Dear brethren, we wanted to reach out and give everyone an update in regards to the Feast of Tabernacles at Panama City Beach this year.  We are still planning on conducting the Feast there with in-person services every day.  However, there are several state and local restrictions in place that have impacted how we will be able to conduct services.  While it is a possibility that Bay County (where Panama City Beach is located) will move into Phase 3 (no or very few restrictions) before the Feast, as of August 7th, 2020, the following restrictions are currently in place:

1. Due to social distancing requirements, the seating capacity at the Edgewater Convention Center is 690 people.  Our current registration is about 780 members.  We are actively working to increase our seating capacity to 800 seats in order to accommodate everyone.  However, some who have already registered for PCB have mentioned they plan to drive to Panama, but watch services online in their condominiums.  If you plan on doing this, please change your festival registration to ‘Not Attending In-Person UCG Services 2020.’  If this happens, our actual attendance will likely be less than our capacity of 690, and everyone on the Waitlist will be able to attend services each day if they desire to do so.

2. At the moment, there is a travel restriction in place in Bay County, where Panama City Beach is located.  This travel restriction limits who is permitted to travel into Bay County.  To determine if you are permitted to travel to Bay County, please review the guidelines under ‘Vacation Rental Reservations’ at https://www.co.bay.fl.us/CivicAlerts.aspx?AID=156  Under this guideline, your state must meet one of two limits in order to be able to travel to Bay County.  Your state must have fewer than 750 total COVID cases per 100,000 people –OR- fewer than 500 active COVID cases per 100,000 people.  The specific links to check these numbers are shown on the website.  Please note when you are looking at the link for active cases, you need to change the setting on the map from ‘Counts’ to ‘Per 100K.’  This travel restriction will not be monitored or enforced by the church.  It is up to everyone to determine if they are eligible to travel into Bay County, and make Feast plans accordingly.  Recent data suggest that the number of active cases per 100,000 people is trending downward, which is a good sign.

3. In order to accommodate as many people as possible, we have had to dedicate some of the rooms we normally use for Youth Instruction to seating for services.  This means there will be no in-person Youth Instruction this year at the Feast Site in Panama. 

4. We are currently schedule to not have any dances.  If things change and we are able to, we will do our best to have a combined Family/Teen dance.

5. We are still planning on having Family Day at Rock-it! Lanes.

6. We are still planning on having the senior Luncheon at Captain Jack’s Buffet.

7. There is currently a ‘mask order’ in place for Panama City Beach.  This order is scheduled to end on August 13th, 2020 as the summer tourism season will be winding down by then.  In theory, this means there will not be a mask requirement in place at Panama City Beach at the time of the Feast.  However, the governing bodies of the area reserve the right to extend the mask order, if necessary.  To be on the safe side, PLEASE ASSUME THAT A MASK WILL BE REQUIRED WHILE IN PANAMA CITY BEACH AND DURING SERVICES. 

We realize that the above restrictions are not ideal.  However, with everyone’s willingness to comply with these requirements, we should still be able to have a large number of God’s people gathered together to keep the Feast in person together at Panama City Beach this year.  We ask that everyone continue to pray that God intervene and remove the virus, so we can keep the Feast as a group, and bring honor and glory to His name!

If you have any questions, please feel to reach out to me at any time.

Warm Regards,

Dan Preston

Feast Coordinator - Panama City Beach, FL

(513) 324-6156

Dan_Preston@ucg.org