Pineridge Blog
When I was a pastor in small Iowa town in the 90’s we often had a dilemma on a snowy Sunday morning. Should we cancel church or not?
They had a practice long before I came of canceling worship if a snowstorm made it dangerous for people to come to church. We had a number of farm families who traveled gravel country roads to town, so their safety was our highest priority. When a storm had dumped several inches of snow on Saturday night, it was an easy decision. But more often than not the question we found ourselves asking, “Is it bad enough to cancel?” And more importantly, “If we don’t cancel will some people think that because the church is open, it must be safe?”
Since I have been here I don’t think we have ever canceled church because of weather. Sometimes we have had small
crowds. Several times we have had to pay to have the parking lot plowed Sunday morning. A couple of times we have had only one service, but we have always been open. That’s why the decision to cancel in-person worship during this pandemic was very hard for me. It ruined my perfect record for one thing! I also knew that we would get to this current place and have the “snow day dilemma.” At this point my main concern is that no one interprets future reopening the church, when and however that may happen, as a sign that it is completely safe to come to church.
For whatever reason the virus still seems to love to go to church. Being in a large group of people in a closed room for an hour is one of the most dangerous places to be to contract the virus. It is running rampant in the close quarters of nursing homes, prisons and on cruise ships. Public events and graduations are canceled for that very reason. Governments have hesitated to mandate churches to suspend in-person worship because of their honoring the fundamental American right of the separation of Church and State. It is not, however, because churches are somehow immune to the virus. Many outbreaks have been traced to religious gatherings or funerals
where guidelines were not followed. At least one pastor who defied warnings about the danger of religious gatherings during the pandemic died of COVID-19.
https://www.nytimes.com/…/bishop-geraldglenn-coronavirus.ht…
“How will we reopen?” you ask. The only answer is, “Carefully and prayerfully.”