Statement on Coronavirus (COVID-19) |February 5, 2021

1. The safety of our staff and volunteer leaders. Some might wonder, “Why not just open the buildings for those who are comfortable with gathering in person?” One answer to this question is that our gatherings each week require a large and very diverse group of people to work in a number of hands-on roles to make them possible. We do not feel comfortable requiring or expecting staff and volunteer leaders to serve in this way if they are in a high risk category for COVID-19 or if they are simply not comfortable or ready to do so.  Furthermore, we are not yet sure about the respective best practices for large-scale indoor gatherings.
2. The unity of our body. Any attempt at reopening right now will necessarily exclude large portions of our church, both in number and demographic, including many older brothers and sisters or others who may find themselves at higher risk for any number of reasons. We also know that individuals and families have varying levels of comfort with being in crowds of people at this time. While we don’t believe it will be feasible to wait until everyone has the same comfort level with gathering, we do want to wait until we can encourage as many people as possible to come while saying with complete confidence, “This is a safe environment for members and guests alike to worship.”
3. The nature of our gatherings. Our worship gatherings are not designed for social distancing. We sing and shout and hug and serve. We are individuals and families, including kids (who aren’t always easy to keep in one place where we monitor everything they touch!). We sit in seats that people have sat in just minutes prior to us being there. While it is certainly possible to gather together without doing some or all of these normal activities (we’re thinking through all of these possibilities), and while there are various ways to reduce risk (we’re exploring all these ways, as well), the above factors cause us to take added precautions before gathering for worship as the church.
4. The credibility of our witness. By God’s grace, we are spreading God’s love across our city and around the world in many ways beyond what we were doing before this pandemic. Thousands of thousands have joined us online and on television for worship, including many who have also come to faith in Christ. So as we read stories of church gatherings resuming in other places and see examples of staff and attenders inadvertently transmitting this virus across their community, and then we consider the size of our church and our reach across the city, we want to be extremely careful to display the wisdom of Christ as we exalt the name of Christ. In short, we want to be agents of the gospel and do not want anything we might undertake to hinder that eternal message.
5. The opportunity for observation. Every week (and seemingly every day!), there are new developments in the local, state, federal and global response to COVID-19. These rapid developments include more knowledge about how the virus responds to treatment, or to weather, or to the reopening process, or how individuals might better protect themselves. In proceeding with caution, we give ourselves access to more and more information to make a wise decision on reopening. There are many areas in which we are glad to take risks in order to be on the cutting edge as a church now in reaching the unreached. However, we do not feel the same burden to take risks in order to be on the cutting edge of re-opening large scale gatherings. Knowing that this virus is latent for as long as two weeks before symptoms might appear, we are inclined to lag behind more large-scale reopenings to determine if various practices are safe in reducing risks to people. In the end, we want to keep and increase our focus on the areas mentioned above while carefully observing and humbly learning from other large-scale in-person gatherings.