Nearly every church in America either closed or migrated their worship services online back in March due to the COVID-19 outbreak that took our nation by storm. Since then, there has been a lot of talk about how long these measures should remain in place, what does reopening look like, how long do we wait to reopen, what does reopening safely look like, etc. Truthfully, there have been a lot more questions than answers.
Now that we’re in the month of June and the majority of states in the nation are beginning to reopen, a lot of churches are also making plans to resume on-campus services. I have a lot of friends in ministry around Georgia and around the nation I communicate with regularly so I know that the plans vary widely depending on the context of each church. That is as it should be!
Resuming on-campus worship on Sunday morning was just the first step in our plan to slowly transition back to a normal schedule. Sunday will mark our fourth week of on-campus worship services. The last three weeks have gone very smoothly and we anticipate that to continue to be the case as we transition into the next phase of our reopening plan. I strongly believe one of the key reasons for that is part of our plan from the beginning included communication. There are four key groups we knew we needed to have clear communication with.
Staff
Don’t laugh… you’d be surprised how frequently staff in an organization (including churches!) are not on the same page! We began with our senior staff. Back in mid-March, we began meeting with senior staff twice a week. Nothing fancy, nothing formal, lots of prayer, and lots of honest discussion. Those meetings were followed by less frequent meeting with our entire staff. For those who were not coming into the office daily, we ensured they were able to join us remotely.
Preschool and children’s ministry, senior adults, worship, and everything in between. Then there was a new twist: production planning. Making sure we had a reasonable schedule for recording until we were able to resume live broadcasts. Like a lot of churches, we had some technical issues to resolve during this time. If you’re interested, you can read my post on that topic here. They key is having thorough, candid feedback from every area of ministry.
Key Leaders
Every church has key lay leaders who ensure the ministries of the church are able to function. For us those include our teams that help with greeting people as they arrive on campus, security, audiovisual, praise and worship, etc. Once our plan was developed and communicated to our staff, it is important to pull the appropriate leaders in and get them up to speed. That looks different in each church, but the need is the same.
These are the leaders that will help work through which team members ask to serve during this time. They are also the people who will help with any additional training that may need to be conducted and they will help think through the logistics of reopening. More than likely, they will also help fill in some blanks or may even see something we planning to miss. Getting them involved as soon in the planning process as possible is very helpful!
Congregation
Once the plan is in place, staff is fully aware of the details of the reopening plan, key leaders are in the loop and doing their part, the congregation needs to know how we are moving forward. By this time, there is likely a general overall plan with a target date to resume limited on-campus services. The congregation needs to be informed.
We did something we had never done before: a livestreamed town hall-style event. We were able to take questions in real time via Facebook as our panel talked through the various aspects of our plan. We also posted videos showing our people what they could expect upon arrival. The first time they saw one of our sanitation stations would not be when they arrived at the church. We have a number of digital platforms we use so the videos were posted on each where we also encouraged people to share them on their own accounts.
Local Officials
This last group might come as a surprise, but we felt it was an important group of people to include in our communications. We informed our local mayor, police chief, and fire chief of our plans to resume on-campus services. We provided details of our plan along with links to the various websites from which we were taking guidance (primarily Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, Georgia Department of Public Health, and Georgia Baptist Mission Board).
In our communication we provided highlights of some of the things we are doing to keep everyone safe including a few things we are not doing (e.g. passing offering plates, handing our bulletins). We also let them know that our plan to return to a more normal schedule would follow the guidelines provided by our governor so as things change, we will continue to do our part. We received a very favorable response from each thanking us for letting them know our plans.
Next Steps
The news in our area continues to be favorable and we are looking forward to our next town hall event where we will communicate our next steps with our congregation. In our church, we hope to be able to be able to allow our Sunday School classes to begin meeting on campus again in the coming weeks. Recent changes to the size of groups from 10 to 25 allowed to gather here in our state make this a sensible next step for us.
I am eager to see all of our churches being able to resume their normal schedule of activities in their communities. I pray this is helpful to some who have not yet reached the same place we have and are still working through plans to resume on-campus activities.
Blessings,
Chris