Hello CPC community,

As many of you heard in church yesterday, our Elders have decided on a direction for our worship services moving forward. We appreciate everyone who gave input on this decision and look forward to moving ahead together as a congregation.  

Why the change?
About 6 months ago, Session met for an extended retreat to worship together, pray together, and seek the Holy Spirit’s leading for our church.  We had noticed a decline in attendance on average Sundays, a decline in giving, and an increase in the average age of our congregation, and we acknowledged that these were indicators that as a church, as a whole, we were not thriving in the way we hope to, and had not for some time.  

In response to those indicators, after much prayer and discussion, we decided to embark on a summer of experiments. The goal was to determine whether there were changes we could make that would help CPC live into the calling God has for us, changes that would help us serve as effective ministers of the Gospel to our congregation and to our community, that would position us to thrive in both our worship and our service to the Lord.

Services Overview
Our plan moving forward is to hold 2 worship services in the Sanctuary.

• The first service will begin at 9AM and will have a blended worship style with a traditional bent. We will provide Children’s Church (all children K-6 meeting in one group) and adult Sunday school during this service.
• The second service will be at 10:30AM and will be led by the praise band. Children’s Sunday School and adult Sunday School will be held during this service. 

We will have our fellowship time between the services in the patio, which we hope will provide our congregation with regular overlap and opportunity for fellowship.

However, we recognize that there is a benefit for us to all meet together in one room for a united worship service. So to address that, we will have only one service, located in the Hoffmeister Center on the last Sunday of each month. These services will be held at 10:30AM to give us as much consistency as possible.  

Why we chose this option: 
Our elders adopted this plan because it seemed to balance many of the competing needs that we experience. We are excited about this plan for several reasons:

1. We hope that locating our services in the same space will bring a great connection between attendees of the two different services 
2. We feel that the space here in the Sanctuary provides a more conducive worship space, as it allows people to hear each other when we sing 
3. Locating our worship services on the same side of the street as our children’s programming will bring a greater degree of safety for our kids 
4. Monthly combined services will allow us to have regular times together to ensure our congregation doesn’t drift apart in the way that we did previously.
5. Keeping two services allows more physical space for our congregation to grow.

But we do recognize that the space here in the Sanctuary is not perfect. There are several things about this space that make it hard to access and move around, especially for those with more limited mobility. We will be working hard to address these issues as quickly as we can. We deeply value all members of our community and are committed to making sure everyone can get to church.

Start Time:
These changes will start on Sunday, September 8th.  

Sunday, Sept 1- Hoffmeister, 10AM (moved to Hoffmeister because of the holiday weekend and termite fumigation)
Sunday, Sept 8- 9AM and 10:30 AM Services, Sunday School Resumes

What we are asking of you: 

1. Keep the main thing the main thing- The logistics of our services are really important, but at the end of the day they are designed to help us gather together in worship, to meet God and be formed by Christ for the renewal of the city. As we adapt and adjust to these new changes, we hope that we don’t get so hung up on the logistics that we lose sight of what is most important. 
2. Volunteering- This worship setup answers a lot of the challenging questions we have been wrestling with for the last couple of years, but it keeps a high burden on our volunteer teams. So our Session is asking that if you are not currently volunteering on a Sunday, please consider helping in some way. We can use your help in the nursery, children’s ministry, media, greeting, outside greeters, the refreshments team, and the praise band and choir. Whatever your skill sets are, there is a place for you to serve on Sunday.
3. Invite people- This decision to stay with two worship services is based on the idea that we feel we need to expand the impact of our church in our community. We chose two services so we would have space to bring others to join us. We ask that you join us in recommitting to being an active witness to the Gospel here in Merced and inviting others to join us in worship. 

This decision has set us up to live into our identity as a multi-generational congregation that is here “for Merced”. And we humbly ask that you join us in this calling.

The Session of CPC

See below  to view the video of our announcement on Sunday, August 18th.