A WORD FROM OUR EXECUTIVE TEAM

Dear Union Avenue,

It’s been three months since the spread of COVID-19 across the country forced the shutdown of so many parts of our lives. Since then you have been faithful in being careful to protect yourselves and others as well as keeping in touch with family, friends, and community during this time. Perhaps we’ve all had a chance to reassess our priorities and what things we hold as important. Thank you for your continued support of our shared ministries as we seek to find new ways of being Church in the midst of a pandemic that has taken so many lives – many precious to us.

While the State of Missouri lifted restrictions earlier in May and the City of St. Louis has eased some restrictions as of late, it still is not possible for us to congregate in person for our various church activities and be safe. The Executive Team has been in frequent and continued discussion over what an eventual reopening would look like, and the Official Board of the Church will be discussing the matter again at its June 21 meeting.  While the details are by no means worked out yet, a few patterns of thinking have emerged that we feel appropriate to share with you now.

The reopening of our church building will likely be done in several progressive phases based upon the current number of infections in our area and the recommendation of health agencies about resuming non-essential gatherings at various numbers of persons.  Our highest priority is to protect and maintain the health of all persons who walk in the door, from the mail carrier to the ministers to the membership at large. We take this very seriously because we love you and our neighbors very seriously.

Our current thought is that once the building is deemed clean and safe, we will reopen it to staff only for the time being, having staff members stagger their work in the office on different days as much as possible. We’re discussing where masks will need to be worn as well as where we will install hand-sanitizing stations throughout the building. We are currently researching best practices for cleaning and maintaining our facilities in light of COVID-19.

Opening the building to smaller public gatherings will be determined later and based upon our ability to ensure the safety of people gathered as well as clean the building (and any surfaces contacted) between such events. In the meantime, we encourage everyone to continue to be the Church through our Zoom and telephone meetings and email.

Our highest priority is to protect and maintain the health of all persons who walk in the door, from the mail carrier to the ministers to the membership at large. We take this very seriously because we love you and our neighbors very seriously.

Opening the building to larger public gatherings is much more difficult and dependent upon further restrictions being lifted/health recommendations being made. Since we worship more than 50 people, we must take into serious consideration what the resumption of worship in the sanctuary (our largest space) would entail. There is much ongoing research about aerosolized particulates from singing and speaking together indoors. This, alongside the difficulties in taking communion, is largely prohibitive for us gathering to worship in person until it is safer to do so. While it would be great to say, “We will resume worshiping in person together in the sanctuary on ___________,” we currently do not have the necessary data to make such a statement.

It is too early to predict when we will resume public events in our building, especially in light of a potential spike in transmission due to the careless disregard of social distancing in Missouri beginning Memorial Day Weekend (for which the county has issued a travel advisory) as well as a similar disregard now happening across the river in Illinois. We hate to wait, but wait we must. Until then, we are learning, discussing, and preparing. And Union Avenue has never throughout this entire pandemic stopped being Church – we’ve just moved our ministry out of the building for now. We’ve never closed.

Please contact us with questions and concerns, and do reach out to Rev. Michael and the Council of Shepherds if you know of or need pastoral care. We love you and want to see you again – hence the deliberate pace of our discussion and action.

Be smart, be safe, and be well. Our love be with you all in Christ Jesus.

The Executive Team:
Robert Reed, Matthew Mahaffey, Enola Proctor, Naomi Pope, Randall Palmer, Rev. Michael Riggs