Yesterday, Outreach magazine featured an article by Jeff Bogue, senior pastor at Grace Church, Akron, Ohio, and the executive director of CE National. In it, he shares how the church, the largest in the Charis Fellowship, has been responding to the Covid-19 crisis. A portion of the article appears below. Click here to read the complete article.
COVID-19 PERSPECTIVE: Jeff Bogue
Grace Church of Greater Akron, Ohio
As we’ve been wrestling through the coronavirus epidemic and its relational and economic upheaval, we have leaned into these big ideas:
We have paused all in-person programming and are pursuing relationships. We found, as a church staff, that this crisis has actually created a great opportunity for us to push deeply into personal relationships. It’s not too often you take the time and effort to contact your church family simply to check on them and ask if you can pray for, help or serve them in any way. Especially as a larger church, when we send out communications to every individual, we are often asking them for something. We may be raising money or simply asking them to be involved in some way, but rarely are we simply checking on them for purely pastoral reasons.
At Grace Church of Greater Akron, we have a mailing list of over 20,000 people that would have connected with Grace in some way. One of our practices during this difficult time, is taking that list and calling through it individual by individual. We are simply asking if we can pray for them, help them or serve them in any way. The response from our folks has been overwhelming, because they are scared, hurting and facing a high degree of uncertainty. It’s been a phenomenal time to simply pastor and shepherd them through these uncharted waters.
Click here to read the complete article.