Dear BPCWAians, As announced in the bulletin today, registration for the Holiday Bible Program (HBP) begins next week. This program will be conducted in the mornings from 4-6 January next year. Much effort is ongoing in the planning of this program for your children. The planning for this year’s program comes with many headaches due to COVID-19 restrictions, but I feel that it is important not to forgo having the HBP because it is an important yearly event for BPCWA’s children and teens to help keep them focused and reminded of spiritual things during their holidays. So, I do strongly encourage parents to register their children for this program when registration opens. Naturally, some things will need to be different due to the restrictions. However, to assure parents and to encourage attendance, I want to use this pastoral to explain some of these challenges in order to help parents understand why we have had to make some of the decisions we’ve made for this upcoming program.

COVID-19 Physical Distancing Requirements. Most parents probably know that physical distancing is not required in schools. However, as a church, BPCWA is not considered an educational institution. Hence, we are still subject to the physical distancing guidelines expected for churches. According to WA government’s Phase 4 Frequently Asked Questions on their website, churches are required to ensure that “there should be 2 square metres of floor space per person and patrons should practise physical distancing by keeping 1.5 metres from other patrons from other households.” This is why our Sunday School classes have the children sitting physically distanced during their lessons, and this will have to be the format we adopt for the HBP as well. As such, physical distancing puts constraints on the number of children we can accommodate for the program and many other follow- on effects on different parts of the program.

Reduced number of classes and children age groups. Previously, it was easy to just distribute the classes logically by the children’s literacy and understanding levels. For this year, we have had to simulate scenarios based on potential attendees, categorise them into class sizes, and then check if each class exceeds the COVID-19 capacity limits for the available rooms. As the fellowship hall needs to be used during tea breaks, it cannot be used for classes. The remaining larger rooms that we can use for classes are the main sanctuary, upper level sanctuary, and upper fellowship hall. Calculations had to be done with potential attendees and various year groupings to determine how to split up the classes for this year. HBP includes students up to Year 10, while Sunday School only covers students up to Year 5. The HBP preteens and teen’s class is important as it allows us to reach out to them on important Christian topics at a crucial stage of their development before adulthood. With the wider age range covered by HBP coupled with the physical distancing requirements, we can only accept HBP registrations from students in the Pre-primary to Year 10 range, based upon the modelling of potential attendees in each class. This means that we will not be able to take in those aged 3 and in Kindergarten as we did before. So as to maximise the usable space for each room, we will not be arranging tables for students in each class. Even with all these student reductions in place, we may potentially be unable to have the usual certificate giving ceremony at the end of the program and the group photos as we used to do in previous years.

No active outreach to new friends this year. In previous years, we encouraged worshippers to take the opportunity to evangelistically invite friends to our HBP program. Our desire to use HBP as an evangelistic outreach remains unchanged, and we desire and hope to be able to continue this in future years. But due to the space crunch this year, we are limiting registrations to our worshippers, family/extended families of worshippers, and those who had attended our HBP in previous years. So, grandparents in BPCWA who had previously enrolled their grandchildren in the past are welcome and encouraged to do so again. We also want to use HBP to reach out to those who used to worship at BPCWA but have stopped coming in recent months, or those who had been regular at our past HBP programs. If you would like to invite someone for HBP but are unsure if you should continue to do so, please do contact me or Terry, who is the HBP coordinator this year.

Staggered tea breaks and no provision of food. With the 2 sqm per person capacity limit, we cannot have all the children adjourn to the fellowship hall at the same time to have their morning tea break. And to avoid crowding, we will adjust the timetable of each class so that only 1 class is using the fellowship hall for tea break at any time. With the added constraints on cleaning and other COVID-19 hygiene processes, we will not be providing fruits for the break. Instead, parents are advised to prepare a packet of snacks for each of their children that they can have a snack during the tea break between classes. These timetable changes mean that we also need to be more flexible in the planning for the lessons and in teaching each class as well.

Despite all the challenges faced, we are putting in much effort and thought, by God’s grace, into the planning of the Holiday Bible Program. I wish to reiterate that this is because we believe that this is an important outreach to and spiritual development of our young ones over several days of teaching. We do all these because we sincerely want to be able to have our children grow up as godly seed for God’s church. This is the theme of this year’s program. Especially in a year when travel is significantly reduced, there is no reason why parents cannot register their children for this program. Yes, it may be different, but what’s most important is that we want to be able to continue to teach the younger ones precious spiritual lessons. Do pray earnestly for us as we labour with the desire that it will bear fruit for our Lord as our children grow and mature.

1Cor 3:7-9 So then neither is he that planteth any thing, neither he that watereth; but God that giveth the increase. 8 Now he that planteth and he that watereth are one: and every man shall receive his own reward according to his own labour. 9 For we are labourers together with God: ye are God’s husbandry, ye are God’s building.

Yours in our Lord’s service,

Pastor