Subscribe
Donate
Subscribe
Donate
Volunteers dressed in masks at Crestview Baptist Church in Georgetown prepare bags of materials to deliver to youth enrolled in the Camp Crestview Reimagined online camp. (Photo courtesy of Corey Ash)
GEORGETOWN – Georgetown Crestview Baptist Church has some unique amenities and resources that have helped her thrive in a global pandemic. But Pastor Dan Wooldridge believes his greatest strengths are creativity and commitment.
“We’re not going to close our doors and hide under the bed until it’s over. It’s just not in the DNA of this congregation,” Wooldridge said.
Instead, the church continued to notice new tactics to adapt and satisfy desires in a conversion environment, from offering an online edition of its summer day camp to making its construction available for distance learning sites once the school resumes.
Like many congregations, Crestview Baptist suspended in-person worship in mid-March. Crestview has aimed to expand its online presence through cult streaming on Facebook, YouTube and the church website.
“We present online a group, a team of compliments and preaching on Sunday morning, Sunday night and Wednesday,” Wooldridge said. The church has also begun posting daily devotional videos and selling Bible exam opportunities online.
The PieceMakers duvet from the church ministry created a mask for others who needed to cover their faces, first for health care workers, and then for the faithful when Crestview began to “meet” at the site on Mother’s Day.
At this point, the church benefited from a resolution made several years ago to equip its facilities for live worship at various campus sites so that it can accommodate overflowing crowds.
“At that time, we were looking to maintain the structure of a new cult until we withdrew our debt,” Wooldridge said. “Instead of satellite campuses around the city, set up our entire campus here like a satellite.”
More than three hundred have accumulated the maximum Sundays for the in-person worship since the resumption in Crestview. Even by blocking one in two benches and holding at least six feet among the faithful of other homes, the church could accommodate that number twice if it opened more places of worship on campus, Wooldridge said.
Hand sanitizer stations are installed on the premises and worship centres are disinfected between services.
Sect leaders give a “small impetus” to inspire the faithful to the masks, and all the greeters and sheriffs, Wooldridge said.
Although they are encouraged to dress in the mask in the building, it is only mandatory in one position, the aisle of the bag, which is designated for those who need to be in an environment where everyone wears masks.
Since most of Crestview’s educational area is divided through mobile walls, the church has made changes to Bible studies on campus while allowing social estrangement, Wooldridge added.
Among the faithful who meet in user and those who consult Bible and online studies, attendance is particularly higher now than before the pandemic, and the church reached a maximum attendance of 956 in Bible exams in a time before the close of mid-March. More than 20 others have joined Crestview ever since.
While some churches have suffered financially during the pandemic, giving at Crestview surpassed budget requirements for the first half of the year and has continued at a record pace, Wooldridge reported.
Many members give checks online or by mail at the church workplace during the week. Others place their offerings in boxes outside the centers of worship.
“At some point, I need to go back to the plate supply service,” Wooldridge said. “I see provision as an act of worship.”
In May, the church suspended its popular week-long summer camp at Camp Crestview, originally scheduled for June. However, it was postponed for early August as a virtual event.
Camp Crestview Reimagined includes age-appropriate activities for children from kindergarten through grades 2 and 3 to 6, presented on the Internet or on DVD. Each registered child receives a package of supplies for the camp.
More than 1,000 young people are participating, adding to Crestview young people from other states with family ties that can enroll this year through the online format.
The virtual format also allowed Crestview to share the day camp party with Maranatha Baptist Church, a congregation in New York’s Queens district that basically serves immigrants from Romania and other Eastern European countries.
When school starts, Crestview hopes to waste time on your campus to learn from a distance.
Because the church has quality Wi-Fi on-site, it will provide a learning area for academics who have laptops but do not have reliable Internet access at home, or who have noisy preschoolers and want a quiet place to do their household chores, Wooldridge said.
“I’m lucky to have the highest art in the world,” he said. “They continue to create new tactics for us to come across our community.”
We seek to tell you, motivate you and challenge you to live like Jesus. Click to learn more about Follow Jesus.
If we achieved our goal—or didn’t—we’d love to hear from you. Send an email to Eric Black, our editor. Maximum length for publication is 250 words.
Classified