Last Thursday, I was able to receive the second dose of the Moderna Covid vaccination. I can’t tell you how fortunate I feel to have it. Again, I am glad that I didn’t have to make up the guidelines for who receives it and when. Seems like no matter what is decided, someone was/is going to be upset.
I also hear more and more stories about people from the congregation getting scheduled for first and second doses. Some with more success than others. Because of the vaccination, many COVID related numbers seem to be trending in the right direction. In fact, on my drive to the church building today, I was listening to the podcast, “Up First” by NPR, and they were sharing the same positive news. It does seem like there is light at the end of the tunnel. This will not go on forever.
Because things are appearing to be moving in the right direction, it is natural to start wondering when will we begin offering indoor worship services again. In fact, if you have asked yourself that question, you are not alone. I think of it often, as does church council. At our last council meeting, this past Thursday, we spent a good portion of it discussing this question. The conversation was around finding some type of metric that we could follow based on information that we all agree on. Then when the agreed upon information was in an agreed upon range, we would have the conversation about resuming in-person worship. But finding that information is difficult. We didn’t want to use something like “survival rate” or “total deaths.” Both can be used to skew opinions easily. Even if “survival rate” is a fraction of 1%, when you extrapolate that over the entire population, total deaths could be in the millions. Obviously, that is unacceptable. In reverse thought, if you solely focus on the total number of deaths, it can lead to paralysis and the thinking that there is no acceptable safe behavior.
Fortunately, we came upon the website www.covidactnow.org. What we like about this website is it provides information in easy-to-read formats and provides context for the information. You can search by state, county and city metro areas to find up-to-date COVID information. The 4 basic data points it uses are “daily new cases per 100k,” “infection rate,” positive test rate,” and “ICU capacity.” It provides where a state, county or city metro area currently is, regarding these areas, and what are target rates to achieve that would allow that county to “move to a different color.” I encourage you to take some time and explore it. When it designates Rockingham County as “orange” (we are currently “red”) we will have the conversation about offering in-person worship. Until then, we believe it is not safe to do so. We will be checking this site regularly and will have a special council meeting if we are designated “orange” before our regularly scheduled monthly meeting.
Please pray for everyone who is making decisions during this time. There is no easy decision. Pray for school superintendents and principals. Pray for mayor’s and county executives. Pray for business owners. We most likely may never know what the “right” decision was, so pray that we have the courage to make what we think are good and wise decisions with the information that we currently have.
Grace and Peace,
Pastor Tim