grocery stores were shut down for fear of theft. Our building and our community continues to be an example of Jesus-like generosity in our city. This is the legacy we inherited from the people who helped build this church and it is the legacy you all will leave as you sustain the church community. Thanks be to God for your efforts!
Next, what you are excited about, the plan to slowly re-open our building. At Ravenswood Fellowship United Methodist Church, we are guided by three simple rules for following God and living a Christian life. These rules, created by the Methodist founder John Wesley state: Do no harm. Do good. Stay in love with God. Because we are in love with God, we seek to do no hard and do ever more good for our neighbors, strangers, and ourselves during the Coronavirus pandemic. As a Christian community that celebrates diversity and values social justice, we did no harm and did all the good we possibly could by suspending our in-person worship service and closing our building. In our efforts to continually do no harm and do good, members of our leadership teams and lay volunteers gathered on Zoom calls for two Saturday mornings in May to help us read through resources, consider ongoing cleaning needs, and begin plans for preparing our space to safely re-open. The leadership team then completed a walk-through of the building identifying any changes or updates to be made to the space in order for safe gatherings to occur. These leaders prayerfully considered what needs to be cleaned, how often, what items need to be removed and how to maintain ongoing cleaning in our space. We are preparing for a large cleaning and clearing a way of things (like pew cushions) and then making plans for ongoing and scheduled cleaning of our building. In addition to considering cleaning needs, RFUMC leadership is also planning to keep streaming our services. We've created a Technology Team to help us do this. Epidemiologists continue to recommend that people limit their activity in large gatherings in religious communities like ours for the coming months, if necessary. For those who choose to stay home to protect themselves and/or because they are essential workers and do not wish to risk introducing viruses to our community, we will continue to offer worship online, even after we re-open our building. Our Technology Team of tech-enthusiasts is wiring up our beautiful, historic sanctuary for wifi compatibility and researching gadgets we'll need to keep streaming services. In this midst of all this change, updates, and discernment for the future, we continue to prepare our hearts and minds to welcome Pastor Mori as our full-time pastor in July. Pastor Mori will move into her new home in the parsonage in mid-June and begin work and worship with Ravenswood Fellowship UMC starting July 1. She is prepared to help us continue these phases of re-opening, best practices for cleaning requirements, and continuing online worship.
All of these things, cleaning our space, providing safe protection equipment, updating our wifi, preparing for live streaming worship services in the sanctuary, and more, require dedicated time of community members and financial resources to make them happen. As we continue to prepare for re-opening, please consider how and how much you can help by volunteering for teams and sharing your finances with our community. The gifts of your time and your finances help us continue to worship our God who provides so generously for us. Thank you for sharing so generously with the community of God! We can't wait to see your beautiful face in-person (!) soon. To volunteer for an "After Covid-19 Team," please contact the Church Office by email at ravfelumc.org, call (773) 561-2610, or sign up online here.
To support our faith community's work financially please mail checks to 4511 N Hermitage Ave Chicago, IL 60640 or give online at https://www.paypal.me/rfumc
At these links you can read the full phases for re-opening RFUMC and a summary for re-opening. | 
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