Instead of having one large church service, the Glorious Church Worship Center in New Iberia has hosted two smaller services the last few Sundays, ensuring all of the parishioners are given the opportunity to attend church while remaining safe.

Though the church hasn’t been fully affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Rev. Kenneth Leleux, pastor at GCWC, said the church was still able to hold meetings with members.

Even during the quarantine period, Leleux said meetings could be held with 10 people as long as they practiced social distancing and used precautions like wearing masks.

“We did have some meetings but not church services,” Leleux said. “We did some online meetings on Facebook, and that worked out really well.”

Now that the Gov. John Bel Edwards has the state set to enter Phase 2 of the return from COVID-19 regulations starting today, easing restrictions on both businesses and churches to allow them to fill to 50 percent of their capacity, Leleux expects to continue with smaller services.

Before today’s Phase 2 lifting and because GCWC’s church is so large, Leleux said the church was able to hold more than one service — one starting at 10 a.m. and the other at 11 a.m.

“Rather than the full two hours, we did an hour service, an hour and 15 minutes at the most,” Leleux said. “And we did two of them on Sunday, that way we can have two groups of people coming in and out, limiting to 25 percent each.”

After response from parishioners on having a later start to the smaller services, Leleux said the church did 15 minutes of worship and music, followed by an opening prayer and then 30 minutes of a sermon.

“People were glad to be together, they were easily social disting, people came in with masks and without children,” Leleux said. “It worked great. We were just excited to be able to come back together after being apart for six weeks.”

This past Sunday, GCWC hosted a full two-hour service, and even had communion, while remaining cautious.

While the church can’t hand out anything to everyone to help stop the spread of COVID-19, Leleux said there were portable communion elements that come in a pre-packaged cup with communion bread.

“We placed them out and had them out for a while,” Leleux said. “Everyone came out and got their individual cups and we prayed together and we did a mini sermon on the benefits of communion.”

With their portable cups in hand, the congregation recalled what Jeus said in remembrance of him.

“But what are we remembering?” Leleux said. “It’s not just He did it, but it’s what it all meant to him, meaning the passover and all that Sunday resuscitation implies and indicates to us.”

From here on, church leaders are planning to do even more now that they can have up to 50 percent capacity at services.

In order to welcome everyone back fully, GCWC is planning to hold an outdoor meal to invite the neighborhood to have a meal with them in the future.

Leleux, a native of Delcambre, said GWCC believes in miracles, signs and wonders, and the power of God.

“We’ve seen God do lots of miracles and healings, either on the spot or down the road,” Leleux said.

Today there are more than 6,000,000,000 unreached people in the world, according to the church mission statement. These are people who may be among no community of believing Christians and which may have never heard the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Their goal is to assist in delivering the gospel message using adequate resources to evangelize the people. Listed below are several ministries that GCWC provides assistance throughout the year.

Leleux said the main goal he and his wife, Stephanie, and GWCC have is to help people to live with God along the long haul.

People can expect, according to Leleux, that someone is praying for them, as well as all of the other churches in town.

“We are praying for our community, and we are praying for the healing that needs to continue to take place in our community groups,” Leleux said. “We invite everyone, the gospel is for everyone.”