COVID-19: External factors contributing to the decision of when to resume in-person church gatherings

Like most churches, the congregation I lead has suspended virtually all of its normal ministry schedule due to COVID-19. In recent days, however, there has been increasing talk about re-opening businesses and churches. To that end, many people have endeavored to compile how-to’s to help churches prepare for the day when we are able to resume in-person gatherings. Most of these focus on what I will call internal factors. That is, they focus on things that the church can directly control. I have read several such how-to’s, and I continue to appreciate the collective wisdom that they provide. However, I have been wondering what external factors – that is, things which the church cannot directly control – must be present before we resume in-person gatherings. As of this morning, our congregation’s leadership team has wisely identified at least three such factors.

Declining trend in local infection rates

First, before we resume in-person services, our leadership team has decided that we must see a declining trend in local infection rates. Please notice that a trend is a general pattern. Thus, we will be looking to see that the majority of daily infection rates are lower than the previous day’s. What this means is that an individual day may be higher or lower than the trend. Such peaks or valleys would be considered anomalies to the trend, and they could be influenced by a number of things.

More specifically, our leadership team will be looking for a downward trend in new infections that lasts no less than three weeks before we resume in-person worship services. So also, we will be closely monitoring the trends after we resume services to ensure that the trends continue, and if the trend begins to incline again, we will seriously consider suspending worship gatherings again. The reason for this is simple: we do not want to contribute to reversing the downward trend!

It should also be noted that we are monitoring the infection rates in our local area. Last week, our governor announced that she would relax restrictions in 77 of the state’s 99 counties because they showed little or no COVID-19 activity. This is tremendous news, and yesterday, I had conversations with two parishioners eager to know when we would resume in-person meetings. However, our county is one of the 22 where restrictions have not been relaxed because infection rates have not been declining. Therefore, I have begun a spreadsheet tracking the daily infections reported in our county. This data is then plotted on a graph which shows the general trend at a glance.

At our church, the plan right now is to set a tentative date for resuming in-person worship after three weeks of declining infections in our county.

Gating criteria for federal re-open plan, Phase 2, must be met

The federal government has laid out some fairly sound criteria to guide our decisions to resume in-person worship gatherings. You can find the full details of the federal re-open plan here, but in general, there are three such criteria:

1. Downward trajectory of influenza-like illnesses (ILI) reported within a 14-day period AND Downward trajectory of covid-like syndromic cases reported within a 14-day period
2. Downward trajectory of documented cases within a 14-day period OR Downward trajectory of positive tests as a percent of total tests within a 14-day period (flat or increasing volume of tests)
3. Treat all patients without crisis care AND Robust testing program in place for at-risk healthcare workers, including emerging antibody testing

The plan is set up so that restrictions are eased every consecutive time these conditions are met. The first time they are met, it recommends that gatherings of more than 10 people are allowed with strict social distancing. The second time, it recommends that gatherings of up to 50 people may meet with relaxed social distancing. Given the nature of in-person worship, we believe it will be feasible to gather again once the criteria have been satisfied for four consecutive weeks, or once we have satisfied the requirements for Phase 2 of the re-open plan.

Sanitization and cleaning supplies must be readily available

In all of this, there is a wild card that may override all other considerations. Regardless of when we resume in-person worship gatherings, we will need to be able to properly sanitize the facility after each service. Thus, churches like ours are already making plans to make that happen. These plans, however, rely on one thing over which churches have no control: the availability of cleaning supplies.

In our community, disinfectant spray and other cleaning supplies remain in short supply on store shelves. We cannot open our church doors until those supplies are available. Moreover, they must be available on an ongoing basis. This will be crucial because churches and every other business that is re-opening at the same time will require more of these supplies than ever before, and they will need them for the foreseeable future. How confusing and frustrating it would be to resume our in-person worship services for a week or two, only to be forced to stop again when we could not find a new can of disinfectant spray!

These are the three external factors that our church leadership team is watching as we contemplate re-opening. If your church has identified others, I would love to hear about them in the comments!