To Members and Friends
Of First Presbyterian Church Champaign
Friday 13 March
 
Dear Friends,
 
In my frenzy to get “Corona News” out to you earlier, I forgot to share my weekend movie suggestions. Since travel these days is not wise, take some road trips with me via film. “Planes, Trains, and Automobiles” is one of Roger Ebert’s favorite films. It’s funny. It’s predictable. It’s sweaty. There’s slapstick. Steve Martin and John Candy deserve each other. Enjoy.
 
It’s a double feature. Try Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris.” 
 
See Mr. Ebert’s reviews below.
 
Also, my friend David LaMotte is streaming a live concert tonight from Black Mountain, North Carolina. Follow the links below.
 
BIG peace to you all.
 
Matt Matthews
First Presbyterian Church Champaign
A (cool) congregation of the PC(USA)
Church: 217.356.7238; Cell: 864.386.9138
WWW.MattMatthewsCreative.Com
 
Friday night at the movies:
Ebert’s take on the movie “Planes, Trains, and Automobiles”
https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-planes-trains-and-automobiles-1987
 
 
Friday night at the movies:
Ebert’s take on the movie “Midnight In Paris”
https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/midnight-in-paris-2011
 
 
My friend David LaMotte is offering a live-stream concert on his public Facebook page. Click this link: David LaMotte Community. 
 
Brian Hilligoss is opening for David, then David will start around 8:30, joined by his little son Mason for a couple of songs.

Friday 13 March 2020

Members and Friends of
First Presbyterian Church
Champaign, Illinois

Dear Friends,

During what the World Health Organization now calls a pandemic, your church is attempting to practice what are called “social distancing techniques” to slow the spread of the Coronavirus.

Your Session met last night (Thursday 12 March), prayed, and discussed at length keeping our flock and wider community safe in the face of the Coronavirus. This is one of the motions we approved:

First Presbyterian Church will worship only via live-stream for the next two Sundays (March 15 and March 22). The campus will be closed on those Sunday mornings. Our congregation is urged to tune-in electronically at home.

Dr. Peter Yau has agreed to coordinate First Presbyterian Church’s response to Coronavirus. He’s asking all of the scientific questions, monitoring the CDC and local Health Department, and guiding us in terms of keeping our flock and community safe. My hunch is, if you have questions, Peter has already been thinking them through.

Our friend Peter is Director of Proteomics and Affiliate Professor of Cell and Developmental Biology at the University of Illinois. He is well-connected to the scientific and medical community here in Urbana-Champaign. Not only this, he deeply loves our congregation.

Another motion your Session approved last night is that we have cancelled all church functions for two weeks—including Bible studies, women’s circles, committee meetings. Other groups that meet on our campus, such as Alcoholics Anonymous, are allowed to meet if they choose. The Kevin Chapman funeral will take place as scheduled on Monday at 2:00 p.m. in our sanctuary; let’s continue to hold that family in our prayers. The church office will remain open during regular office hours.

Your Nurture Committee will be exploring ways to visit our members who might need help learning to use their computers to join our service of worship on live-stream. Additionally, if you need anything, call the church office (217.356.7238) and our Congregation Care Deacons, staff, and Nurture Committee will explore ways of helping you. Groceries? Medicine? Please be in touch.

In a Zoom on-line meeting yesterday with area ministers, Julie Pryde, Public Health Administrator for Champaign-Urbana Public Health District, issued recommendations for area churches. These are not mandates at this moment. These recommendations guide the Session’s actions:

Ms. Pryde stressed that social distancing is the best tool we have to slow the spread of the virus.

As medical historian and epidemic expert Howard Markel recently put it, “Coronavirus is a socially transmitted disease, and we all have a social contract to stop it. What binds us is a microbe – but it also has the power to separate us. We’re a very small community, whether we acknowledge it or not, and this proves it. The time to act like a community is now.”

Your Session agreed that First Presbyterian is a church without walls. This pandemic reminds us that we will be nimble, creative, connectional. Necessary social distancing won’t weaken the ties that bind us together as community.

I encourage you to reach out to friends in our congregation via phone and email to say hello, to share a joke, to share a concern, to express care. Your church is working on ways to keep better in touch with our flock. Because connecting with our flock is vital, if we can swing the technology, all members will be getting a recorded phone call from me up to two times a week. Who in flock is most rattled by this pandemic? Who is most lonely? Let them know you care.

Online financial giving options can be found on our website. You may send your checks to the church office. Our work—and expenses will not stop. Pray for our ministry.

When our church reopens, we will continue to take every measure to keep our church disinfected and clean. We will continue to refrain from hand-to-hand touch. We are becoming experts at toe taps, elbow bumps, peace signs, winks, and other forms of meaningful, non-touch greeting.

Your Session, under Peter Yau’s guidance, will be staying up to date about Coronavirus developments; we’ll make changes in approach as necessary. We meet next Thursday in a meeting convened electronically via an on-line meeting technology. Pray for them, please. Let us know if you have questions or concerns.

As the legend goes, at the height of the Black Plague, Julian of Norwich is purported to have said these words of profound trust in the God she loved: “All will be well. All will be well. All manner of everything will be well.”

I believe that, too.

“Being” church is always an adventure. How are we going to be a church without walls? As we take a pause from meeting face-to-face, how does being church change? I’m enormously blessed to be on this adventure with you. My cell and my email is below. Be in touch.

During this surreal season of Coronavirus, focus on things besides television news.
     Pay attention to the world around you.
          Be amazed.
              Tell somebody.

I can’t wait to worship with you via our live-stream on Sunday.

PEACE,

Matt Matthews
864.386.9138
Matt@FirstPres.Church

LIVE STREAMING DIRECTIONS:
To participate in our live-feed worship service at 9:00 a.m. on Sunday morning, visit firstpres.live If you arrive before the service has started, “refresh” the page periodically and you will see the live video appear at. 9:00 a.m.

If you are active on Facebook, you can watch the service there. Just find the First Presbyterian Church Champaign page and watch. You know what to do.

Prayer For A Pandemic

May we who are merely inconvenienced
Remember those whose lives are at stake.
May we who have no risk factors
Remember those most vulnerable.
May we who have the luxury of working from home
Remember those who must choose between preserving
their health or making their rent.
May we who have the flexibility to care for our children when their schools close
Remember those who have no options.
May we who have to cancel our trips
Remember those who have no safe place to go.
May we who are losing our margin money
In the tumult of economic markets
Remember those who have no margin at all.
May we who settle in for a quarantine at home
Remember those who have no home.
As fear grips our country,
Let us choose love.
During this time when we cannot physically
Wrap our arms around each other,
Let us yet find ways to be the loving embrace
Of God to our neighbors.

AMEN.