The Board of Trustees and staff are THRILLED, OVER-JOYED and DEEPLY HONORED to announce the long-awaited reopening of our beloved Unity Church in Albany on Sunday, July 18th. We thank everyone for their incredible patience and support since March 2020 when we were forced to close the church due to the COVID 19 pandemic. Now that the majority of adults in the Capital Region have been vaccinated, and group gathering restrictions have been modified, now is finally the time when we can re-open the church – with some necessary guidelines – safely and comfortably for our congregants.
Among the challenges we faced in re-opening Unity Albany were our limited space/seating capacity and air flow issues. With the prior 6 foot spacing requirement for seating, this severely limited the capacity for congregants. Our historic 100+ year church was not built with modern technologies for air circulation which further restricted our abilities to have public services.
As we re-open our doors on July 18th, it has been necessary to establish some guidelines to ensure the safety and comfort of all service participants. Initially, we will re-open services for 40 congregants each week — who will need to pre-register for each week’s service. We also require the wearing of masks at each service. We need to abide by these guidelines until such a time as we can safely return to our prior full capacity seating, with no mask requirements. We deeply appreciate everyone’s support and cooperation as we follow these Re-Opening Guidelines.
ADVANCE-SERVICE RESERVATIONS
Everyone who wishes to attend a Sunday morning service for the time being must pre-register by calling the Church at 518-453-3603, extension 20 for the upcoming Sunday. The deadline for pre-registering each week is Saturday at 4:00 pm. OneSong services, which are currently held on the 2nd and 4th Sundays at 7:00 pm will not require pre-registration unless numbers warrant it.
When you call, you will be asked to leave a message and clearly state your name, the names of others attending with you, your telephone number and an email address for your party. Once the pre-registration 40-person capacity is reached, those whose registration requests cannot be accommodated that week will be notified.
DURING SERVICE
All congregants are required to wear masks at all times inside the church and during services.
Congregants are invited to join along in songs with the musicians but are asked to keep their masks on during singing. Musicians will unmask themselves when performing.
LOVE-OFFERINGS/DONATIONS
Initially, we will not be passing the donation basket during services. Your love-offerings are essential to Unity in Albany, so we encourage you to please use other means for donations. Please use the donation box in the lobby for your love offering checks– NO CASH, PLEASE, at this time. We encourage you to go online to the church website: www.unityalbany.org to securely donate via Pay Pal. We thank you for your continued support and generosity to Unity Albany!
HOSPITALITY
For the time being, we will not be offering food/beverage hospitality, or the sharing of food and beverages. After Sunday services, weather permitting, you are welcome to bring your own chairs to congregate with other Unity folks on the Bradford lawn. Online fellowship via Zoom will continue to be offered, as well.
THANK YOU!
On behalf of the Board of Trustees and staff, again we thank everyone for their patience, support and cooperation as we confronted the challenges of the pandemic. We look forward to more events and opportunities for fellowship in the coming weeks.