Parish Staff is mostly remote at this time.
Please contact by phone or email if any need arises for you or someone else

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 Public Health and Diocese Resources

Diocese of Nebraska COVID-19 Messages & Resources
Messages & Resources from The Episcopal Church
Episcopal Relief & Development
U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC)
Douglas County Health Department Recommendations and Exposures

Resources for prayer and worship at home​
Morning Prayer
Compline
Additional resources from the Diocese of Nebraska

Worship

• In-Person Services (with Virtual Option) to Carefully Return:
  
  Partial-Occupancy Services at 8:30 and 10:30 am, – details below.
  
  Virus rates have dropped below the diocesan guideline that allows for in-person worship on Sundays: https://public.tableau.com/shared/46GYFCCZB?:display_count=y&:origin=viz_share_link
  
  As a reminder, the 7-day average needs to remain below 20, but we are in the orange on it for now, which is very heartening news. We are going to offer the following initial plan for returning to worship.
  
  Safety Practices
  Masks, Social Distancing, and seating by family bubble will continue to be required, even for those who are vaccinated. Vaccination is strongly encouraged for all members; please ask Fr Ben if you have questions about the church’s practices or the moral questions around vaccines. Please be aware that at present, we are using an outdoor port-a-potty as our bathroom facility while our indoor facilities are being re-done. We believe many people will want to wait until they are vaccinated or until later this year to return, but if we have strong enthusiasm, we may ask people to alternate weeks in attending to keep our numbers to a safer margin.
  
  We are now holding 2 in-person worship opportunities on Sundays.
  
  8:30 am: a service of up to 40 people plus ministers. Praise Band music. This service will not be broadcast via Facebook Live.
  
  9:30 am: a prep and cleaning time; we will be asking people to depart from the sanctuary after the previous service.
  
  10:30 am: a service of up to 40 people plus ministers Organ music. This service will be broadcast via Facebook live.
  
  This schedule keeps our cleaning needs to a minimum, and also allows us to use this remaining construction time to experiment with a two-service Sunday, which might give us the opportunity for a true Formation Hour between the two services, which could be used for everything from coffee-hour fellowship across our times to parish meetings and events to ongoing classes. This seems like an appropriate moment to try this possible schedule out.​​

Holy Communion
We are celebrating weekly Eucharistic services again, rather than Morning Prayer. These involve only the hosts (bread) and not, at present, a common cup. I will reiterate a call for people who would like to receive communion at home, and if needed, train Lay Eucharistic Ministers to make those visits. We will continue to have safety practices around preparing communion.

Acolytes, Lectors, Altar Guild
We will be evaluating our liturgical ministries one by one, but at present are not restoring them fully. The hope is to begin carefully adapting and returning these elements of our worship as we think through issues of care, safety, and the ministry of each, so stay tuned and please check in with Kate and Fr Ben about your ministry in the coming weeks!

Singing
At present, we don’t have enough clarity about how best to safely add singing back into our indoor worship services. We will continue to review best practices, medical advice, and technology possibilities, and hope to add choral music back in at some point to both services. While it won’t immediately be a part of our programming, we will continue to actively work towards it.

Communications
While our hope is that transmission rates continue to decline and vaccines make everyone safer, a sudden surge in transmission or cases or other medical realities may require us to return to virtual worship in the future. If we do, we will attempt to make that call by the preceding Thursday so that the news can be shared via the weekly e-mail (sign up by contacting Jay Hammond at parish@sainta.net), as well as on our website and Facebook page.
The staff will continue to hold remote office hours and manage various projects and concerns, and we will be updating the parish regularly about our schedule and activities.

If you need to be in contact with Fr. Ben or Kate outside of regular office hours, please use their cell phone numbers located in the directory.  If you do not have a directory, please email them or the parish office if you need their information.