Calvary Church,
I have been receiving calls and texts about President Trump’s recommendation for governors to allow churches to reopen following CDC guidelines. Like many of you, I am following these developments with interest.
Calvary Church has designed its reopening based upon the CDC guidelines. We are waiting for the approval to go forward. Our reopening includes:
- Asking vulnerable populations and those who are sick to stay home.
- Temperature Checks.
- Guaranteed social distancing during services.
- Mandated mask wearing.
- A temporary hold on kids worshipping separately from their parents. Families would worship together.
- A ticketing system and multiple services to guarantee seating and safety.
This would enable Orland to have well over 100 people per service. Oak Lawn would be able to have services of about 50 to 75 people and Noor could fully reopen.
Unfortunately, Illinois has more stringent regulations than the CDC. In June the governor will allow in-person gatherings of 10 or less persons. Then if our region meets all the state metrics for another 28 days, we would be allowed to have up to 50 persons for each in-person service.
I personally think that we have a well thought out plan in place that will keep our Calvary family as safe as humanly possible and enable us to have service sizes that would make in-person services more feasible. Limiting services to 50 people at a time would mean a lot of services! While there are always risks, our plan meets or exceeds CDC guidelines.
Governor Pritzker’s restrictions seem excessive especially while stores like Costco and Home Depot are open and operating with hundreds of people. That being said, we will not break state regulations. From my point of view, this is not persecution of the church but a zealous state government seeking to overly protect its citizens. We will submit to government authorities, pray for them, and will closely watch as this develops both in the courts and in the governor’s office.
We are excited that on June 7 Calvary will have a drive-in church service. Then on June 14 campuses will restart separate services either online or drive-in at their respective campuses.
If we find that there is a desire to continue drive-in services, we will seek to make these services a regular part of Sunday worship.
Attached is an article that has helpful information concerning churches, Governor Pritzker and President Trump.
Longing to see you,
Pastor Ron
