Mass Impact: Little Church in a Big Coronavirus Hotspot
By: Alison Acone
Tags: Church Leadership, Co Vid 19, Seattle, Coronavirus, Health

Leading on the edge of a COVID-19 outbreak

This new church on Seattle’s Eastside just celebrated their 3rd birthday last month. 1,000 people consider us their church home, and I serve as their Care Pastor. Being a young church plant, we are scrappy and nimble, not bound to years of protocol and procedure. However, with a small staff of six, finding ourselves smack in the middle of the 1st US outbreak of COVID-19 has felt overwhelming. We’ve wished for a playbook to follow. We are less than 5 miles from Evergreen Hospital, final stop for the first US victims of coronavirus.

February 3, 2020

Our missionary family from China writes to us with a prayer request. The business and school shutdowns there have happened, citizens are asked to isolate so as to slow the virus’ spread. “We pray not that we are protected; we pray to be USED,” they write. As if with a laser, God highlights this phrase to me and inscribes it on my heart. Soon it will become our church’s mantra.

February 6, 2020

We email our church the missionary’s prayer request, along with other regularly scheduled announcements. The virus still feels far away. Churchlife carries on as normal.

MidFebruary

The news reported one confirmed case in our area by this point, but it had been a recent traveler to Wuhan, China. Knowing this connection, it minimized alarm… because to our knowledge, nobody in our church had been to Wuhan recently.

Our region is filled with high-tech companies (Microsoft, Google, Amazon) whose people are regularly zipping around the world. Seattle and its Eastside brim with international color and flavor.

The reality here: to touch a grocery cart is to touch the globe.

I had been thinking too small, thinking our church didn’t have recently traveled members. Had they been to the MARKET this week should have been the question I asked.

Late February

Random cases began cropping up in the region, mostly affecting the elderly or the infirm. Once a high-schooler became infected we felt inner alert.

News and media sources were scoured throughout the day. I followed the CDC, the Washington Department of Health, and King County Public Health on Twitter. I signed up for email alerts for King County’s COVID-19 Updates. PR Conferences became the soundtrack of my lunch hour. I assigned a friend the task of alerting me as soon as our local school superintendent made a district-wide announcement.

Caring for a family at a time of pandemic requires two things: correct information and a reasonable response. The same is true for church families.

We alerted our ministry teams that they would have ongoing information that they could disseminate to their team members. Scheduling volunteers might be tricky as the over-60 crowd, the pregnant, and the unwell were being advised to isolate. We planned to continue services until advised otherwise from government agencies.

Photo by Chintya Akemi Keirayuki on Unsplash

Thursday, February 27, 2020

I run to our local Costco in the midday, needing to restock our coffee cart. It is a Thursday, the end of our business week. Church in the Pacific Northwest demands a complete coffee experience, as you might imagine. I am stunned to see a gigantic mommy crowd there, lining a dozen deep at every cashier. When asked about the surge, the employee winks and hints that our locals are concerned about coronavirus.

Casually, I Instagram-story my reaction and ask if anyone’s shopping habits have changed recently. Most scoff. Most millennial singles scoff, I should say. Those who are parents have seen fit to have a few extra supplies on hand.

In my mind’s eye, I scan our church’s supply closet and wonder how many rolls of TP we have left.

Friday, February 28, 2020

The CDC is urging our area to practice what is known as nonpharmaceutical practices to limit virus transmission. Vampire-style sneezing, thorough handwashing, surface sanitizing, and social distancing are my new target areas of research.

I contemplate the role of church and its role to inform. Emails are coming in from every agency and organization in our area, seeming to say the same things. Stay at home if you have symptoms. Wash those hands and wash them well. Stay six feet away from each other.

Surely if I am receiving so much information, others are as well. My desire is to use our communication for spiritual health and not as much physical health. I want our people to know the basics of good health, but I don’t want to become whitenoise and redundant to the host of other public service announcements.

Pray not that we are protected; pray we will be USED.

We opted to nod to the CDC and provide links to government agencies in our written communications, but word usage focused on the practical implications for our church, and relevant spiritual encouragement.

I begin to pre-triage Care Ministry, imagining our community in pandemic. What are the needs, and how can a small church meet them?

Saturday, February 29, 2020

I pick up our guest speaker from the airport just as news breaks out of Kirkland, not five miles from us. A state of emergency is called by the Governor as the first coronavirus patient in the US dies at our local hospital.

David Ryder/Reuters

King County patient is first in US to die as officials scramble to stem spread of coronavirus

Our guest speaker, Scott Swan, is unphased by the possibility there will be nobody who shows up in the morning for church. “God will bring whoever is supposed to be there,” he says humbly. As a broadcast journalist for CBS out of Indianapolis, he is well aware of the AP Wire and all breaking news, and he finds his message to be timely. Anxiety, a critical health incident, and personal faith are the elements he planned to speak on. I marvel that God had orchestrated the timing of this message in such a way.

With the news media offering around the clock coverage on the outbreak, my guess is that very few will find the courage to attend a large gathering. But like Scott said, God will bring whoever is supposed to be there. And the rest can catch up on youtube later on.

Sunday, March 1, 2020

I arrive with Scott at 8am for the preservice meeting and consider stacking up some of the 200+ chairs before the 9am service begins. Already, my phone is blowing up with volunteers calling in sick: my Usher Lead and his family are ill, as are my Facilities Team Leads.

The Prayer Team fortunately showed up, along with the Brew Crew and Worship Teams. I figure with coffee, prayer, worship and teaching we’ll have a good day… and as soon as the Childrens Leaders show up, I know things are looking up.

Much to my surprise, 420 brave souls came to church that day.

Throughout the morning’s conversations I got the peoples’ pulse on the situation. Some were absolutely unaware there was a pandemic in our backyard. A few felt the media and government reactions were too conservative. The essential oil crowd felt confident. The young mommies were leaning on the fact that no one under age 9 had been infected. As settled as this crowd seemed to be, we all whiteknuckled a bit whenever someone coughed.

Later that day, a second COVID-19 death was reported out of Evergreen Hospital.

Monday, March 2, 2020

Our team meeting was smaller than normal, as our youth pastor was sick and our executive pastor was out on a family emergency. The remaining four of us hit the gas pedal with planning for an eventual mandatory closure by the state. As a new church, we needed to ramp up to the possibility of livestreaming services within 6 days. Camera equipment needed to be purchased, installed and tested. Music rights needed license for broadcast. Online programming for children needed to be procured. Email and social media communication needed to be ready at the go. We predicted our church would keep an eye on the news and immediately ask questions about midweek group schedules.

Photo by Douglas Bagg on Unsplash

Our local school district announced closures for two days to train teachers to teach on the cloud.

Four more deaths were reported, all stemming from Life Care Center in Kirkland. We watched a larger local church respond with enormous staff support, and we felt a longing to serve at that capacity. Instead, we four staffers had lunch at our local Chinese restaurant, hoping to support small businesses that had taken a stigma hit recently. We discussed care strategies and outreach opportunities over jasmine tea and pineapple chicken.

As two of our key volunteers for Celebrate Recovery were sick, we canceled that night’s meeting.

A former health strategy officer gave me an hour’s consultation, covering best practices for organizations, how to message, and adjustments to make.

Before I left for the day, the senior pastor asked me to DISINFECT THE BUILDING ASAP. Putting away my car keys, I stayed late to squirt my bleach solution and spray down surfaces with Lysol. I left the kids’ rooms for the Children’s Director to clean in the morning.

Tuesday, March 3, 2020

The Children’s Director’s kids were sick, so he stayed home and I sanitized the rooms just in case we’d be having church that weekend.

We hoped for the best but prepared for NOT the best.

We cleaned and sanitized as if church would happen. I unsuccessfully shopped online at Costco and Amazon for toilet paper, cleaning supplies, and Purell hand sanitizer…. I unsuccessfully repeated my efforts at brick and mortar stores. I knew we could get the building up to safely regulations at least once, but until retailers were able to resupply, we’d soon come to the end of our stock.

We accidentally canceled the Women’s Morning Bible Study the next day… the “fog of war” and intense operations caused a slight miscommunication. Whoops! I saw the break as a chance to get the building up to code, so to speak…. as I had been cleaning, I wondered how sustainable it would be moving forward to disinfect after humans continually reentered the scene.

Our team leads asked our healthy weekend volunteers to serve at a higher capacity, offsetting the over-60’s, the pregnant and unwell. After Sunday’s abseenteeism at the leadership levels, we saw the need to gird up the troops.

Meanwhile, throughout all the strategic planning and cleaning, the missionary’s refrain kept looping in my mind:

Pray not that we are protected; pray we will be USED.

How could our little church make a big impact here?

Before I fell asleep that night, a congregant emailed me with ideas of how to bless the community.

Wednesday, March 3, 2020

That the Holy Spirit would move ahead of us in this week was a tremendous encouragement. He may not have been spritzing Lysol, but while that was happening, He was stirring the hearts of the people and going before us.

The email the night before was an answer to the prayer that we be used.

Photo by John Schnobrich on Unsplash

All but ONE of the women in the Bible study got the memo about its cancellation, and that ONE stopped by my desk, full of great ideas about community support. Due to our surprise free hour in our schedule, we collaborated about serving ideas, just shy of whiteboarding. I took our ideas up the food chain to our executive and senior pastors, and were able to solidify a course of action that day.

Connections were made to the nearby agencies we’d partner with, and at last the vision of BEING USED was coming in to sight. With unexpected lightheartedness, I stepped into our GriefShare support group that night. There may have been other midweek programs that week getting canceled, but bereavement support was going to happen. And its leader tonight felt buoyed that beyond logistics, beyond CDC cleaning guidelines, beyond the switch from handshakes to fistbumps, we were going to be USED. We were on the brink of caring for our community in tangible ways. I was giddy.

Before I fell asleep that night, I saw the 9th death had been reported in our county.

Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash

Thursday, March 5, 2020

Following the closure schedule of our local school district, we canceled youth group that night. Our youth pastor was finally feeling better and was back in the office. With youth group canceled, he functioned as a utility player, helping our worship director install cameras and test the soundboard for livestreaming. He also ordered lunch in for us, which proved to be an oasis time for our staff to reconnect. We had gone a million miles an hour for the past few days, and to slow down over Ezell’s fried chicken was deeply restorative.

This week had been an incredible sprint for our team as we covered all the bases and strained to hit our goals. To establish livestreaming meant we needed our website updated as well, so images and text and calendaring were created and uploaded. Collaboration with new community partners was begun, and details needed to be confirmed before public messaging happened. We tried to stay ahead of communication with our leaders, careful to not provoke alarm. The CDC provided resources we needed for balanced verbiage — cautious but not alarmist.

In terms of our community, the local school mandated offsite/on-cloud learning for two weeks. Microsoft closed its doors until March 25; Amazon closed its doors for the time being.

We kept hoping for the best, which would be to meet on Sunday, but we also prepared for the NOT best. The elders took a conference call and agreed to pray overnight about the decision to close the doors on Sunday. They’d reconnect in the morning with a decision.

Friday, March 6, 2020

Almost all of us came in on our day off. Our senior pastor consulted with other key churches in our area to gauge their wisdom, and then placed the call to the elder team. It was unanimously but relunctantly agreed to close the doors on Sunday and only livestream.

Saturday, March 7, 2020

Ministries and organizations are often criticized for these kinds of decisions. Pandemics can be polarizing. Leadership takes the information given by reputable sources, it synthesizes, it asks wise counsel. Ministry leadership prays for wisdom and insight. All organizations consider what is best for the community at large and then they make the call.

We sent our email communication yesterday afternoon and have been met with kind support from our people. They are anxious to get to the next phase of this, which is outreach and community support. So am I.

Being a church in the fast-moving outbreak region has been challenging. We long to shepherd our flock through the anxiety and fear, and spend less time worried about technology and logistics. My hope is that this summary might help your own church prepare for what’s ahead…. perhaps you can get a jump on the logistics now and be better positioned because of our experience.