COVID-19 News Digest 3/30
To best serve churches in this time, we decided to research and organize the best coronavirus content for you so you can focus on serving your family, community, and congregation. Here are the best resources and info we could find for you over the weekend:
The CARES Act and Churches
You’ve probably heard about the CARES Act that was passed by Congress on Friday, which included (among a host of other things) small business loans for which churches are eligible.
PLEASE READ THIS CAREFULLY, then consult your local banker as soon as possible to ask questions about the process. Please be aware, Small Business Administration (SBA) loans have a reputation for being complicated, so don’t be afraid to seek outside counsel.
Also, we strongly urge you to consider what, if any, debt your church is comfortable taking on through this program. The CARES Act allows for the loan to be forgivable if certain conditions are met. Here is the link to the best summary we currently know of.
Here is a video with a fuller explanation of the CARES Act and its implications for churches, brought to you by Houston’s own Vanderbloemen.
Here’s a Q&A with GuideStone’s legal team, led by Chief Legal Officer Harold R. Loftin, about how churches and pastors are eligible for relief in the stimulus package.
Resource Hubs:
Practical Helps for Your Church During the Coronavirus Outbreak
This page is Lifeway’s article hub for what they are putting out in terms of pastor helps. It has several collected resources on how to handle Easter, how to do small groups, and more. There are a lot of disparate articles on these topics out there, but this page pulls many of the questions into one directory.
Coronavirus and Christ
This site is the Desiring God hub for all of their COVID articles with an encouraging letter from John Piper about the situation.
Helpful Perspectives:
Obedience to God and Love of Neighbor in the Face of a Coronavirus
In this article, Al Mohler delves into how both the Old and New Testament help us understand what faithfulness and neighbor love look like in the face of the coronavirus.
God Doesn't Want Us to Sacrifice the Old
In this op-ed for the New York Times, Russell Moore writes about how Christianity teaches that every single human life is valuable, even during a pandemic.
The value of human life is not determined on a balance sheet. We cannot coldly make decisions as to how many people we are willing to lose since 'we are all going to die of something.’