For the past 14 months, Resurrection Community has been praying for God to give us relief from Covid, gathering faithfully for worship in different formats and places, and deferring to our civil and health authorities for guidance on the specifics of how to best love our neighbors by reducing the potential of Covid spread from our worship gatherings.
We are glad to see that according to pretty much every metric (new case numbers, % of positive tests, infection rate), God seems to be answering our prayers for relief. In addition, the increasing availability of vaccines and the number of previously infected individuals means that the possibility of significant spread continues to decrease.
Due to those encouraging signs, our governor has relaxed a number of Covid rules, specifically saying that fully vaccinated individuals no longer need to wear masks in most situations, while unvaccinated individuals are still strongly encouraged to wear masks while indoors with others (i.e during worship).
Practically, for our worship services, this means:
For the next several weeks (and likely months), we will have a mix of masked and unmasked people in our worship services. To be clear, we won’t be asking anyone individually about vaccination, but trusting people to walk in Christ-like honesty and love.
Remember that there are a variety of reasons people may continue to wear masks, so it’s important to treat everyone with grace and not make assumptions. Some may not be able to get vaccinated, some may not have been able to yet, some may be choosing not to, and some may continue wearing a mask after vaccination for the sake of family members or medical conditions.
Remember that our primary motivation in decisions about vaccination and/or masking is love for others, particularly those who are more vulnerable to illness and/or unable to get vaccinated for whatever reason.
The single most important thing in protecting the health of others is to stay home if you are experiencing symptoms or have been exposed to Covid (vaccinated individuals do not need to stay home due to exposure).
Please contact us if you have any questions about any of this!