Church Bell Removed

The bell was removed from the downtown building and moved to Salem's new location. Check out the local media coverage here and here.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

We've Been Here Before

Image
Thanks to  Press Features   for sharing their work on Unsplash. We’re coming up on seven months in this COVID-19 pandemic. We canceled in-person worship the first time on March 15. This experience has been difficult for many and continues to get more bleak. The coronavirus has now sickened more than 33 million and killed more than 1 million people globally. Our country, for the moment, has the most confirmed cases and the highest death toll with over 200,000 virus deaths. The number of cases and deaths in our state continues to rise. Without doubt, this is a difficult moment. Still, the reality in the church is we’ve been here before. The 1917–18 Spanish flu was the most fatal pandemic in history. A hundred years ago it killed more than 50 million people. Churches in some parts of the world were shut for a year. And before that, we know the great church reformer, Martin Luther, dealt with fatal epidemics every few years. None of that may have happened in our lifetime, but we h...
Read more

What Does This Make Possible?

Image
Photo by  Nothing Ahead  from  Pexels As we enter a new year, there may be light at the end of the tunnel of the pandemic. With two approved vaccines now, we hope that at some point in 2021 we won’t have to wear masks, mind physical distance, and refrain from larger groups. Still, if you’re hoping that the church will return to the way it was before the pandemic, I imagine you will be disappointed. I’m sorry. Just the same, while this is a hard truth for some, it also sounds like a breath of fresh air for others. That doesn’t mean the church will be unrecognizable. The people of Salem aren’t disappearing suddenly. There are many of us worshiping, growing, serving, giving, and telling others about what God has done in Jesus. When we do gather in-person again, however, we won’t have as many people as we did prior to the pandemic. In-person worship attendance was already struggling and declining before the pandemic. The crisis has simply accelerated what was already happen...
Read more