WELCOME BACK TO CHURCH IN-PERSON!

We have been missing you all so much. This weekend that begins to change! I know you won't all be back in person, but we are so excited to see as many of you as possible.

In case you haven't heard, we are entering Phase 2 of our re-opening plan this weekend. What that means is that for at least the next 4 weeks, we will be offering two in-person service times at 9:00AM and 10:45AM starting this Sunday. We will of course continue to stream online at those same times for everyone still watching at home. 

As we re-open we will be taking precautions to make our in-person services as safe as possible. We respectfully ask that you honor others by following these guidelines:

• Please register for one of the service times by clicking here.
• Please wear a mask while you are in the building. If you don't have a mask, one will be provided for you. We will have both disposable and reusable masks available at the counter as you enter the lobby.
• Automatic hand sanitizer dispensers have been place strategically around the building. Feel free to use them as often as you deem necessary, and please assist your children. 
• Please do your best to practice physical distancing while inside the building and refrain from congregating in the lobby. 
• Please only sit in the rows marked for you. We will be skipping every other row as well as rotating between services.
• Families will sit together and stay together in the auditorium. There will be no nursery, preschool, children or student rooms open on Sunday morning.
• While we all want to hug, high-five, and shake hands, please refrain from doing so for now.
• Each Sunday service in June will be a watch party. That means that we will be watching the exact same service on the screen in the auditorium as is being streamed online at home.
• Five minutes before the scheduled start time, Pastor Chris will welcome everyone and start the service with prayer. The stream will start on-time.
• As the service ends, we ask that you exit the building promptly so that we can quickly sanitize the auditorium for the next service.
• Persons with compromised immune systems, in an at-risk category, or simply not ready to return to campus are encouraged to stay home and continue watching online.

While these steps may seem excessive, we are taking each of these precautions to reduce the risk of spread in an enclosed space as much as possible to protect our church body. We expect many of these measures to be temporary and will adjust accordingly as we enter Phases 3 and 4 of our plan.

Thank you so much for your understanding, prayers, and encouragement over the last several weeks. We can't wait to see you all soon!

...seeing our Neighbors and the Next Generation changed by Jesus and His Word,

CHRISTOPHER G. SYKES

Lead Pastor 

The Church At Lake Forest

@pastorcsykes

DREAM BIG | TRUST GOD | WORK HARD | DO GOOD

Like many of you, our church leadership is continuing to monitor the spread of COVID-19 as well as instructions, orders, and cautions issued by local, state, and federal agencies. Because things continue to change daily, we have not made a final decision on exactly how we will proceed for Easter Sunday, April 12th. We will post plans as soon as we possibly can.

BOSTON BUTTS

As of the time of this posting, we are still planning to distribute Boston Butts this Saturday, April 4th from 4:00p.m.-6:00p.m. If you purchased a Boston Butt from one of our students, please come by the church during those times for curbside pickup. For health reasons, our students will NOT be assisting with the distribution, and we ask that you not exit your car. The Boston Butt will be delivered to you full cooked and refrigerated. Because of the COVID-19 orders, Scotty's Smokehouse Catering in Nesbit, MS has graciously agreed to smoke the butts for us in his professional kitchen. Thanks Scotty!!

SUNDAY PLANS

For now, we are planning to continue to livestream worship each Sunday morning at 9:45am on multiple streaming outlets and continue repeat broadcasts at http://live.tcalf.com daily. We will also continue to update our CHURCH@HOME page to include videos for kids and instructions for teenagers and adults.

We are testing the functionality and the idea of hosting a large ZOOM call for LifeGroups that will then be split into separate rooms of small groups. If everything continues as it is, we will likely launch this the week after Easter. Our student ministry and staff families have seen success in this model. However, because of the continued volume of church traffic during peak times on Sunday mornings (It's a great day when the church breaks the internet!), we may move the primary LifeGroup meeting time to another time during the week with this launch.

WEDNESDAY PLANS

We are continuing with our midweek ZOOM call for prayer meeting and Bible Study at 6:30pm on Wednesday nights. Use the instructions below to join the meeting. If this is your first time to use Zoom and you plan to join by video, we recommend downloading and testing the app on your device at least 15 minutes before the meeting so that everything is working properly. Also, if you are joining by video, please remember that we can all see you too!!

See you all online at 6:30PM Wednesday night!!

Join Zoom Meeting at this link:

https://zoom.us/j/290610273

Meeting ID: 290 610 273

One tap mobile (If you can tap the link below on your mobile phone, it will put the Meeting ID in for you after a pause)

+16468769923,,290610273# US (New York)

+16699006833,,290610273# US (San Jose)

Dial by your location (You can use any of these numbers to dial in. You will be prompted for the Meeting ID to join us.)

  +1 646 876 9923 US (New York)

  +1 669 900 6833 US (San Jose)

  +1 253 215 8782 US

  +1 301 715 8592 US

  +1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago)

  +1 346 248 7799 US (Houston)

  +1 408 638 0968 US (San Jose)

Meeting ID: 290 610 273

For the next three Wednesday nights, we will meet via Zoom at 6:30 p.m. for our Wednesday evening Renewal for a time of Bible Study and Prayer.

You DO NOT have to create a Zoom account to join the meeting, but you can if you want to. You can join the meeting from any phone by calling one of the numbers below and typing the meeting code when prompted.

This will be a video based meeting, so we encourage you to use the Zoom.us website or the Zoom app on your phone, tablet, or desktop computer with video and audio capabilities so that we can all see each other and interact through the program. From personal experience, even if you are on a desktop, downloading the Zoom app when you are prompted provides the best experience. On any mobile device, just visit your devices app store and download the Zoom meeting app ahead of time.

Use the instructions below to join the meeting. If this is your first time to use Zoom and you plan to join by video, we recommend downloading and testing the app on your device at least 15 minutes before the meeting so that everything is working properly. Also, if you are joining by video, please remember that we can all see you too!!

See you all online at 6:30PM Wednesday night!!

Topic: RENEWAL 03.25.2020

Time: Mar 25, 2020 06:30 PM Central Time (US and Canada)

    Every week on Tue, 3 occurrence(s)

    Mar 25, 2020 06:30 PM

    Apr 1, 2020 06:30 PM

    Apr 8, 2020 06:30 PM

Join Zoom Meeting at this link:

https://zoom.us/j/290610273

Meeting ID: 290 610 273

One tap mobile (If you can tap the link below on your mobile phone, it will put the Meeting ID in for you after a pause)

+16468769923,,290610273# US (New York)

+16699006833,,290610273# US (San Jose)

Dial by your location (You can use any of these numbers to dial in. You will be prompted for the Meeting ID to join us.)

    +1 646 876 9923 US (New York)

    +1 669 900 6833 US (San Jose)

    +1 253 215 8782 US

    +1 301 715 8592 US

    +1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago)

    +1 346 248 7799 US (Houston)

    +1 408 638 0968 US (San Jose)

Meeting ID: 290 610 273

LET'S CELEBRATE SUNDAY!

Yesterday, Sunday, March 22nd, was a great day! Many of you joined us online on Facebook. Several have also watched the replay on our new online campus at http://live.tcalf.com. I know it's hard to compare in person numbers to numbers online, so I won't bore you with everything I track and why I do track numbers the way I do. Instead, let's celebrate the BIGGEST numbers.

We've had 56 unique viewers of our new online church campus at live.tcalf.com. If we think of that like cars in the parking lot on Sunday and multiply by 2.5 (which is the average number of people per car), we've had an almost normal week of church attendance just at that one resource. HOWEVER, Facebook is where we've been living for a while now. We've had 122 of what I refer to as "extended views" on Facebook, meaning that they may not have watched the whole service, but they did more than just click on and click back off after just a couple of seconds. If we use the same car analogy, that means we've had a near record church attendance! On top of that, we've had over 700 people view our livestream video on Facebook for some portion of time and have reached over 1,400 people through various Facebook feeds, just from this one video. That's pretty amazing for a little church in North Mississippi!

We firmly believe that God is up to something. In fact, the church "broke the internet" Sunday morning. So many people around the world were watching online that several church webpages, streaming services, etc. experienced slow downs and complete failures altogether. That may seem terrible (and I know from personal experience that it can be frustrating in the moment), but think about that. For probably the first time ever, the CHURCH crushed internet servers with traffic all over the world. Not sports. Not a political scandal. Not a risqué picture. The CHURCH!

You may also feel like the church has been defeated because we are confined to our homes and the internet. Do you realize that hundreds of thousands of home churches launched this weekend? Now, the may not be long term, but that's still a big deal. God is doing something, and we are going to do our best to stay on board with the movement He initiated, wherever that takes us!

...for our Neighbors and the Next Generation,

Pastor Chris Sykes

PS - Don't forget to sign up for text updates by texting the word CHURCH to 662-709-6849.

After much prayer and discussion, seeking wisdom through our elders, staff, and local officials, we have made the decision to have ONLINE ONLY church services through Sunday, April 5th.

Please hear this:

We are closing our doors, but WE ARE NOT CLOSING OUR CHURCH!

This decision is not based out of fear but based on honor and responsibility. At this time, the plan is to resume public on-campus gatherings on Easter Sunday, April 12th. However, due to the most recent information, we are already making preparations for this to be a special "DRIVE-IN" worship experience. There will be more information coming out soon about the specifics of our Easter service gathering.

We wholeheartedly believe that God is giving us a unique opportunity at this time in history to reach those that live around us. He is giving us an opportunity to bring light into darkness, to bring hope to the hopeless, and to help meet basic needs of those around us. This is a time in history that won't soon be forgotten, and for the first time in at least a generation, churches everywhere are being forced to think outside the box. God is up to something, and we can't wait to be a part of that.

In the coming weeks, we will use this page to give periodic updates, so check back regularly. Below this statement, you will also see a description of plans for this weekend and coming weekends. They may also change from time to time, so please keep that in mind.

Continue to pray with us as we continue to be FOR OUR NEIGHBORS AND THE NEXT GENERATION!

We will continue to stream LIVE at 9:45AM each Sunday morning online on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/tcalfchurch. Even if you don't have a Facebook account, you should be able to access the page and see our livestream. We are also working on hosting a livestream on our main church website at tcalf.com. Because we are trying to keep exposure to a minimum, only a handful of people will be together for each livestream, and some of the content will be recorded in advance. We will do our best to make this as high quality as we possibly can.

Also, INVITE somebody to watch with you. Create a Watch PARTY on Facebook. Text the link to a friend. Leave a note on your neighbor's door, along with an invite card and a link to our website or Facebook page. Email your co-workers. This is an unprecedented time where people are much more likely to tune in than to tune out!

All of our services will also be uploaded to http://tcalf.com/media, which is where you can go now to see past message series.

Our children's ministry team is working on kids content that will also be available each Sunday morning. When you go to the main page, just click on the KIDS link, and you will find updated information there on Sunday morning. We encourage you to share this time with your kids. Just like you might watch our worship on your big screen tv, put their kids videos up on the big screen. Interact with them. Make this a whole family worship time! Content will be updated each week. Also, make sure that you check out TCALFKids on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TCALFkids/.

Our student ministry team (middle school and high school) are also working on updating content each Sunday as well. There will be a "Student Underground" link on the main page on Sunday morning. Teens will be able to find student ministry updates and content there each week. Right now the team is planning to engage with students live on Sunday evenings at 5:30PM using a video conferencing tool called ZOOM. If you don't have an account, go ahead and create one here: https://zoom.us/. It's free to use and you can join on virtually any device via audio and/or video. Also, make sure that you join the Student Ministry text group for parents and students by texting the word STUDENTS to 662-709-6849. AND visit the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/TCALFstudents.

Small group leaders are encouraged to connect each week with their groups using any one of a number of social networking tools available. Call your group to check on them and to record prayer requests. Create a text group to communicate throughout the day. And for those who are tech savvy, consider using a service like ZOOM or Google Hangouts to create your own video conferencing group to study the Bible together virtually.

There are currently no plans for AWANA for the foreseeable future. It will resume at the same time Sunday services resume. We will make an announcement about that when it happens.

However, Pastor Chris is going to create a Wednesday night Renewal Bible Study and Prayer group via Zoom if you would like to join. It will happen each Wednesday night at 7pm. Information for joining the group will be posted on the website and Facebook and will be sent out via text update, so make sure that you text the word CHURCH to 662-709-6849 to join the text group. And go ahead and create a free ZOOM account here: https://zoom.us/. You can also download the ZOOM app to your phone.

• IF:Gathering has been postponed indefinitely
• As of now Boston Butts can still be picked up April 4th.
• AWANA has been cancelled indefinitely