Friends,
As you probably know by now, on Tuesday the State of California lifted a lot of its rules around masking and social distancing. Oddly, I haven’t seen too many changes in the ways people actually live their lives, at least not as of the writing of these words. On Wednesday at a Starbucks across from a Costco on the Hayward/Union City frontier, where I went to work while one of my children attended a soccer camp nearby. I was still required to wear a mask while ordering my hot beverage of choice (just coffee, no “room”, thank you very much, and put it in the small cup you call “tall”). On the pitch, my son and his teammates wore masks after the manner of teenaged boys, which is to say, without much enthusiasm or efficacy, but technically the were still in the Pandemic uniform.
This Sunday MPC will join the Baristas and fútbolistas natural to the East Bay borderlands where I wrote these words; we will wear masks in outdoor Celebration as we have done for the last two weeks.
We’re doing this for a few reasons. Most importantly, we are profoundly concerned about the health and safety of our members and friends, some of whom cannot be vaccinated because they are too young or because they have health conditions that preclude vaccination, so we’re proceeding with caution. We won’t do things like unmask, lean into each other, sing, or move indoors for celebration until the church’s re-opening taskforce has had the opportunity to read and discuss all of the rules and directives from the State in an in-depth way.
This, of course, will take some time, and time is the second reason we are deferring our mask-ditching. We want to be deliberate in coming up with a well-designed and smoothly implemented path back to “normal” (whatever that is), so we don’t want to rush. We’re all motivated to move beyond the pandemic, so I expect some kind of plan to emerge in the next couple of weeks.
There are other considerations as well—for example, we’re going to have to move our online streaming equipment from its temporary home to a permanent, fixed and fully installed home in the sanctuary. That’s still in the design phase. I don’t expect it to be overly complicated, but we do want everything to be done in a manner that is thoughtful, and well-executed.
As we move forward we will be reaching out to members of the congregation, asking for your thoughts and ideas. And even if you don’t get a direct prompting from the re-open taskforce or from me, please don’t hesitate to let me know what you think about our process of reopening. If you have ideas or concerns, please know that I value your input.
One way or another, by hard work, bumbling mistakes or by heavenly grace, we’ll get through all this. It won’t be long now.
God’s Peace,
Ben