Words of Advice for Churches from the Surgeon General
Dr. Jerome Adams, Surgeon General of the United States, offered valuable medical guidance for faith communities in an interview for Christianity Today. His wise advice, that we as a church should continue to follow wholeheartedly, can be summarized as follows:
"So my, my message—if I was talking to your congregants—would be number one, we can turn this thing around in three to four weeks, by doing three simple things:
- Embracing wearing face masks when we're in public,
- Making sure we're washing our hands frequently for 20 seconds or using hand sanitizer, and
- Then watching your distance."
Dr. Adams candidly admitted that "the hard one is watching your distance, because there's some details in there that are important, and that includes not having large gatherings… and avoiding gatherings of more than 10 people and maintaining six feet of distance from others. It sounds simple—but truly that's what we need to do and the reward that you get on the back end, if we do that, we can turn around our rates in three to four weeks, to be able to open schools, to get back to worship."
In conclusion, Surgeon General Adams offers further advice on church gatherings:
- So, medically, if you are already meeting, I would say number one, make sure you're protecting the vulnerable. Make sure people who are older and people who have chronic medical conditions aren't coming to those meetings or that you give them consideration, because those are the people who are most at risk of dying or having severe complications from COVID-19. You need to protect those folks.
- If you are meeting, make sure you do it in a socially distanced manner, at least six feet and encourage people when they're around other folks who aren't in their household to wear a mask. If you are meeting, understand that this virus likes to spread person to person. The closer we are to one another, the more likely it is to spread. The further away we are, the less likely it is to spread. The more barriers we have in between—and a mask is a barrier that prevents those droplets from coming out when we're talking or singing or coughing—the barriers we have prevent spread from the virus.
- The final thing to tell those folks is—if you want to open and stay open—then you have to be the loudest advocates in the community of wearing a mask and doing the things that will lower that background transmission rate.
In spite of the concerning growth of COVID cases in Florida, we plan to continue meeting in person as long as we are able to follow Dr. Adam's advice or until we receive new instructions from local officials. As a reminder, these were the instructions we sent when we decided to reopen for in-person services back in June:
- Practice social distance, trying to maintain six feet of separation from others outside your immediate family.
- Avoid hugs and handshakes.
- Frequently wash hands with soap and water or use hand sanitizer.
- Consider wearing a face mask.
- If you feel sick, please stay home.
Like everything we do as a church, we want to act during this crisis in ways that demonstrate our love for one another and that glorify our Lord and Savior.
We are looking forward to seeing many of you this Sunday, and for those prevented from joining us in-person, please continue to watch our service on Facebook Live and YouTube.
