Five Questions For Churches Planning to Re-Open During COVID-19

It’s been more than two months now since churches have stopped gathering and as you could imagine, this has been really difficult for pastors. Every week, we’re preaching to an empty room, attending tiring zoom meetings, and feeling disconnected from our congregation. While this may have been an interesting challenge at first, it’s not fun anymore. We want to gather again.

As a result, this is exactly what some churches hope to do on May 31 where hundreds of Californian pastors are planning to re-open their Sunday services. Apparently, they are “not asking for permission” and it’s getting pastors around me thinking what they should do.

There’s nothing more that I’d want right now then to re-open our church, see everybody face-to-face, and worship God together. But before doing so, there are so many questions that I think need to be considered before calling our congregation to gather together. Here are five of the biggest questions for me.

1. Have We Considered the Unique Characteristics of a Church Gathering?

One of the main reasons why pastors want to re-open churches is because they see markets, restaurants, and small businesses starting to open. We can’t help but think, “If all of these businesses are opening, why can’t churches open?” You can argue that churches provide an essential service to individuals and even help cities thrive. So long as we follow the same safety procedures as other gatherings, why can’t we meet?

Here’s the problem: church gatherings are different. Very different.

First of all, we’re a large assembly, which increases the odds of someone carrying the coronavirus. Secondly, we’re a singing assembly, which more likely exposes people to aerosol transmission. Lastly, we’re a gathered assembly that spends an extended amount of time together, which greatly increases the chances of infection. In fact, one author notes that it’s exactly the formula of “exposure + time” that leads to successful infection.

In other words, it’s inaccurate to compare church gatherings to grocery stores or restaurants. While churches provide the most essential service possible (worship), there are also unique features of our Sunday assemblies that pose unique risks.

2. How Can We Ensure the Safety of Our Congregation?

I’ve been looking at how other churches are planning to re-open and most of them look similar: spread seats apart, wipe down doors, discourage physical interaction, etc. Like grocery stores and restaurants, churches want to do all they can to make the congregation feel safe gathering together.

Here’s the problem: I don’t think any of these safety procedures will really work. Why so? Again, the church assembly is a unique gathering and therefore carries unique risks.

There’s a story in Washington State where a community choir met and took all the necessary cautions to prevent infection: no shaking hands, sitting apart from one another, avoid sharing music sheets. In other words, their safety procedures looked really similar to churches. However, one member of the choir was asymptomatic and infected most of the people who were in attendance. As a result, 45 of the 60 choir members developed symptoms and 2 died.

Why so? It’s not simply due to the asymptomatic choir member. It’s because they were with an asymptomatic person in a large assembly where singing was taking place for an extended period of time. In an environment like this, wiping doors and practicing social distancing simply won’t cut it. Yes, there will always be risks in everything, but we need to take consider for how high those risks will be before calling our church to assemble.

3. Can Our Staff and Volunteers Remain Healthy and Not Burn-Out?

One solution to the problems I mentioned is for churches to hold multiple Sunday services. I’ve even heard of a few larger churches are considering hosting 6-7 different Sunday services so people can safely gather.

But while this is may be great for your congregation, I can’t help but think this is terrible for your church staff. Unless you’re a megachurch with a large staff rotation, I can’t imagine how adding multiple services will be sustainable. Sure, your lead pastor may be willing to preach 6-7 sermons every week, but can you imagine the associate pastor doing this? Can your praise team lead worship every week like this?

Perhaps there are other creative ways of hosting multiple services (e.g. stripped down worship, video recordings, etc.), but I can’t help but think that any church planning to do this is doing so at the expense of their staff. While it may be helpful in the short-run, this seems to set an unhealthy precedence in the long-run.

4. Have We Imagined How Sunday Worship Will Feel Like For Our Congregation?

Imagine driving to worship on Sunday and entering the parking lot only to be greeted by a parking attendant instructing you to park six-feet away from the next car. As you park and get out of your car, you see a friend also getting out of her car. However, you can’t walk together or even chat. You have to just say hi and walk six-feet part from one another towards worship service.

As you enter the church building, greeters wearing masks wave hello but instruct you to wait before filing in. Once you enter the sanctuary, you see a half-empty room filled with seats that are spread apart. Everyone in the room is wearing masks and sitting quietly. You sit down and wave hi to someone you haven’t seen in weeks - but you can’t give them a hug or talk too closely.

During service, you notice volunteers scrambling in the back since more people came then their expected capacity. During the worship and preaching, you can’t help but think about all the viral participles spreading in the air. During prayer, you hear someone cough and can’t help but side-eye the potential harbinger of the apocalypse. After service ends, you’re instructed not to fellowship but to drive home.

I don’t know about you, but if that was my Sunday worship experience, I might just stay home next Sunday. Yet, this is the likely scenario for churches opening anytime soon - and this is if churches and people are actually following safety protocol.

5. Why Are We So Eager to Gather?

Probably the most important question that needs to considered is this: why are we so eager to re-open our churches in the first place? While some pastors believe this is all a “plandemic” and that the government is impeding our religious rights, I’m sure there are others who are genuine and simply want to worship together.

However, I can’t help but think that there are a lot of pastors that want to re-open the church not for our congregation but for ourselves. As pastors, we worship Jesus but we tend to find our identity in ministry. The lack of feedback in our preaching, the decreasing online attendance, and the shortage of financial giving makes us feel like our churches are weakening. And especially with other churches opening, we don’t want to “lose” our members.

But perhaps this is where God is really challenging the idols of our hearts in a way like no other. Perhaps this is a time to really see how much we believe that it is Christ who will build His church and that the gates of Hades and the infection of COVID will not prevail against it. Perhaps this is a time where we’re simply called to shepherd the flock that’s among us rather than the potential we had originally envisioned for ourselves and our congregation.

Conclusion

A Baptist church in Georgia recently re-opened and took all the typical safety measures that most churches are planning to take this month. However, after learning several families in the church had contracted the coronavirus, they once again suspended their Sunday services. I can’t help but think that we’re going to see the same thing in our churches if we’re not careful in our re-opening plans.

So when should churches meet again? I’m not sure. I can imagine churches meeting in smaller gatherings (e.g. community groups) in the near future. But to be honest, it’s difficult to imagine re-opening Sunday service until we’ve discover a vaccine, find effective treatment, or have more available testing. Perhaps I’m missing something, but from what I’ve read, nothing has convinced me otherwise.

People may think churches that aren’t re-opening any time soon are being driven by fear. Perhaps. But I wonder if churches that are choosing to re-open may also be driven by fear. The fear of your church members being spiritually unhealthy. The fear of a shrinking congregation. The fear of the loss of ministry. May we be humble in our opinions, unafraid in our convictions, but charitable in disagreement.