Five Lessons I learned from a COVID-19 Spike at Our Church

In March, April and May, our church staff braced for a wave of COVID-19 cases to sweep through our church family. It never happened. In fact, for the first three months of the COVID-19 outbreak, our church family of about 1500 only experienced a handful of coronavirus cases. As far as we know, none of those cases was spread at one of our events. Two weeks ago, that all changed. Like most churches, we moved to an online-only format in March, but as soon as our governor and state department of health gave us the green light, we started meeting in socially distanced services. A few weeks into those services, we had a coronavirus scare, but it was short-lived.

One of our staff members was exposed to someone who later tested positive for the virus, and our entire staff was with the exposed staff member in a two-hour staff meeting a few days later. The exposed staff member then tested positive. We had the rest of our staff tested, but everyone else tested negative. No one, including the one staff member who tested positive, showed any symptoms. We breathed a collective sigh of relief, and many of us, including myself, came away from that experience more convinced than before that the only real threat we faced from COVID-19 was our services being shut down again.

Then it happened. The first phone call came on a Friday from a staff member. "Bad news. I've got a fever, body aches, and six out of the 11 symptoms on the CDC's checklist."

The next week was filled with phone calls and text messages about symptoms and tests and who had been exposed to whom. By midweek, we learned that the virus, which would eventually work its way through about half of our staff, had spread to some of our volunteers.

Almost two weeks after that first phone call, we are still waiting to find the end of the virus' spread among our church family. This has been extremely challenging as a pastor and leader, and I hope I can share my experience with others who might learn from our mistakes dealing with COVID-19. Here are five lessons I learned. Read More

Churches cannot relax their vigilance against the COVID-19 coronavirus. When they do, they open themselves to a cluster of new cases as did this church. The COVID-19 coronavirus is not going away anytime soon.