Why Some Christians Are Not in a Hurry to Regather

By Robin G. Jordan

When churches reopen their doors, one reason that church members and regular attendees are not returning to the building in the numbers that church leaders were expecting is that some people are more cautious than others. The more cautious people are going to be slower to return to the building than the less cautious ones.

Pastors and other church leaders may not realize it but from the perspective of someone who has been studying how COVID-19 is transmitted and what kind of precautionary measures a church needs to take to prevent it from becoming the nexus of a new cluster of COVID-19 cases and deaths, the precautionary measures that they are implementing in their churches leave much to be desired, based upon their self-reporting. Cautious people are apt to pay more attention to the latest findings on the transmission of the virus and the most effective precautionary measures. When they weigh what their church is doing, they may conclude that it is not really taking the pandemic seriously and it is not really doing enough to protect church members and regular attendees. Pastors and other church leaders may dismiss their concerns but that may be a part of the problem.

While we might like to think that pastors and other church leaders are making regathering decisions solely on the basis of safety to the congregation and the community, other factors may be influencing their decision-making. There is also a lot of confusing, misleading, and out of date information about the seriousness of the COVID-19 pandemic and the effectiveness of various precautionary measures online.

As they consider a return to the building, pastors and other church leaders need to be considering their own attitudes toward the pandemic, the attitudes of their church members and regular attendees, and the attitudes of the different segments of the community.

I live in a region of Kentucky in which its residents are not in agreement regarding the serious of the pandemic and the need for precautionary measures to protect congregations and communities from the virus. This division which often reflects the political divisions in the region affects pastors and other church leaders as well as the rest of the region’s population.

A surprising finding is that senior adult church members are among those who are most eager to return to the building for in-person services and gatherings. They are also among those who are most at risk in the event that they became infected with COVD-19. In the case of older church members attachment to the building and other factors may override their caution.

The Sunday before last most of the members of the church that I have in the past served as a preacher and service leader returned to their building for an in-person service. What prompted this decision was the arrival of an out of state couple who sometime attend the church. They have a second home in the area. They had decided to travel even though their state and Kentucky advised against out of state travel. As far as I know, they did not observe the 14-day quarantine that Kentucky was urging out of state visitors to observe. In their state crowds ignoring precautionary measures and gathering in close proximity to each other made the news over the Memorial Day weekend. Until they arrived in the area and inquired about church services, the general consensus was to wait until sometime in June before considering a return to the building. Only two local members who were attending another church whose pastor did not temporarily suspended services were pressing for an earlier return.

Another factor which may have contributed to their return to the building may have been the President who urged churches to reopen their doors on that Sunday.

Most of the church members who decided to regather on the last Sunday of May are elderly and have health issues. They erroneously assumed that their gathering would be safe because it was a small one—less than 10 people.

One of the reasons that churches were at one point restricted to gatherings of 10 or less people was that smaller gatherings reduced the number of people who might be infected if one or more of the participants had COVID-19. When the gathering is a small one it is much easier to do contact tracing.

Small gatherings are not “safe.” They simply limit the number of people who become infected if one or more of those attending the gathering is infectious. To reduce the risk of infection those attending the gathering must also be maintaining social distancing, wearing face masks, and not engaging in activities that increase the likelihood of the transmission of the virus such as singing, loud talking, and eating from a common dish. They should also be meeting in an outdoor area or in a room that permits spacing of six to ten feet between each attendee in every direction. If they are meeting outdoors, they should be meeting in an area where there is a breeze. If they are meeting indoors, the windows and doors of the room in which they are meeting should be open to the outside of the building and the room should be ventilated by electric fans. In addition the attendees should themselves be observing appropriate precautionary measures outside of the gathering.

A small gathering whose attendees are not taking care to implement recommended layers of protection—social distancing, face masks, etc., and in which one or more of the attendees has not been personally observing such precautionary measures can become the nexus of a cluster of COVID-19 cases and deaths as much as a larger gathering.

The church members who returned to the building have an attachment to the building which the church has occupied for 15 years. They have an attachment to each other. They also have an attachment to the formal liturgy that comprises their Sunday worship. These attachments and the view that the COVID-19 pandemic is not as serious as the health experts claim, a view verbalized by at least one church member and reflected in the actions of several church members and those of the pastor whose church two members were attending until their own church resumed in-person services may have led them to make what may prove to be a reckless decision.

In preventing the spread of COVID-19 and protecting the most vulnerable, church leaders have a responsibility not only to their church but also to their community. It does not matter what other churches are doing. It does not matter what politicians are saying. It does not matter what protesters are doing. What matters is the safety of the church and the community.

We should be leery of the kind of logic which concludes that because others may not be doing the right thing or are urging us not to do the right thing, it is okay for us not to do the right thing. It may come as a surprise but people do at times think that way—more often than we might like.

The truth is that we are not out of the woods yet. We still have long way to go. People are still getting sick. People are still dying. There is a growing likelihood of a second wave of the virus. While we might like things to return to the way that they were, that is not going to happen. People are not going to come flooding back into our churches. They may in some areas but I suspect those areas are the exception and not the rule. It is going to take churches a while to rebound if they rebound at all.