Keeping Church Unity During COVID
Before COVID-19 cases in central California reached their highest numbers, Sacramento County health officials called for mask wearing, social distancing, and temperature checks before people entered buildings, including churches. Our Conference leaders encouraged the pastors to follow county guidelines. At the Sacramento Central Seventh-day Adventist Church, we were reasonably compliant. We had nurses ask simple health questions and do the temperature scans. Almost every person entering the church was masked. We had roped off alternate pews and actually issued tickets for available seats to ensure adequate social distancing. Not everyone kept their masks on after deciding on their seats, and sometimes people didn't sit in the correct spot. But church members were quite understanding and generally cooperative. We simply asked folks to be cooperative in case county health officials visited the church.
The pastors were careful not to try to police the situation. We explained to those who thought things were too restrictive that we wanted to make attending church feel reasonably safe for those who might be more fearful. We were hoping to keep the attendance from declining any more than necessary. Most people accepted this explanation as reasonable. At that time there had not yet been a COVID case among our congregants.
On two separate occasions, unknown individuals called the county to complain that our church wasn't adequately compliant. Both complaints were about someone who was not wearing a mask (a chorister, and a person in the lobby). In both cases someone from the county called to talk to the senior pastor. All he had to do was explain what we were doing, and they were happy to trust him. They were too busy to do anything more. The pastor's cooperative spirit didn't hurt, either.
Meanwhile, a friend of mine in another state told of division in his church over COVID restrictions. The conference had directed local leaders to remove the hymnals from the pews as one way to limit the spread of the virus. My friend was one who had removed hymnals and was then accused of having no faith in God to protect us from the virus. The accusers said the conference leaders also lacked faith. Interestingly, those who made the accusations soon had the virus, and that settled things down considerably.
Only a couple of months into the pandemic, an aunt of mine died of COVID. She had already been in and out of the hospital with other serious illnesses, such as diabetes and congestive heart failure. We all knew that if she caught the virus, she would likely not stand a chance. We were right. One of our church members who also wasn't very healthy got COVID and sailed through it like it was just an average cold. COVID would prove to be very hard to predict.
Then the infection case numbers went way up in some parts of California. The Sacramento County health officials and the state governor announced a lockdown. Since our church is a media church and regularly livestreams, we were easily equipped for the change. The media team and those participating up front continued to go to the church, while the church was announced as closed. If any members showed up in person, we did not turn them away. Our sanctuary is very large, and they could sit far away from any other person. We didn't believe they posed a danger.
Church was closed like this for about three months. Sometimes we had almost no one sitting in the congregation while we livestreamed and recorded the Sabbath School and church programs. Sometimes there were about 20 people there, in addition to the participants and media team. During this time, we livestreamed prayer meeting. We studied the last several chapters in The Great Controversy and some passages in Revelation. Our livestream attendance was triple what "in person" prayer meeting had normally been.
Probably the question of whether COVID was a sign of the nearness of Christ's second coming engendered interest in prayer meeting. We were clear that the pandemic had no direct relationship to the mark of the beast crisis. We saw it as a pestilence, one of the signs in Matthew 24:7. We clarified end-time issues to help people not be easily swayed by those tending to make strong definitive internet statements about COVID and the mark of the beast. We did acknowledge that the current crisis could lead to other matters of concern.
These livestream prayer meetings were done in 2020, long before the vaccines came out. Not as much was known back then as today. Even now, there are still many contradictions spewed by various media sources about the pandemic. It hasn't been easy to know who is telling the truth throughout the past two years.
Meanwhile, in Southern California a couple of prominent churches of other denominations had refused to close their churches and were in intense battles with their respective counties. Matters were going to the courts to decide. Our Conference leaders warned us to avoid anything of that kind.
It helped tremendously that the Sacramento County Sheriff put out a statement that his department did not see its role to be that of an enforcer of the county's COVID health restrictions. The sheriff actually told people not to call the sheriff's office to report noncompliant people. He told them to call the health department. This was the first clear word that sheriff's deputies would not be going to churches to disband services or to arrest people.
When infection cases dropped significantly, the county allowed churches to open again up to 25% of seating capacity or a maximum of 100 people, whichever was fewer. We had no idea if many people would come. We decided not to do temperature scans and dispensed with the seating ticket idea, deciding to trust that people could handle themselves adequately in a sanctuary that could seat over 1100 people. We still left every other pew roped off. The number of people brave enough and interested enough to come reached the low 90s. Over the next few weeks, sometimes we did go over 100 in attendance, but we didn't worry about it.
After a few months, the county increased the allowance to 50% or 200 people, whichever was lower. By this time, a number of our church people had had COVID and recovered. A few had to be hospitalized, but they also made full recoveries. Two of our three pastors became infected, along with their wives.
My wife and I didn't have any symptoms, even though we had spent time with some of the others right before they became symptomatic. Previously, I had baptized a man who was sick and who tested positive the next day. Why didn't my wife and I get sick? The other pastors and their wives practiced healthful lifestyles. Perhaps my wife and I escaped because we had been taking vitamin D3 for at least two years before the pandemic hit. We were taking it for mental acuity. We learned at some point during the pandemic that the majority of persons getting infected were vitamin D deficient. Maybe vitamin D was a factor in our not getting the disease. There were probably other factors, too. Who knows for sure?
Early in this phase of being allowed to have 200 in attendance, we had what appeared to be the beginning of an outbreak in our church. Five families—over a dozen persons—were affected all at once. Through the One Call Now system of calling members (nearly 600 calls went out), we let the whole church know that the church wouldn't be open for attendance the next Sabbath. Over the next two weeks, no one else developed symptoms, so we knew there wasn't an outbreak among our congregation after all. Some people came back the following Sabbath, but it took several weeks to build back up to 200 in attendance.
Overall, the church members could see that we were communicating clearly and promptly what was happening and what was expected or recommended. Overall, the membership was showing confidence that we were trying to do what was best to help the greatest number of people feel safe.
Some church members stopped coming right at the beginning of the pandemic and still don't feel safe to come to this day. These are those who feel that they have weak immune systems or who share living quarters with those who are at higher risk. And a few even admitted that they got used to having church in their pajamas via livestream and haven't mustered up the will to make the effort to come back to church.
Meanwhile, our church did lose a member to the coronavirus—a healthy man of about 50 years of age. He was not one that people would have expected to pay the ultimate price. His funeral was a very difficult one for his parents, siblings, adult children, and, of course, his dear wife. It was very sad, hard for them to understand. Why him? He was much loved.
Not everyone has thought that the pastors, the staff, and the church board have handled all aspects of the COVID crisis correctly, but our church has remained united. One board member wanted to be much stricter about the masks. Other board members thought this was ridiculous. The pastors had to remind people to respect others who saw things differently. The majority of the board kept a pretty good balance and was always able to work together calmly on the various details they had to decide on for the life of the church.
When the omicron variant scare hit, our governor and county health officials encouraged another lockdown. By then the courts had ruled that the governor couldn't prevent churches from being open, so this time the official calls for closing were merely strong suggestions. Because the omicron variant was reportedly much more contagious, the staff agreed for me to put out a One Call Now to the members, asking them to keep their masks on while they were seated during Sabbath School and church unless they were very adequately socially distanced.
There were some interesting reactions to that call. A lady called to tell me that I wasn't strict enough, that the mask wearing must be strictly enforced. She was one who hadn't come since the pandemic began. I sympathized with her and tried to explain our position of keeping church open and reasonably safe. While I was talking with her, another member was calling me to berate me on the opposite end of the spectrum. He left a scathing message on my phone. He repeated things that he had already sent me by email a few times in the preceding weeks. He said that the coronavirus was entirely a made-up hoax, and that I was foolishly believing the media's lies and was spreading fear among the members.
The three pastors never did tell church members what we actually believed about the pandemic, the science, or the media's handling of these things. Why didn't we express to the church what we believed about it all? Because our goal was to keep the church from getting all divided over it. If we had given our personal opinions, some would have been very happy with us, but others would have been upset. What good would that have done? We were determined to keep our church functioning as well as possible. Was this the best we could do?
Considering what I heard about strife in other Adventist churches, I think we didn't do too badly. Could a time come that a pastor would have to take a more decided position to be true to God and the membership? I think so. Every circumstance has its own details and nuances.
We must depend on wisdom from God as new and old challenges arise. Greater difficulties are sure to come. May we learn to depend all the more on God's guidance through the Holy Spirit.