Update on P1AG Churches Response To Covid19/ Coronavirus as of 3/16/20:

Yesterday we enjoyed such a wonderful time in worship together.  I’m so thankful we were able to meet together and to reenforce the guiding principles of our faith founded in love rather than being motivated and swayed by fears.  Remember perfect love drives our fear.  Let’s exude this in this hour.  Let us continue to pray for those affected by this illness and seize this opportunity to prepare our hearts for all the ways that God may guide us to serve His purposes in our communities.

Since yesterday’s service we have learned that the numbers of confirmed cases in Arkansas continues to rise as do those throughout our nation and the CDC suggested yesterday nationwide that Americans should avoid all events with 50 or more people in attendance.  Our schools, we also learned, are shutting down at least through March 30, possibly longer.  Then today the remarks of our president raised the bar even further calling all citizens of the USA to avoid gatherings of 10 or more in order to slow the spread of this virus in our communities and in our world.

In order to comply with the authorities God has placed over us and to uphold safeguards to help prevent the spread of this pandemic we have decided as a Church Leadership not to gather on Wednesday night nor on this coming Sunday.  Instead we will be coming together virtually through social media.  Just because we are not gathered in a building doesn’t mean that we are not still the Church.  

We will be live streaming worship and a sermon/message this Sunday on our Facebook page.  We worked today to upgrade the technological aspects of our streaming service and feel confident that the video image and audio content especially will be vastly improved this week.  We want to invite all of our church family to tune in on our Facebook Page this Sunday at 10 AM, better yet create a viewing party and invite your friends to watch too - https://www.facebook.com/P1AGChurch/

Also we will be working on some things that you can do as a family to grow spiritually throughout the week using our Right Now Media Video Library.  We will make some suggestions on Social Media, but you can also just peruse the myriad options and take advantage of all kinds of great materials.  If you have not already signed up for this you can send the following text message “RightNow PARA1ST" to 41411.  This is a free gift to members and friends of P1AG Church.

Things continue to change rapidly concerning this pandemic issue.  We monitor it and make decisions about when we will meet again as each day passes.  We will do all that we can to keep you informed.

Finally I want to really encourage all of our regular tithe and offering contributors to continue in your faithfulness each week so that we can meet all of our weekly/monthly obligations and so that we are unhindered financially in our outreach and mission.  You can give online through our webpage  - https://www.p1ag.org/give .  If you would like you can even set up recurring giving through PayPal so that you never miss an opportunity to support the church.  Also you can always just send in checks to our office at P1AG Church, 1605 Fairview Rd., Paragould, AR 72450.

P1AG CHURCH COVID 19 RESPONSE PLAN:

As all of us I’m sure are now aware our world is dealing with a pandemic crisis known as Covid 19 or Corona virus. This has been labeled a national emergency and as schools close around the country, sports/ other large venue events at all levels are being halted and people are growing more concerned I want to encourage you that God is still on the throne. He is still King and we can take confidence in knowing that He is neither surprised by this nor are His plans in any way impeded by this crisis.

This is not a time for us as a church to retreat and to hide, it is a time for us to reach out even more with the hope of Christ. We will need to be open as to how God wants us to do this in the coming days. There is a lot of fear in our communities over this – but perfect love casts out fear. We need to allow our actions and perspectives to be motivated by love and not dictated by fear. Our hope of course is that this will pass with little more harm, but should it continue to cause sickness and death in our communities we will continue to hold out hope of a savior who loves all of us and who cares deeply for our pain and sorrow.

At this point you may be wondering what we are going to do about meeting as a church. In our community as of now there are no known cases of this virus and our heart is not to add to any of the fear over this, but we also want to be wise and take preventative precautions. We will continue to meet as a Church for all of our weekly scheduled services for now:

Sunday Worship Gathering at 10 AM

and

Wednesday Night Growth Nights at 6:30 PM

The leadership of the church will continue to monitor the situation and determine in the future if it is necessary for us to cancel any meetings together and we will notify you all as soon as is possible. We do want to encourage you if you have been sick at all to please let us know so that we can pray for you, but also ask that you would please stay home to rest and get well before returning to be with your church family here. We are working on providing live streaming through our Facebook Group of our Sunday Morning Service so that you can tune in and watch if you are absent. We will continue weekly to post each week’s message in our podcast on our website.

Facebook Group - https://www.facebook.com/P1AGChurch

Podcast - https://p1ag.org/listen_to_messages

We also want to encourage you to take advantage of our online giving on our website, where you can give even if you are not in attendance. You can even setup recurring giving through PayPal so that you don’t have to miss an opportunity to continue to support the ongoing ministries of our church.

Online Giving - https://p1ag.org/give

Preventative Measures Starting This Sunday:

- Offerings can be placed in receptacles at the welcome center or on the wall just outside the middle back doors of the sanctuary. You can also give online via our church website. We will discontinue passing the offering bags during the service at least for the time being.

- We will suspend our greeting time during the service.

- If you would like a second cup of coffee please throw the old cup away and get a fresh cup. All food refreshments will be prepackaged.

-We encourage you right now to stay home when you are sick.

-Everyone practice frequent hand-washing with soap and water for at least 20 seconds.

-Practice use of hand sanitizer. Utilize sanitizer provided at various locations around campus.

-Cover coughs and sneezes with tissue or the inside of the elbow.

-Refrain from hugs, hand shaking and hi-fives. Instead, greet with a wave.

-Limit close contact with others, as much as possible.

-Be aware that we are following existing sanitizing procedures in cleaning the facilities.