IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT
You are invited to join Spokane Friends on Sunday morning March 29 in our first Virtual Worship Service! The meeting will be held via Zoom and can be attended by clickin on the following web address (or copying it into your browser): https://zoom.us/j/409994 170 at 10:00 am on March 29. Bring your favorite beverage and you may even wear your pajamas!
Spokane Friends will not worship in the Meeting House until further notice in response to the restrictions put in place due to COVID-19 pandemic.
The Church Office will be staffed as usual. Caritas Outreach Ministries, the neighborhood food bank operating out of our Meeting House, will also continue to stay open as long as possible. Please monitor our website for announcements about when Sunday worship services will resume.
See below for the Clerk’s announcement during worship service on Sunday March 15:
Friends,
The Elders met this week to discuss our church community’s response to the Covid-19 outbreak. During the meeting we discussed ways of limiting exposure through social distancing, increased hand washing, the use of disinfectants, etc. As the week went on, several Elders expressed a growing concern that we had not gone far enough, given the rapid growth of the virus in other countries and the fact that we have a population of high risk individuals who worship here.
The question we were faced with was: Where are we in this crisis? The information the CDC currently has available puts us on the same exponential growth curve that Italy is experiencing, only 10 days behind Italy’s numbers. As you may know, Italy has imposed a nationwide lock down to prevent further spread. This seems to represent the path the virus will take here. However, the severe limitations on testing for the virus in the US might mean that we are even further into the curve than estimated. Because our testing for the virus has been so limited, we simply do not know how prevalent this disease is among the our population. It is reported that people who have the virus are contagious before showing symptoms and many people who are showing symptoms are not being tested unless they have recently been outside of the US and or have come in contact with a known carrier.
Given the apparent risk to members of our community, the Elders and I have decided that we should suspend church services for the time being. While this decision was not made following typical Quaker process, we felt that meeting to discuss options would put all of us at risk of spreading the virus and therefore took it upon ourselves to make the decision. We hope you will understand the urgency and forgive our trespass.
Sunday morning service will be suspended until further notice and the meeting for business scheduled for the rise of worship today is cancelled.
We will be sending out a weekly update on the email list serve and on this website, including any news and any expressed community needs. If you or one of your loved ones contract the virus or have any other need that the church community might help with, please reach out either through a phone call or by email and let us know so that we can all be in support of one another.
We hope, Lord willing, to be meeting again by Easter.
So remember to look for an email on Thursdays and let the community know if you are in need.
Sincerely, Jonas Cox, Clerk of Elders
Looking Ahead
April 26 Shawn McConnaughey
May 17 Paul Anderson
