Dear friends in Christ,
We look forward to welcoming you back to worship together in person!
We know that some are past ready and some are not quite ready. I encourage you to have grace for your fellow parishioners as we navigate this time. When it comes to matters of health, we as a society have typically thought of health as an individual choice, leaving much of the responsibility for risk analysis and decision-making in the hands of an individual person. This is how we have treated the flu for decades: vaccination decisions are in the hands of the individual and we do not legally limit activity each winter because of the flu. In March 2020, there was a huge mental shift and a consensus quickly formed that we would primarily consider the larger community instead of each person evaluating their own individual risk. We adopted policies to maintain our physical distance and wear masks to reduce the spread of the virus in the community with an eye to particularly helping the most vulnerable. Even most of us who were not personally concerned about our own risk of contracting the virus generally accepted and appreciated these regulations for the common good.
We are now moving back to thinking about this more as a matter of individual choice instead of as a communal matter. Some think we should have done this months ago, others think it is premature to think this way, but as a society, we are moving in fits and starts back to that. In Oregon, as soon as 70% are vaccinated, state regulation will mostly consider the virus in terms of individual risk and eliminate most required safety measures.
As the St. Mary’s community, we are all in different places on this question. Some of us want an immediate return to full capacity, maskless services in the church as we had before the pandemic. Others of us want to hold off longer. Most are in-between. While it is attractive to simply say people have the option to get the vaccine so we should all do what we want, we do need to keep in mind that many in our St. Mary’s community are not yet eligible to receive a vaccine because they are too young and will not be eligible until this fall at the earliest. We also need to keep in mind that some in our community have medical conditions that prevent vaccination or reduce the effectiveness of vaccination.
How will we navigate this transition time back?
The general answer is that we will take it slowly and cautiously with the in-person options expanding over time. As we re-open, we will maintain online options for those that want or need to go more slowly.
The Vestry has decided upon the following values to guide our decisions:
• Follow diocesan guidelines and rules.
• Be Legal.
• Follow public health guidelines from the public health community, especially paying attention to Center for Disease Control and Oregon Health Authority recommendations, generally taking the more cautious approaches to our re-opening, to minimize risk out of care for the congregation.
• Be inclusive in our ministry of those who cannot, should not, or will not yet gather in person.
• Recognize and consider the shared use of our space in our decisions, considering who else will be using the space.
Applying these values is not always self-evident. For instance, vaccinated and unvaccinated people can legally remove masks outside (second bullet point), but the Oregon Health Authority still suggests that people keep their masks on in outdoor crowds (third bullet point). Since we are going to be cautious in our approach, we ask people to keep their masks on during the June outdoor service. We will evaluate in a few weeks for our July service. With falling case numbers and increasing vaccination rates, we may make masks optional for our outdoor July service, but we need to wait to decide. One of the many things that COVID has taught us is the folly of trying to plan too far out, so we are going to take this a few weeks at a time.
Here are our plans for the coming weeks:
• This Sunday, June 13th, will kick off our summer plans with one outdoor service at Lively Park in Springfield. Pre-registration is not required. You can be admitted to the service as long as there is space available. The park will now allow 300 people, so we do not anticipate running out of space. We will sing hymns together. We are asking everyone to still wear a mask for the service. Our vaccinated worship leaders, however, will start removing their masks when speaking in order to help those with hearing difficulties understand better what is being said. Following the service, there will be an in-person Sunday School for children and youth along with a coffee hour with food served by people using good hygienic safety protocols.
• On Sunday, June 20th, we will move to having two indoor Sunday Eucharists. We will have music at both of these services. One service will be a Rite I service at 8 am in the main church capped at 40 people. The other service will be a Rite II service at 10 am in Berktold Hall capped at 60 participants. Pre-registration for these services is recommended, but not required. For the time being, there will not be a coffee hour. We discovered this year that ventilation in the Sanctuary is seriously insufficient, about 25% of what we need it to be. We are actively working on ventilation upgrades, but it will be several months before they can be completed, so we highly recommend vaccination for those attending any service in the church. For the time being, we are asking people at both services to remain masked, and communion will remain in one kind (bread only). Worship leaders who are vaccinated will remove their masks while speaking so that they can be better understood.
• Over the summer, we anticipate the addition of more services, removal of registration and attendance caps, perhaps adding in coffee hour, the possibility of mask optional services, and the return of communion wine being available. But as I said before, it is not wise to make concrete plans too far out with COVID.
If you have been holding back from attending services to keep spots open for others, please sign-up and come to services. With the two services, we should have enough space and if we do not, we will add more services.
Finally, please remember that this is a transition period. We will probably make some mistakes and there will be some compromises that will not be perfect for everyone. In the big picture, this will be a short-lived time. Soon we will be safely standing shoulder to shoulder, worshipping together. Soon we will be enjoying a cup of coffee in the Guild Room and a meal in Berktold Hall. We are so close. Keep the faith. God is faithful to us.
Blessings and Peace,
Bingham+
