Cedar Park moves services online for Palm Sunday

The idea came about when Governor Abbott urged churches to continue meeting while also practicing social distancing.

AUSTIN, Texas - Palm Sunday usually means people around the world should flocking to their nearby church to worship, but that's just not the case this year because of social distancing orders. Now churches are looking at other outlets to pray.

“There's nothing greater than the face-to-face communication that we can do, however, we're in a time to protect people. We cannot do that,” said Mark Westerfield.

Westerfield is the Senior Pastor at Central Baptist Church in Round Rock. Recently, each of Sunday church’s services has been live-streamed online.

“If you have any kind of iPhone, then you have the capabilities of having church online and that's what everybody wants,” said Westerfield.

Each service is posted on Youtube for people to easily access.

“I'm grateful for the day we live in that we're able to go digital and that we can actually do this. I think about 20 years ago that there was no way we could even consider doing this,” said Westerfield.

The idea came about when Governor Abbott urged churches to continue meeting while also practicing social distancing.

“Doing things online, we're learning every week and how to do it better and we feel like we're using what is the culture of our church to reach our people,” said Westerfield.

Although it is not a traditional way of doing things, Westerfield says he thinks this has opened doors for the future of churches.

“When these eight weeks are over, we may see the church differently. We may see it basically be far more reaching than we ever saw before,” said Westerfield.

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