Good Day BLC Family,
With a heavy heart, and much prayer, the Elders of Brady Lane Church have made the difficult but necessary decision to suspend all services and activities, groups, ministry teams, rentals, and any other functions from today, Wednesday March 18 until May 17, 2020. We will be closed for 8 weeks. The office and building will be completely closed during that time period. The Elder team will continue to meet and monitor the situation and if conditions change for the better we will reconsider the length of suspension, or if things continue to get worse, we will lengthen it.
We will be doing pastoral care through our life groups, ministry team relationships and through elders and staff efforts but these checks will all be done on the phone, by calls, texts, or emails. We will not be conducting any in person pastoral calls unless we are making drop-offs of supplies or groceries for folks in need.
We are not making this decision because we are afraid. In Christ we are afraid of nothing. We are however trying to consider the well-being of nearly half of our congregation, who fit into one of the various categories of folks who are at risk.
Why didn’t we close last week? Why now? Due to more information being provided by agencies and experts as to the ramifications of continuing to stay open, pleas from the CDC, Indiana’s Governor, and from the President of the United States, we felt it was time this week to make the decision to shut down.
During this time, we will continue to have worship services available online every Sunday morning, beginning at 8:30. You can easily find these sermons one of three ways – first you can go to our website at www.bradylanechurch.org and click on the media tab and then the messages tab. The most recent message will be the first one to appear. You can also go straight to YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVklOJFEoNYk5u–6nRrzaQ and the most recent video will be to the far right of the line of images. The third way will be to follow our links to YouTube by watching from our social media platform on FACEBOOK. You will also be able to access a virtual bulletin in a couple of different ways. One way will be through YouVersion Bible App on your smart phone or tablet. Stacey will be setting up a virtual bulletin on that app that you can save to your notes of your personal online Bible. We will also make that bulletin available on the website and also on social media.
We will have a few songs recorded by Lee Anna Atwell and then Jeff will deliver a message. We will be pre-recording these during the week and launching them at 8:30am on Sunday morning, so whenever you get up on Sunday and want to have worship, it will be ready for you to view. You can take communion as a family on your own and you can continue to give offerings either by giving online through our website, or by mailing your offerings into the church through the USPS.
Stacey will continue to put together lesson material and activities that our families can do together at home for the kids – those documents will be sent to our families via email and will also be available online at our website.
Jeff will also do his best to record a couple of messages a week either in written form or video that will assist our adults in continuing to do discipleship while we are unable to gather.
The only ministry team that will continue to serve together during this time will be our food pantry. While it will remain open – we will greatly alter our handout procedures. We will be going to a drive through set up and will take the food out to the people in their cars rather than have them come into the building. We are currently looking for 5-10 18-40-year-old members of BLC to come in and assist in the hand out, as most of our food pantry workers again are in that prescribed danger zone for this pandemic. Also, if any of you are in need due to these special circumstances, please let the church know and we will get food to you!
Good Shepherd Learning Center will also remain closed as long as the Lafayette School Corporation remains closed.
During this time, the BLC staff will still be operating out of our facility and at times from home. Please contact the church office, Jeff or Stacey, or any of our elders or Deacon Team Leader Stu Jones during this season and we will assist you in any way we can.
We hope everyone understands the decisions we have made, we feel it is in the best interest of our congregation, whom we have been called to pastor, protect, and pray for. Please be in prayer for each other, check on one another, take care of one another while we weather this stormy season. No matter what happens…remember – our GOD is in control! When this is done, we will have the greatest worship celebration together that BLC has ever seen!
IN CHRIST,
BLC Elders
Don Roberts, Mark Sorensen, Mike Roller, Bill Gaines, Mike Odom, Nathan Hazelgrove, Richard Culbertson, and Jim Hudson
And BLC Staff
Jeff Keller, Stacey Smith, Tricia Roller, Lee Anna Atwell, and Lesley McKowen
ruary 3, 2019! Can’t wait for Stacey and his family to join us.
ut of a word that once meant something special…Hesed – in the Hebrew – Agape in the Greek. Love without condition. God’s love. At Brady Lane Church we do our best to display love, through the work of the Holy Spirit in us. The fruit from our relationship with the Holy Spirit of God, and with Jesus Christ our intercessor, and the Father – brings that unity of brothers and sisters from every tribe, tongue and nation. We have folks who are Hispanic, we have African Americans, we have folks who are from Korean and Japanese descent. We have had folks who have joined us for seasons who have either lived in or are from countries like Taiwan, Ethiopia, Dominican Republic, Nigeria, Haiti, and soon Indonesia. We support missions in our community, our state, our country and the world. We serve anywhere between 150-175 families twice a month with our food pantry. We minister to 30 neighborhood families with our Good Shepherd Learning Center preschool. WE provide Grief Recovery Classes, Financial help classes, and Bible classes. We have fellowship events within our congregation regularly but we also have big events that we invite our whole community to be a part of. We don’t do any of it because we are special…we do it because of God’s love growing up in us through the work of the Holy Spirit! And we want to share that LOVE with YOU!
We are happy to announce that Stacey Smith has been offered and has accepted our Next Generation Director position at Brady Lane Church! This is an exciting day, and the beginning of a new chapter in the life of our church! Starting February 3, 2019, He and his family will officially be part of the Brady Lane Church family.
As we approach the weekend before Christmas, I want to take a moment to say thank you to some people who have made 2018 amazing!