Good Shepherd Episcopal Church in Venice is thinking of alternative ways to help the community during these stressful times.
“Sometime last week as we were planning to do virtual services as a lot of churches in the area, not only our denomination, but a lot of churches are saying how can we scramble, to not have services in place but to provide live streaming options, and so we were working on that and in the midst of that I thought okay my concern here is, we can’t do everything virtual,” said Rector of Good Shepherd Episcopal Church, Father Joe Hudson.
In initial services, the church had to cut out the wine due to viral concerns and cut down to only offering the host.
“Now, doing virtual, there’s no receiving of the host,” said Father Joe. “And so I thought, Drive-through, so I thought it would be a good idea to offer drive-through communion. So actually right behind me here were going to have people come through between 11 and 12 tomorrow on Sunday and receive the host.”
Father Joe says they will make sure to practice social distancing during the communion.
“We’re going to be safe, they’re going to be safe, and we’re not going to lean into vehicles,” said Father Joe. “Our deacon will be stationed on the passenger side, I’ll be on the driver side and we’ll be offering the host to them and a quick blessing for people and then sanitizing in between every one of them so ill have the sanitizer with me as well as the paten with the host.
Father Joe says the host is offered to anyone who is a baptized Christian
“But everyone needs a blessing, so I would love to have people come who are a bit anxious, a bit nervous about all that’s going on, understandably,” said Father Joe. “So come on through and we’ll offer you a blessing as well.”
“We care about this community and we know this community is suffering and we want to be here and available in any way that we can be,” said Father Joe.
