| Happy Holy Week Church Family, We find ourselves in a peculiar spot this Holy Week. It is one like we’ve never experienced before and will certainly never forget. Holy Week is a time where we do a lot of remembering. We reread familiar passages and meditate on the last days of Jesus. It’s a reflective time, and most of us have probably had a lot of that in recent weeks. I invite you to continue to seek after Jesus this week in fresh new ways. What might the Lord be teaching us this Easter? How can we draw near to him in this time where we are asked to keep our distance from so many? As the weeks draw on the realities of not meeting together and seeing each other hit harder. I know last week was the hardest for me personally, as all of this became so real. My prayer for each of you is for a fresh experience with our risen Lord, finding new and creative ways of engaging in the community during social distancing, and health for you and your loved ones. I encourage you if you haven’t already done so to reach out to friends and family in a new way this week. Maybe you’ve never done a facetime call on your iPhone or iPad, or you’ve been hearing all the talk about zoom, or maybe it’s even going back to the basics of writing a handwritten card and mailing it. Connect with those you love this week and give thanks for the technology, both big and small, that allows us to do so. I’d also like to invite you to some of our Holy Week video messages we will be giving this year. This Thursday-Saturday at 7 pm we will live stream a brief message from Bobby or myself. These can be streamed at spg.church/live or on Pastor Bobby’s Facebook or YouTubepage and if you are unable to watch them live you can also watch them later at your convenience. These short reflections will occur each night and will be an opportunity to reflect together and dive into a bit of the passion week narrative. We hope you can join us! I’m so blessed to serve as one of your pastors and lead such a great staff here at Shepherd’s Grove. Our team has been working hard to continue to connect and there have been some fun and exciting things going on with the children’s ministry, youth ministry, and now rooted groups and various other small groups continuing on virtually. Our team has been blessed by the calls that they have made to you and your caring and loving spirit. So many of you have spent time with them in prayer and offered to help with any needs of the community. It’s incredible to see the church really be the church. We love you all and continue to pray for each of you daily. Stay healthy and remember, God loves you and so do we, Chad Blake |
Holy Week
