Like I mentioned in the last week’s Pastor’s column, Hanmaum church will move one step slower than the American churches and the state’s recommendation for in-person Sunday worship service. Nashua Baptist Church who we share the building with will resume the in-person service from June 14th. Hanmaum church will resume the in-person service from June 28th with the limited number of attendees.
The state allows the 40 percent occupancy for worship service, but our church will limit it to 10 percent (average 8 percent). Only the 10 groups will be allowed in- person service where each group should consist of people who do not need to keep distance from each other (for example, those sharing living space such as family members). The total occupancy count will be maximum of 20. This means that total of 6 groups can attend the service not counting the 5 essential worship helpers (4 groups).
In this way, we can maintain 8 feet (2meter 43 centimeters) between the groups. The distance between the sermon podium and church attendees will be 18 feet (5 meters and 48 centimeters). During the service, we open up all the 6 entrance doors, and use the lobby areas between the sanctuary and main entrance as well. If you also consider the height of the ceiling, we have pretty good spaces between the occupants. To prevent the droplets that can come from the sermon podium, the work is in progress to put up 20-inch glass barrier surrounding the podium. The worship helpers will minimize their space usage and not interleave their walking path.
Beside this, we will enforce the basic precautions to limit the spread of the virus (a. ventilation before and after the service b. pre-sanitization of entire main sanctuary, bathroom, busy spots and fixtures c. all the attendees will continue to wear the masks unless needed for service d. temperature check, disposal glove, mask and hand sanitizer will be provided)
Ultimately, I think we need to leverage the fact that our community is small in number and come up with our own unique way to protect the community from the virus. The benefit of a small community is transparency; we can see through each other’s life. We know who is attending the service and can easily check the attendee’s exposure level to the virus. The worship helpers are already sharing such information with each other. Also, they are doing the diligence in protecting themselves from the virus as well.
If you want to attend the service, please inform me or SeoYoung mokja in advance. We will check the attendee’s exposure level to the virus, fix the final head count, and assign the seating. We will provide personalized guidelines and instructions before you can enter the main sanctuary and have dry run.
Experience so far taught me that virus protection cannot be learned in the classroom. Our lifestyle should change. So, for a while, we will keep the Sunday service attendees small, and learn to protect ourselves from the virus as a whole. In this spirit, we will pick one person from those who want to attend the service and appoint him as a virus protection trainer for the week. His job is to consciously raise awareness of the virus protection and offer ways to put it into practice so that it will become our lifestyle. He will be responsible for enforcing social distancing and raise his voice when detected undesirable behavior. He should expect the unexpected and make the best effort to control it as well.
We will continue the online service along with the in-person service. Stay strong! We are one body. I will be on your side protecting you with God.
From Choi, Ji Won.