Dear Church Family, I wanted to take a moment and contact you through one of our many platforms. We recognize that not all of our members have access to every one of our platforms so we are going to be sharing this vital information via Email, our church’s Facebook page, Facebook live, YouTube live, Text, as well as mailing a hard copy of this letter to all of our active members. In regard to all future announcements, we are asking all of our church families to contact us with your email address by emailing us at secretary@fbcbakersfield.com as well as by signing up for our text updates via your mobile phone by texting 81010 to @fbctexts. Due to recent state directives, we as a church have made the following adjustments. SERVICES As of today (March 18, 2020) we will be encouraging all of our membership to stay home and join us during our live stream services. All of our services will be live on our Facebook page and our YouTube page. In addition, each sermon will be archived on our sermon audio account that can be accessed by going to our website www.fbcbakersfield.com and clicking on the sermon link. I would like to encourage you to join us live as we will be making time each service for “real time” prayer requests, praise, and some general fellowship chat time. This is effective until further notice. OUTREACH We will continue to go out and be a light to our community and to our sheep in this trying time. It is my desire to have every member of the church visited during this season (though I recognize some may not want to have that contact, and we understand fully). It is also my desire to continue to reach people who might be searching. So, with caution and in observance of the recommendations by our elected officials we will continue to go out into the harvest field. We will be “meeting” at the church during our regularly scheduled times via a “Drive through” setting. I as the pastor will be supplying you with the maps and the visits by bringing them to your car. As far as the actual execution of these efforts we are encouraging families to stay together or people to partner up by 2 or no more than 3 in a car. As these visits are executed, we are directing you to use social distancing practices and not go into the house if at all possible. Some of these visits will be soul-winning in nature, some of them will simply be to bring supplies to those in need such as our elderly church family. UPCOMING EVENTS From now until Easter Sunday all events held by the church other than our regularly scheduled services and outreach will be postponed. Unfortunately, that includes our “By Faith Building Banquet and offering as well as the baby shower for Mrs. Recinos. I would encourage you members to hold on to your committed “By Faith” giving and be prepared for that event to be held later in the Spring. As far as the baby shower goes please consider mailing the gifts to the Recinos directly (contact the office for that address) and we will be having some form of gathering in the near future to celebrate this momentous occasion in this young family’s life. We are prayerful that God will allow us to have an unrestricted Easter Sunday by April 12th, but if we are still under these adjusted guidelines, we do have some very inventive ways in the works that we can still be together and celebrate safely. Stay tuned for more on that in the near future. CHURCH MEMBERS IN NEED We as a church family have a biblical mandate to care for all men, but especially those who are of the household of faith (Gal 6:10). During this time, we are inviting our members to care for our membership. There will be people in this congregation who won’t be getting a steady paycheck, there will be seniors who cannot and should not be standing in line for groceries, there will perhaps be people who run out of supplies. We are calling on the church family to be prepared to meet those needs in this time. We have an obligation to care for each other and be the church! As it stands right now, we have some supplies stocked up off sight for the needs of our church families. If you have a legitimate need that you cannot meet, we are asking you to contact Pastor directly and we will do everything we can to meet that need. Please do not abuse that system, as we want to save these resources for those in our church family who cannot legitimately meet these needs. If you have extra and can help donate items please bring them to the church. This is not the time to hoard things this is a time to be the hands and feet of Christ and meet your brothers needs! TITHING While we cannot meet, we still must pay rent and all of the bills associated with running the church including the staff salaries. We encourage you to make use of the online giving platform that can be found at the upper right-hand corner of our website. It is simple, secure, and will keep you from ever having to leave the house. You may also give by mail or by dropping of your tithe at the church directly. Please be faithful to give during this time of adjustment. FINAL THOUGHT ON CHURCH ATTENDANCE While it is strongly recommended by the government and the church that you choose to stay home, I also want to make clear it is not against the law to come to church, and we will not be locking the doors. If you are a church member who feels strongly about being present, I will not be turning you away or be responsible to cause you to violate your conscience before God. If you are reading this and you are not a regular attender but are looking for hope, I will be here, my staff will be here, but most important, GOD WILL BE HERE! To say that these days are going to be a little different is quite an understatement. At the same time, we also want to recognize as well that these days are ordained of God Himself and we look forward to seeing what He is going to accomplish through these changes. Be flexible, be informed, be cautious, be gracious; you may not like all that has been decided, I CERTAINLY DON’T … but let’s be the church and love on each other. In Christ, Pastor Kacey Trudelle
Where We Meet