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A Letter from Bishop Benfield
For me, Holy Week has always been more introspectively focused than communally focused. It is a time to reflect and not get so caught up in what, these days, has become a “pre-holiday frenzy” before every holiday, secular or religious. Even the church, with all its liturgies, loves getting into a frenzy. This Holy Week, due to the pandemic, we all are going to be forced to be more introspective—more alone—than many of us want to be. No pre-holiday frenzy this year. Gaping absences instead. But in this week that is quieter than usual, we all have the chance to focus on the absences in life that can form our vision for a more abundant future. The most striking image I cannot let go of this week is an online news article that showed a young, uninsured woman ready to catch a bus to go to work as a health care provider. She is fearful of becoming sick, yet she knows that she has no other option than to catch that bus because she is living on the edge of poverty. It is a situation that embarrasses me because my own life has been so different, so abundant. Holy Week is about directly facing the reality of a broken world. But it also gives us the chance to envision what a more abundant world can look like for everyone and the decisions we need to make—as individuals, as a church, and as a society—on how we get there. As I reflect during this Holy Week, I am hoping that resurrection is indeed just around the corner, a day when the fear will be replaced by joy, disease replaced by health, selfishness replaced by concern for one another. I hope you will as well. A Letter from Bishop Benfield
April 1, 2020 The Christian Church across the world is preparing for a Holy Week and Easter unlike any we have known. We will not be gathering in person, either to observe the Passion or to celebrate the Resurrection. It does not mean, however, that we will not find ways to gather. On Monday I had a Zoom meeting with members of the clergy to discuss the varied ways that we are going to lead our congregations this next week. Some of us are going to lead online worship, some will record worship, and some will encourage parishioners to virtually join other congregations. We will not have “drive-by” or “in the parking lot outdoors” services. The health risk is simply too great. Neither will we attempt what some people call “long distance” consecration of bread and wine. We want to respect the essential traditions of the church that have seen us through other plagues throughout our 2,000-year history. I encourage you to join in services online as you can, and also spend your own time in prayer in your homes. I also encourage you to find your own acts of compassion in the coming week, be it watching out for a neighbor, calling an isolated person, or donating to help others who are fearfully struggling with finances. The Holy Week and Easter messages after all, are about dying to one way of existence and being raised to a new way of life. This is the life we can live whether we are able to gather in church or not. Larry Benfield Bishop of Arkansas A Letter from Bishop Benfield
COVID-19, as nefarious as it is, has had at least one positive effect: it is bringing out the best of the people in our churches. I am hearing stories of outreach ministries, such as feeding programs, that continue to operate under new and challenging circumstances, and I know that our members are making concerted efforts to contact all the people connected with our churches with a deliberateness that I have never before seen. Thank you so much for being the church even when church buildings are not the focus of our church lives. The diocesan Executive Council met Tuesday, and we talked about the concerns that we have—and I am sure that man of you have as well. I am also trying to stay in touch with the clergy and the primary lay contacts in all our congregations. Let me share a couple of items with you. Tuesday, the focus of my email to clergy was how to prepare for Holy Week and Easter, as well as how to focus on pastoral issues, such as how funerals might take place when we are being required to stay distant from one another. It is a situation that we will indeed face. The focus of my email this week to church offices is how the day-to-day business of the church can continue in uncertain times. We are working as hard as we can to discover how legislation being passed by Congress might help churches keep employees paid if absences from work are required. We want to make certain that congregations have the money necessary to pay needed bills. And we want to be sure that our buildings are kept safe and secure even when people are not in them every day. I am sure that that there will be more challenges in the coming days. We have confidence, though, that the love of God will get us through these times as we remain concerned for others and creative in our responses to whatever it is that this situation throws at us. The church has been through tougher times than these in its two-thousand-year history, and it still has a witness. And it will continue to do so long after this epidemic is over. Larry Benfield Bishop of Arkansas |
Weekly Offerings
SERVICES MAY BE TEMPORARILY SUSPENDED DUE TO COVID-19 Sundays 10 a.m. – Holy Eucharist 11 a.m. – Coffee hour Wednesdays 11 a.m. - Morning Prayer 5 p.m. - Contemplative Evening Prayer |
