As Liberty Baptist Church is able to open up more of our activities, we will post those updates here. As always, feel free to contact the church staff at office@lbcliberty.org or (816) 781-1234 for further details.
April 27 Updates
Last Friday, the Clay County Health Department announced that we have officially moved into Phase Three of the COVID Recovery Plan. You can read more details here about the community-wide factors and improvements that determined this move, but the most important change is that the move to Phase Three lifts the building occupancy limits and makes social distancing measures a recommendation instead of a requirement! While masks are still required when indoors, we are excited at the opportunity to seat more of our members and guests in the sanctuary for worship.
With this change, we will once again have to make a few changes to our building setup to maximize capacity and allow our members to worship safely. Additional changes may come over the next several months, but we do hope this will be one of the final big changes before returning to more of our pre-COVID routine.
Worship Services
We will continue to hold two worship services: one at 9:15am and one at 11:00am. Both services will continue to be livestreamed. You may attend either service and do not need to let anyone know which service you will attend.
Sanctuary Setup
All of the chairs will be moved back into the sanctuary to allow for full capacity in the sanctuary. We will continue to reserve seats for guests who register in advance. For everyone else, we will continue to assign seats at the door for the time being, to maximize seating and help everyone easily find seats as the sanctuary becomes more crowded. We hope to eliminate registration at the door once we are able to reimplement the Host Team, which helped members and guests find seats pre-COVID. For now, we will continue registering at the door to make finding seats as easy for everyone as possible.
In addition, because we no longer have to observe social distancing, those who join us in the sanctuary can expect to sit next to other members once more. As has been the case for several years now, we will encourage members to sit “up and in”, moving towards the front of the sanctuary and towards the center of each row. We know this may be uncomfortable for some, but it is also necessary to maximize our current space. If you ever feel uncomfortably close to the member or guest sitting next to you, take that opportunity to pray for and consider giving towards our future expansion efforts!
Overflow Rooms
The Fellowship Hall will continue to be used as an Overflow Room. We recognize that some of our members may need to continue social distancing for health reasons. While we likely will not be able to make accommodations for social distancing in the sanctuary, the Overflow Room will continue to be available as a space where you can sit as close to or as far from the next household as you desire.
Because of the increased capacity in the sanctuary, we will stop using the Family Room and Second Overflow Room in the youth room, effective this Sunday, May 2nd. We know that these spaces have been helpful for families with young, active children, but we will need to utilize these spaces soon as we begin making preparations upstairs for Liberty Kids to reopen. Please know that your children are always welcome in the regular Overflow Room or the sanctuary. We also hope to provide some temporary childcare in the coming weeks for children between 10 months and 2 years old. If that would be a helpful service to you, please consider serving to help make this possible (sign up here to serve).
The Cry Room will continue to be available down the stairs from the lobby in The Book Room. As a reminder, this space is intended for any parent to use when comforting, caring for, or disciplining children before returning to the sanctuary or overflow room for worship. This room is meant to be a temporary space to move in and out of as needed, much like the Mothers’ Room, rather than a permanent space where people stay for the duration of the worship service.
If you have any questions or concerns that we didn’t address here, please contact the church office. We anticipate that these changes will help us return to more of the regular rhythms of church life, and we hope you are as excited about these updates as we are. This has not been a particularly easy season for any of us as we worship amidst various challenges, but we are so grateful for a flexible, humble, sacrificial, and loving church family.
We hope to see you this upcoming Lord’s Day!