My church family,

This has been a whirlwind of the past few weeks. I’m grateful to each of you for the flexibility and the resilience you’ve all shown as we’ve navigated these waters of Covid-19 together. Thank you for the love and care you’ve shown one another.

I do want to update you on the outbreak we experienced. We got up to 15 positive cases, including the original case. While we can’t say with 100% certainty that all came out of our original case, we have good reason to suspect that almost all of them did. Because of the explosively contagious nature of this variant, we are going to make a few adjustments, so that we can return to in-person worship safely.

Therefore, we will be returning to in-person worship this upcoming Sunday, June 12th. This is very exciting news, and we are looking forward to being together again. However, in order for us to do this safely and wisely, we will be requiring masks for everyone over 5, regardless of vaccination status for the next few weeks. Our hope is that we can safely return to masks optional starting the first Sunday of July, the 3rd. We will keep you updated if this has to change.

We are hopeful that by returning to masks for everyone, we can keep our doors open by avoiding any more outbreaks as we go through this new variant spike in our county and community. By doing so, we can also protect those in our congregation who are immunocompromised and staying true to our Methodist commitment of “Do No Harm.” (By complete happenstance, the Methodist “Rules” will be the focus of our next sermon series as well!) Our live-streaming of the service will continue to be available permanently. We know that having a live-stream is essential for many folks to worship with us, including many of you who do not live in the Spokane area!

Thank you, truly, for the ways you continue to adapt and strive to be faithful to the work of God in our community. I am grateful to be your pastor. It has been a real joy, even in the trying days we’ve walked in together.

Looking forward to seeing you all again soon.

—Pastor Megan Madsen