Church openings during covid

TomUK

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I'm just wondering how covid is impacting Anglicans around the world. In the UK, in the midst of this new strain, Anglican churches are coming under a lot of pressure to close, especially those in the south of the country that are hardest hit. I'm interested in what the situation is like in the rest of the world?
 

seeking.IAM

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In my U.S. Midwest state we are under no pressure to close. My Diocese has been more conservative, in general than what is prescribed by authorities. We worshipped outside, masked, and distanced until winter weather set in. Once it was too cold to worship outdoors, we moved inside. We added additional inside services to accommodate distanced, by-reservation-only seating. We sign in for contact tracing in case of an outbreak. No singing. Eucharist is the Host only served in the pew.
 
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GreekOrthodox

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The Greek Orthodox Archdiocese has pretty much followed the guidelines for each state. My parish was closed from March 15 to ehh... June for in-person services. Since then we have what I feel is a pretty balanced way of doing things. Every other pew is closed, and the open pews are open in kind of an X pattern... (hoping this comes out right) and everyone wears a mask. Only the chanters sing the service. I dont think we've had any major issues with Covid being spread.

People ------- People
CLOSED PEW
-------People---------
CLOSED PEW
People--------People
 
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Deegie

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I'm in the Midwestern United States as well. My diocese is following all of the guidelines from civil authorities. We switched to Morning Prayer via Zoom from March until about June/July. After numbers subsided, we started holding Holy Eucharists outside on the lawn, although we did move indoors if it rained. We have enough space to spread everyone out. That lasted until about October, when we went back under restrictions due a rise in cases. The bishop would allow us to livestream a Eucharist right now with only the service participants in attendance, but we have decided not to do that and reverted back to Zoom Morning Prayer.

When we are holding Eucharists, the people receive only the host (the celebrant consumes the small amount of wine which is consecrated) and a number of changes have been implemented in order to minimize people touching things. It is also masks required for everyone throughout the entire service (except for a brief moment to consume the host). Preaching is done with a mask on. No live singing or wind instruments allowed. It's a very different experience right now.

The bright side is that we are using technology far more effectively. We have installed a whole new audio/video setup which allows us to stream in HD to multiple social media platforms. We also have people joining our services from other states -- some are parishioners who had moved away and others are friends/family member of parishioners checking us out. It's pretty neat!
 
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PloverWing

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I'm in New Jersey, one of the US states that was hardest hit at the beginning of the pandemic, back in the spring, so the state and the diocese and the general population have mostly been in agreement about the need to take strong steps to slow the spread of the virus.

Our bishop issued a directive in March that churches were to close, with remote-only services, until further notice. This was not an easy step, as the Eucharist is central to our worship, but it was necessary.

In the fall, the bishop allowed parishes to re-open for outdoor worship if the parish submitted to the diocese a plan outlining safety precautions (distancing, cleaning, etc), which would be reviewed by a diocesan-level committee of scientists. Later in the fall, parishes could open for indoor worship after submitting a similar plan describing indoor safety precautions.

Our current in-person Sunday attendance is about 10, with the remaining members connecting via Zoom or Facebook. The maximum attendance allowed by the bishop goes up and down as the case numbers go up and down, but 10 is within what we're allowed. As with @seeking.IAM 's church, communion is the Host only, we register our info for contact tracing, and only the music director sings. As with @GreekOrthodox 's church, our pews are marked off with a socially-distanced seating pattern.
 
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grasping the after wind

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Our congregation has strict guidelines for worship much more stringent than the guidelines for other establishments that have been open continuously through the pandemic( churches in our state were not allowed to hold indoor services at all for a period of time.). Even more stringent than the government guidelines demand . Perhaps government officials in many states distrust both small businesses and religious organizations very much more than they do large corporations and liquor store owners? Perhaps they have other reasons for treating small businesses and religious organizations so much more harshly with no apparent scientific justification for doing so? Who can say?
 
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Shane R

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We never closed our church building a single Sunday. But lockdowns first hit in Lent and we discontinued our Lenten supper followed by Evensong. No one came to the last one we tried to hold anyway. Normally we would have run midweek supper with Evensong during Advent too, but there was no support for it so we did not.

There were times the number of in person attendees beyond the ministry team were no more than 5-6 but we're hitting 20 most weeks now. This is in a parish with quite a few old folks and some other high risk individuals.

We have been communing everyone by intinction, which is only done by the chalicist -not the recipient, for months. We hosted a small wedding last Saturday and did confirmations Sunday. The clergy have always been available for home visits to serve the Eucharist.
 
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Paidiske

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I'm in Australia. In October I moved from Melbourne (the city hardest hit here, which had a very severe lockdown) to a rural town in the diocese of Wangaratta, which so far has been basically untouched by Covid, so there's been a drastic difference of experience.

In Melbourne we closed the church in March and by the time I left had not resumed services (we had begun to open the doors for people to come in and pray privately). We had been doing various things online; livestreamed morning prayer, pre-recorded Eucharists. Those had benefits and drawbacks but on the whole were not a great experience, I'd say. I think they are now allowed to hold services with very limited numbers present.

Where I am now, I have a parish with four centres. We are only holding regular services in three of them, though, and the smallest we are leaving closed for the time being, because it's easier to socially distance in the physically bigger spaces. We have capacity limits based on our floor area, but they aren't affecting us much except for funerals where the church might normally have been packed out. Communion is in one kind except for the presider. The congregation may not sing indoors, so I'm starting and ending services with a hymn outside.

Those are the main differences. Of course there are sign-in systems and hand sanitiser everywhere. Where we are, masks are not mandated by the state and few people wear them. I have enough trouble getting people to hear me at the best of times (lots of mature aged folk with degrees of hearing loss), and am not making that worse with a mask. Social distancing is hard to enforce at all times, but we encourage people to stay physically apart. Some folk are avoiding handshakes and the like. The peace has become more of a "wave at your socially-distanced neighbour" type thing.

For what it's worth, especially where I was before, we also found the government's rules inconsistent, and it often seemed unfair to us that businesses were allowed more than we were. At one point I was talking about this with my bishop (who was tasked with being the negotiator with government for our diocese) and his comment was that most of the people with whom he was dealing had very little knowledge or experience of church, and there was a lot of ignorance and misunderstanding of how churches actually operate, and that made things more difficult. So I don't know that it was lack of trust, exactly, but certainly a lack of understanding, that contributed to that disconnect.
 
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Tigger45

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In my U.S. Midwest state we are under no pressure to close. My Diocese has been more conservative, in general than what is prescribed by authorities. We worshipped outside, masked, and distanced until winter weather set in. Once it was too cold to worship outdoors, we moved inside. We added additional inside services to accommodate distanced, by-reservation-only seating. We sign in for contact tracing in case of an outbreak. No singing. Eucharist is the Host only served in the pew.
This is pretty much what the ACNA parish did & does. The Episcopal diocese has been shut down for the pandemic but it’s cathedral does a great job streaming services.
 
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TomUK

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Thanks guys, it's really interesting - and to a certain extent encouraging - to hear how churches around the world are responding. I've found that I've been getting frustrated about a few things on a local level about church closures etc. and there's something very helpful about being reminded that this is a global situation.
 
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Paidiske

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My big frustration here is the way the rules seem to be constantly changing. (Finding out on the afternoon of Christmas Eve that we wouldn't be allowed to sing indoors for Christmas was the nadir of that frustration). If I were better able to plan even a few weeks ahead, that would go a long way!
 
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Deegie

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My big frustration here is the way the rules seem to be constantly changing. (Finding out on the afternoon of Christmas Eve that we wouldn't be allowed to sing indoors for Christmas was the nadir of that frustration). If I were better able to plan even a few weeks ahead, that would go a long way!

Although my Bishop is being more restrictive than most (which I'm fine with but bothers some people), there is one great thing about our process: we know exactly what the rules are and will be. If the county is in Phase X, then the following rules apply...if we move to Phase Y, then it will be whatever... Definitely helps with planning. I cannot imagine the frustration of planning Christmas Eve and then having to change the service at the last minute.
 
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Arcangl86

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The two dioceses in my state are using the same restrictions for worship. They are strongly discouraging in person worship, and saying that if churches decide to have it anyway, they must strictly abide to the restrictions the Commonwealth has for non-Church entities (like many US states, religious entities are under lesser degrees of COVID restrictions then non-religious). The logic being that the restrictions are lighter for churches because of the 1st amendment, not necessarily because it's safer.
 
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Shane R

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We were the only church in town having a communion service for several months. The bishop gave parishes the option of going to Morning Prayer as the main service for an extended period of time and the next closest parish in our diocese chose to do that.

We had just got setup for a good video feed when our A/V guy had a pair of heart attacks. He was able to return to church for the first time since October last Sunday, though he is not ready to run the video again.
 
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Paidiske

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Although my Bishop is being more restrictive than most (which I'm fine with but bothers some people), there is one great thing about our process: we know exactly what the rules are and will be. If the county is in Phase X, then the following rules apply...if we move to Phase Y, then it will be whatever... Definitely helps with planning. I cannot imagine the frustration of planning Christmas Eve and then having to change the service at the last minute.

For the record, it's not the Bishop causing most of my frustration, it's the state government. Not helped by the fact that most of the diocese is in one state, with just two parishes (of which I have one) over the border in an other state, so most of the diocese is working to a set of regulations completely different to what I'm working with... sigh.
 
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MarkRohfrietsch

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We follow our Province's guidelines. We are back in lock down. During the first lock down we developed on line services beginning with Pastor's cell phone, then his lap-top, and now we have two remote control cameras and better sound (mixer is on it's way too). When restrictions were eased we did go back to services, but limited in size. To accommodate everyone, we had early Mass in our basement Chapel, and later service in the sanctuary. Now we are back in lock down but are better equipped. See this thread in TT: Covid Lock-down.... And Liturgy
 
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Shane R

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I've been analyzing the statistical trends for our video feed. We peaked at around 170 viewers in a week. This was because the two UMC churches didn't have anything for their people for an extended period of time so some of the Methodists were watching our video. (Our church building could not accommodate 170 people!) The rector thought that was great but it has not yielded any visitors to the in person service. But as time has passed our viewership has waned and we are now getting about 80 views a week.

Some of that is no doubt the result of other churches finally getting something going for their people to watch or do. Some is most likely people losing interest. One of the other interesting trends is that most of the viewership does not come at the time the video is first streamed. It seems many people prefer to tune in late on Sunday and close to half of the weekly viewership tunes in sometime during the work week.

This points to a trend I was reading about in a specifically Roman context the other day: people are not coming back to Mass. I suspect it holds true across a broad spectrum of liturgical churches.
 
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Paidiske

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My numbers are definitely lower than they were pre-Covid. Anecdotally, some older folks in particular are still avoiding places where people gather, so I don't know whether that will pick up a bit over time, but I know we've lost some folks altogether.

But as one person said to me this week, when it's been going on since March and we still aren't back to "normal," some people have fallen out of the habit. And once you've found that you quite like the habit of sleeping in on Sunday, or having that time with family in a leisurely way, or whatever... getting back into the habit of church must feel like trying to go back to exercise after a long break. And we all know how hard that is!
 
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