Friends,
Ordinarily, I’d use this space—my column in the last Contact issue before Christmas, to share a few ideas and insights that, for whatever reason, didn’t make it into my Christmas sermon. This year, I’m writing to exhort you to be careful as you celebrate Christmas.
A year ago, we had our Christmas Eve services on YouTube, and the service was really good, but it wasn’t nearly as wonderful as in-person Christmas celebration. Last season, as I sat in the living room of the manse and watched the service online, I said a prayer of gratitude for knowledge that 2021’s Christmas would take place after the COVID-19 pandemic had been relegated to wherever it is that history stores it’s odd stories and strange happenings.
Turns out I was entirely wrong about that. I am grateful that we are now worshiping in person, and I cherish every opportunity I have to see members of the MPC family face-to-face, but the COVID-19 pandemic is not behind us, not even close.
So please be careful as you celebrate Christmas. Please keep wearing masks, and if you have not yet received your vaccine booster, please do so. If you have yet to get vaccinated, now really is the time. In my house, as we gather with friends for Christmas dinner, we will all be taking at-home COVID tests as an extra precaution, and I recommend the same for you and your loved ones.
This evening the MPC Re-Opening Taskforce (our COVID response team) will be meeting to make sure that we are doing everything in our power to keep MPC members, friends, and visitors safe at our Christmas Eve services. I don’t yet know what the taskforce will recommend, but in advance of that meeting I feel as if I can say that our Christmas eve services will go ahead much in the same way they do on Sunday mornings, with vaccine or negative test requirements and mask-wearing mandated for everyone except leaders who have been tested. We will run the sanctuary’s air through the high-end filters we’ve installed, and we will encourage distance in seating and in interacting. I also would say that if you can get tested using an at-home test or a clinical test before coming to Church Christmas Eve, that is one way you can help keep the congregation safe. And, we will be having three services on Christmas Eve—one at 4PM, one at 5:30 PM and one at 9PM. We expect a larger crowd at 5:30, so if you are free to join one of the other services, that would help make the 5:30 crowd smaller, which would help keep everyone safer.
The Omicron wave has not yet hit the Bay Area, which remains a region with low transmission rates relative to elsewhere in the country. My prayer is that we can avoid the worst that Omicron has to offer us by loving one another enough to do what we can to stay safe.
A Merry and Safe Christmas to You,
Ben
PS I will be on vacation following the Christmas weekend, and back in the office on January 11, 2022.