Start by mobilizing your church to meet small and serve big!
The new CDC guidelines came out last night. They recommend no gatherings “of 50 people or more throughout the United States” for the next eight weeks.
What now?
I talked to an official in the administration, and I learned that the federal government is very wary of telling churches they can/cannot meet, but we should expect this kind of guidance for no large groups to include churches.
In addition, I reached out to the Surgeon General’s office. (As I mentioned, I had met with the Surgeon General and his team a couple of weeks ago.) Dr. Janet Wright shared this:
Thank you for your note. I know you and your networks are aware of the CDC guidance to faith-based organizations, available here and last updated on March 6. While the new guidance (Mar 15) does not specifically call out churches, the public health principles of social distancing and protecting the most vulnerable definitely apply. Like all CDC guidance, this is a recommendation based on the best available science.
In other words, this will almost certainly be what your communities will expect unless we hear something more from the CDC. Thus, we should plan accordingly.
As most churches will follow the recommendations, that means we are about to see a mass movement to smaller settings or groups––starting now. For churches, this means all your Easter plans to this point have just changed.
We will be providing more resources about this, including a podcast launching today on leading through this crisis at http://CoronaVirusAndTheChurch.com. The new podcast will be called, Leading in the Coronavirus Crisis and will include pastors, scientists, counselors, and more.
This is not the first time churches have been asked not to meet for a period of time ...
from Christianity Today Magazine https://ift.tt/3b1KtIZ
No comments:
Post a Comment