 everybody's here as we talk about really important information as we begin to think about what it looks like to to reopen our buildings for continued ministry. So I'm going to offer the platform right now to Bishop McKee but before I do that I just want you to remind you that you can go up to your right-hand corner and take an opportunity to do speaker view or grid view however you like to participate and that sometimes can help your experience if you've got the right view and we'll also be having the presentation and the resources in the chat box so that you can cut and paste the links and have resources for yourself and then you can also ask questions in the chat as we continue to meet for the next 90 minutes. So I'll pass everything on over to Bishop McKee and we'll move forward. So I present to you Bishop Mike McKee. Thank you Canny. So I want to thank y'all for being on the call today and I know that some of us are reaching Zoom that fatigue but we will not grow weary in our well-doing I want you to know that but I appreciate you being on and I think that we can be helpful to many of you and we have some people who can be helpful but also planning to present from perspectives on which they're working. I want to acknowledge for all of you that basically the churches in the East District, Northwest District using proper guidelines that we have used as a conference are on they have opened their churches for the most part but as we open one of the things I want to remind you is that we will continue to keep the road with the guidelines in place which means that it's going to be challenging and difficult for some of you in larger congregations especially about where do how many people can we have and I remember I think it was Christchurch I think Kim you did a y'all did a measuring and it's not like what's 25% of the the capacity it's like what's six feet of equal distancing a social distancing around so it's important to remember that. I also want to remind you that I think that there's a tendency that you get a lot of pushback on something like this so I want to say to you that what's guided us as an annual conference has been my some mantra all along is to just focus on on especially especially the general rules in this way do good do no harm and stay in love with God and so especially on that do no harm one of the things that that has been my goal all along for all of us for this desired outcome is number one is I didn't want our clergy and their families to be at risk in contracting COVID-19 because because of this which means that the protocols are designed to lessen that risk. Secondly I didn't want laity to also be at risk if they came to worship God and the experience will not be like what they had but it'll be different but it'll be the way for people to gather and we want people to know that they have to socially distance. I think about the church in this way I know this is this has been very different and I will tell you that I think it will continue to be different and I can do not be I will not be surprised if later this year we close churches again if the virus ticks back up and so I think it's important for us all understand that and one of the reasons why I've been reticent about this is the day we're going back because early March when when the first time we closed for the middle of March I thought by the middle of April we would be open and then so I just did this month by month by month was guided primarily I want to be honest with you by the numbers I think the numbers tell no lies and they tell us how many people how many new cases there are the challenge well and little short rise and Colin and Denton counties recently we believe we can open was with some safety but when it comes to Dallas County we still don't know when that is but we're having a meeting next week either Monday or Tuesday I can't remember Deborah Monday or Tuesday with the Metro district pastors on we just said it and nobody knows it yet it's Monday at two Monday at two with them so we'll be anyway we'll be using the protocols and we're we're asking that people continue to mask I had a very interesting comment from one of our pastors yesterday when there is a little some pushback about masks that it's not comfortable they don't want to go to church and sing through a mask the whole music thing that's probably going to get addressed today but what a mask does is it does not protect the wear it protects everybody else and if we I think when you get to think about if everybody is wearing a mask then everyone is welcome that means a person who has a condition that really puts them at risk I can go everybody's going to be wearing a mask it means people over a certain age can feel more comfortable out going everybody's going to be a wearing a mask and so to be the beloved community and the church that we are everybody should wear a mask and I don't like wearing them either but I tell you what I do not want to infect anybody I don't want to get it but I don't want to do any harm by infecting anybody I've had a COVID-19 test because of all the board members at Memphis hospital were able to get one I'm negative Jones negative I want to stay that way but I want our people to stay that way I know this is going to be a challenging difficult time and we're still in conversation about when those churches the Metro District were open but I think you're going to get a lot of good content today it'll be very helpful and the challenge is going to be about how do you tell someone you got to wear a mask you got to stay six feet apart we don't have room for you but you can go here and watch on TV or any number of things but I know this is hard work and blessings on doing this but there's a goal and the goal is is that no church be a Petri dish for COVID-19 and that everyone we want everyone to feel safe in our buildings no matter when we're together we want everyone to be to be safe from from the spread of the virus this is not a hoax the virus is real and I was just talking to Joel and evidently so I think in someone in Fort Worth has contracted the virus for the second time they think so blessings on your time together I know that you have a good call I will say that Kami and other people who have joined her in this effort are very adept it's what's about what what is permitted and what to do and how to do it and I want to thank I want to thank the annual conference team especially and some other people they've gathered around them for for working on this and blessings on you and because I'm I'm really moving for executive platinum now and zoom miles and I'm gonna get off this call so I can get some more zoom miles since I've got this qualifies as one call but we've all learned to live with this and it's just the way it is in that so blessings on what you did thank you Kami another call with you at some alright thanks so much thank you bye bye so the purpose of today's webinar is to focus on the large church and I'm assuming that if you're a part of a medium-sized church and small church you can also gain a lot of information from today's presenters we're going to be discussing what it means to be a past oral leader in these times as well as a lot of details that have to do with opening our buildings for continual ministry and in our churches so for just for your knowledge today the presenters will be Reverend Kayeck who is from Lovers Lane United Methodist Church we will also have Lenita Jesson who is from First United Methodist Church of Richardson K. Richardson is with us and she will be speaking to us from St. Andrew United Methodist Church I think I noticed that her name was Robert Hasley on there but she is really Kaye Richardson and a great resource and Kim Hill is also with us from Christ United Methodist Church of Plano our district superintendents and center directors will also be facilitating breakout rooms along with these leaders so all of these persons will be assisting us in our presentation also have some information that I'm going to offer you from Reverend Don Underwood that was very insightful and so we look forward to just gathering and giving you all this information the first about 40 minutes we will be going through a lot of details and then the last 40 45 minutes we will be putting you into groups there's about 115 people on this call we were going to divide into 10 groups so you'll you'll have an opportunity to offer your insights and ask your questions in in group so that is what's that that's the plan for today so I will begin by just giving you the topics the first part is we're gonna have a small conversation on what it means to be a faithful leader and see the work we're doing with reopening buildings is a faith movement and a leadership opportunity to express your theology and your scriptural grounding and your practice then we're going to move to the context and challenges that we face and so our contextual realities we're gonna step through a checklist so that you can look and see what some of our larger churches checklist look like and what yours might look like then second then next is the stages and rolling out of a plan and sometimes we'll have to roll back into those that stage if some things happen so just to be aware of how much leadership is needed to just take a look at the things that are going on and then we'll be looking at the larger picture of who the church is right now all the different audiences that your church ways your church looks so you know some of your churches are gonna be meeting online some of them are gonna be in meeting in person and so it's gonna look very different and then last we'll come back together to ask and answer questions so that's our plan and with that and we'll just start our PowerPoint with that I would like to jump over to Todd Harris who I would love for him to share a little bit about what it looks like sorry let's go back where I jumped in Todd there's a new resource out that is very well done it's called resuming care-filled worship and sacred life during a pandemic and this is going to be placed in in the chat so that you can copy and paste it but it it will cover most everything that we have discussed today we'll also have the PowerPoint that you can as I said download but this one particularly I think will be very helpful for your use and with that said one of the things I like about this particular resource is that it has a very strong theological undergirding as well as biblical leadings for us and this time as a way of really caring for our people and our churches and the communities that we live in and honoring their sacred worth and so I think it's very helpful in in the work that we're going to be doing together all right Todd Harris if you would just take a few minutes to talk a little bit about setting the table for pastoral leadership and how it is that the shepherd has become your guiding metaphor as you thought about reopening our buildings thank you cammy and I can we thank you for guiding us in this process to always ground ourselves theologically in what we do whether you're a pastor or a lay leader or another type of leader in your church on staff we're grounded in our faith and our faith should be should be our guide in all processes especially major processes such as this and so I appreciate that cammy encouraging us to do that you know we all have different parts of the Bible different images that that resonate with us throughout our life and at different times different seasons and being a pastor or being a lay leader there are different parts of the Bible that truly speak to us and that we resonate with that begin to serve as a guide and and for me one one of those images in the Bible that is as an image that I've long resonated with and that is that's the image of the shepherd and and and so even as I pastor the church I resonated with the image of the shepherd and all that that perhaps brings to mind as I think about what it means to pastor a congregation and then even as a district superintendent now one of the images that that I remember thinking about when we were challenged to do this back at DS training school again I resonated with the image of the shepherd and what that means in terms of leading flock of churches and and so for me there there is no doubt that that Christ is the good shepherd so Christ is the ultimate shepherd that guides us in our work in our ministry and then then the bishop is also a shepherd that guides and directs our annual conference and and the in the cabinet but but as a district superintendent as a leader in the in the conference as a leader in the district I resonate with this image of the shepherd and all that that brings to mind and and so the shepherd leads the shepherd sometimes guides the shepherd sometimes stands in the middle of the flock sometimes behind the flock but the role of the shepherd is to lead to guide sometimes we prod sometimes we have to go after the lone sheep to to bring them back into into the flock I know I've had multiple conversations with pastors that I've one reason or another haven't had recent contact with and so I like to reach out to them and say hey come and be a part of the flock and let's realize that what we're doing is all together so so sometimes I have to go after the ones that have gone astray and lead them back to the flock one of the things that recognized either in the local church and both in the local church and as a district superintendent is that sometimes the sheep want to do what they want to do and sometimes we call that stubbornness strong willed and and so part of my work is is to help cultivate that relationship so that they're able to catch a glimpse of the vision the Bishop talked about you know a desire to keep all of our pastors and their families safe in this time and and I can't tell you how many times I've heard that he is committed to keeping our pastors and their families safe from the virus he's committed to keeping our churches safe and and and so that's a vision that that he is instilled in our minds as we consider the process of resuming in-person worship so so sometimes sheep want to do their own thing and and perhaps you experience that in your local church and and what's your role in that so so anyway that that's an image that that res that I resonate with that helps to ground me theologically that reminds me of the work that I do and and the variations of the ways in which I live that out in my role now as a district superintendent and all this is to say is to just to challenge you and we're gonna have time in our small group meetings in just a moment to to consider what is it that grounds you theologically maybe maybe your image is being a neighbor maybe maybe your image is another another one that we find and some other one that we find in the Bible but what is it that grounds you theologically that will guide you in the process of resuming in-person worship that's where we're going with this because I believe when we're grounded theologically we're able to differentiate ourselves to self differentiate ourselves as followers of Jesus Christ and we're able to stand there to be a non-anxious presence as we guide our church so what image resonates with you and your soul and guides you especially in this process that's all I have to say about that camey thank you I appreciate that so on a regular basis Todd has been one of those persons that has been a great conversation partner with me and with our cabinet about why we do things theologically and and grounding ourselves biblically so I really appreciate your words thank you so much we're gonna move next to K. Eck and early on lovers Lane did a really good survey found all kinds of interesting pieces of content that helped them guide what their next steps were gonna be some of our larger churches have also done surveys I think some of our smaller ones as well and the ones that people that are presenting today have given K some of the feedback that they've gotten and so she's gonna share right now some of the context challenges and realities and survey information that she's come up with okay friends it is really great to see you all this is my little sheep Ellie who wants to do whatever she wants to do right now when she's supposed to be taking a nap so I apologize for that but when considering your context of ministry we really suggest that you send a survey to your congregation just to get their feedback and find out where they are and I know that many of you have already done this but we would be happy to share our survey questions with you and the survey questions from some of the other large churches who are presenting today if you sent a survey several weeks ago you might consider sending one again to your congregation as people seem to be kind of changing where they stand on how they feel about what's going on but across the board from the surveys that I looked at we ask really similar questions like which service did you attend online what was your experience of that service did you experience guide in a way at that service we ask for people's age what precautions would you need to be in place for you to come back to worship would you bring a child or someone in a high risk category to worship with you and overall it really seemed that those with younger children and those who are in a higher risk category were not ready to return to campus yet quite yet but interestingly those with youth group age students especially those who are in sports are ready to come back as soon as they can some consistent precautions that people seem to expect or to have hand sanitizers available the wearing of face masks designated ingress and egress areas with clearly marked paths on the floor eliminating any handshakes or greeting times and eliminating congregational seeing it sounds like most people are monitoring the coronavirus cases close to them in their area and that's the primary determining factor and when people feel comfortable returning to our campuses so we've also found that most of our classes and groups have transitioned to being online very easily and they really like that we've even gotten some feedback that some prefer to keep the zoom option online so they don't have to get in the car and drive to class or to their groups during the week so as you're considering your context continue to think about how we can do no harm and how you can continue to reach your online audience even as you prepare to come back to in-person worship we we believe we'll see a significant decrease in the number of people who physically attend our campus when we do open so we've tried to be intentional about thinking about how do we continue to address online audience as well as the in-person audience and we've kind of talked about it like this like pre-covid we did worship services online with the people online kind of looking over our shoulder into what was happening in the room post-covid we have to switch that thinking to we're worshiping online and as people come back we let them look over our shoulder into the production of what's going on so we'd be happy to share our surveys with you and some of those results and I encourage you to send one just to to figure out where your people are and what they're expecting so Kay one of the things that you said to us early on was that you were surprised to find out how many folks responded positively to the online experience would you just say a couple words about that? Sure on the lover claim survey we ask specifically how have you experienced God have you experienced God in the same way or more with worshiping online or less and we found that about 75% of the people said that they experienced God in the same way or more than they had previously and so that was really encouraging for us to continue to do really good online worship. All right well thank you Kay and I appreciate the highlights that you brought with us and just showed us today and she does have all of those her survey available as well as some other options if you want to connect with her. All right our next presenter is Kim Hill and she's going to be talking about a checklist for reopening. Hi everyone I'm glad to have this opportunity to share some of the work we've been doing at Christ United. First of all I want to say that there's unfortunately no single checklist that's going to work for everyone so I am kind of giving you a broad brush of what you should be thinking about as you decide to reopen. The first thing is to create a task force that's focused on strategy and procedure. So you need to decide who you want on that task force, a facilities person for sure, probably hospitality, engagement, communications definitely, age level ministries because it's not just about opening worship it's about when to open everything and then decide how you want to or if you want to or when you want to involve lay committees, lay members in that process. So right now we meet and we have been for a long time we meet every week for at least a couple hours to talk about all the reopening issues. Next you'll want to if you have members who are working in the medical profession they're really helpful. It's good to kind of talk to them regularly and see where they are. They're a great resource for determining timing and policies and then Kay just talked about surveys and that surveys have been really helpful for us. We did our segmented and we did demographics and we found the same thing that Lovers Lane did that the older demographic and the younger with children aren't ready to come back yet and I'm happy to share that survey with anyone who would like it and you may want to consider doing surveying more than once because now we're into this almost four months and as we all know it's pretty fluid situation so opinions change throughout. Then you want to do research so we've actually had someone go to a couple of larger churches on Sunday that are already open not Methodist churches and walk through the whole Sunday morning process and that's been pretty enlightening. Gives you a lot of insight into what you probably do want to do and maybe what you don't want to do and there's lots of opportunity for that and then later on you'll hear from Kay Richardson about communicating and it's just vital that throughout this process you regularly communicate what you're doing as a staff to get to reopen because you know your congregation is wondering when how if so it's important to do that. The next piece is phasing and you know to me that's almost the most difficult piece to to come up with it's a kind of a logistical nightmare. Lanita is going to go through Richardson, first Richardson's phasing but you know you have to consider all the different groups you know you've got staff and small groups, mission work, child care preschool, Sunday school, weddings, memorial services, just facilities rental, your gym if you have one and worship and all of those may or may not be phased in at different times and then you have to define your parameters for reopening all those phases or all those groups is it the number of cases you know where do you start do you start with worship do you start with the groups and then identify factors that would result in you closing after you've opened beyond you know the bishop saying we have to close you may have other factors you want to consider and then going to worship which is yeah next slide is worship the determining a worship style so for a lot of us for almost four months we've really been you know refining our worship experience we haven't been you know live for an hour in a long time you know we get to do multiple takes lots of editing we're having some off-site fun this month and so would you suddenly go back to the usual one hour live for I don't know 100 200 people and you still have a thousand plus online expecting expecting what they've been receiving for the last four months do you do a hybrid do you do both so there has to be a really big conversation about that for sure calculating your worship capacity it's not as easy as it sounds you know you put the 36 square feet around every individual because most people don't come into the worship space as individuals so you'll have you know families of four families of two so you're going to have probably a wide range wide-ranging number so we can see our capacity is about 1800 but from our calculations it would be two to three hundred depending on size of family units so you need to make that calculation we've talked about a reservation system just for headcount you wouldn't actually have people you know show their ticket or their phone or whatever when they come to services but it would give you a good idea of headcount and if you're getting close to what capacity is then you have to decide if you're going to you know close the reservation system what i found in looking at other churches and talking to people who have been going to church that doesn't look like it's going to be a problem most people aren't getting close to their capacity even their reduced capacity um and then you have to talk about multiple services for our our sanctuary it will take us an hour and a half to clean the whole sanctuary so we'll need that much time between services if we decide to do multiple services maybe you go in slower and do one one service to begin with and just wait for that because it's you know that's a lot of work to have to clean that quickly singing that's a whole another issue and i know you'll have a whole webinar on that so you're going to have to decide the congregation singing people on the chancel are singing communion got to decide how you might want to do that mask we are planning to require mask for worship and how are you going to manage that you're going to have to decide who who will be the person or the people that will confront people in the sanctuary when they've decided to take their mask off we have signs up right now that say love your neighbor wear a mask so it's just that that's going to be a difficult piece of it and you know how do you do communion with a mask on is another another issue do you manage the parking lot um then you've got to think about ingress and egress how many doors do you have open do you dismiss by rows restrooms we visited one church that had their restrooms closed so which might not be a great idea but if you have your restroom open you have to have attendance in the restroom because they have to clean after every uh every every person that's in there and then really importantly is managing expectations because the people that will come the last time they were in your sanctuary things will have looked a whole lot different especially if you're going to be doing a showing a live stream on the screens and then to prepare you have to develop your Sunday morning policies and procedures so that's going to be a long list so it's all about seating and how you shepherd people through the building to keep them distance long list now and now you got to start recruiting and training so you'll be prepared and you need staff and volunteer participation guidelines a facilities hygiene protocol your facilities use policies need to be amended to account for cobit and all the things that need to be done with that the tracing system it's not something you're required to do but it seems like it would be the right thing to do to know who's in the building on Sunday morning i mean we know who's in the building all week long so we can trace that way but on a Sunday morning how will you do that you don't want pens that everyone's signing in you can use an app and have them do it that way you don't want them punching it in on the screen you need to revise your waivers if you haven't already done that no we won't have Sunday morning worshippers sign waivers but we do have anyone participating in mission work definitely signing waivers that contains the new cobit information and then signage so your communications team is going to be busy creating signage that does all the usual you know check check and make sure you don't have a temperature you don't you know have the symptoms you haven't been around somebody wash your hands i mean just there's so much signage that has to be done so i think i've gone way over my five minutes it's a lot of information thank you so much cam i appreciate it i mean that's slide is going to is made available to you as to the group as well our next presenter is lanita and she is from First United Methodist Church of Richardson she's going to be talking about stages and rolling out a plan thank you cammy um this is so much information as you all will see so moving into the phases as kim mentioned putting together a logistics team is really important and we did it very purposefully making sure that all areas of the church were represented and all demographics so different ages and life stages so that we had all voices heard um and then determining how you are going to move forward as kim mentioned is really important what are going to be the determining factors that will move you from step one to step two for um fum cr we've decided to be more data driven and not date driven and we're not going to move forward until we've seen flattened or declining numbers in dallas county so we started with step zero which is the buildings closed it was when we're shelter in place and we tried to list all the the major items that will need to be looked at from step to step and we chose to do it based on gathering size so the governor and all the cdc the guidelines from the beginning were um gathering size so we are currently in step one transitioning to step two but we are only allowing outside meetings and those are people are scheduling or reserving our parking lot so that's socially distanced with masks um we've had drive-thru parades we've had outdoor baptisms uh confirmation our conformance were baptized outside with lots of creativity um our senior pastor used a palm branch to baptize our conformance so he was able to be socially distanced and far apart we do not have staff on campus yet it's all uh essential staff only and then our school we have an onsite school that was scheduled to open yesterday but um even our government um government facilities are not in agreement of how things should work so we have the Texas Health and Human Services that had given us permission to open because we sorry let me back up we had teacher training and a case um someone tested positive just or had symptoms and um had to self-quarantine immediately following teacher training last week Texas Health and Human Services gave us permission to open on the 15th the Dallas County Department of Health um said everyone had to self-quarantine and so our school opening was pushed off an additional week but we're following all of the guidelines of the temperature checks and reduced class sizes and additional cleaning um all of that then our staff is not on campus yet we're slowly doing that um we have our welcome desk manned just beginning this week for deliveries only and essential staff are coming in um but that all of those guidelines will be put into place um as people enter the building we they're forced to go to one only one door uh temperature checks masks cleaning all of that so then we can move on to step two that is 25 people um we're just moving forward so cautiously our preschool is closed for the summer and it would not open until the fall anyways it follows risd um so staff and volunteers on campus we're just saying approval required socially distanced by appointment so we're not letting anyone into our facility yet we have a building across the street so the first group we wanted to support our support groups like a so they are the first group to be able to meet we're requiring um attendance be taken so that we'll know who's on campus uh it will be kept confidential but we're asking for them to uh follow all of the guidelines so whoever is the person in charge of the group they have to take that responsibility for the group to be meeting all of the requirements um outside organizations still just outside vehicle usage we don't know when our buses and golf carts will be used again the fitness center gym it's staff only right now very limited we said we'll follow the Richardson YMCA however they just opened yesterday so some you know this has to be so fluid where you'll have the best intention today and it could change tomorrow and so you know I encourage you to build a system that can move forward and backward easily um we are not do go don't plan to do any onsite meals or drinks that could be shared we're encouraging anyone that comes on campus to bring their own when they can come on campus so step three is pretty much the same it's just increased to 50 people step four is up to a hundred people step five over a hundred and then the new normal um but we are our senior pastor has been so supportive of acknowledging that whatever decision that you make it's going to be too soon for some and too light for others and just you know accepting that and doing the best that you can it's a lot of information right so most people are going to need to download that and take a look at it are you available for any questions Leneita if they want to email you directly at first absolutely all right um thank you so much for all of that work and showing us steps and I did think that I remember you saying that you also um had talked about you might be in step five but you might want to go back to step four or uh that it's fluid correct yes right thank you so much um Kaye Richardson is going to come up she is um going to speak to us she is from St. Andrew United Methodist Church and they have been discussing a communication strategy at their church that she's going to share thanks Kaye there we go so funny story I'm always teasing Robert Hasley about his technology you so I know you'll help me keep a secret that I accidentally clicked on his calendar invitation instead of my own today so I am Kaye Richardson and I'm so happy to be with all of you today and all of these strategies that you've heard the others speak to we've all been in this together and had the opportunity to share with one another and we are just as you all are going through this process and it seems like it's 2020 and every day we have something new right so we are moving along with our plans to reopen and the first thing that we did was inform our staff because we understand that they're going to be getting questions from all of those that know them the best in the church and so we wanted to make sure we gave them the tools they needed to be able to answer as many questions as possible and of course they can always refer to pastors and senior leadership for answers if they don't know them so last week we informed our staff that this past weekend our pastors would be making announcements in worship services are about our plans to reopen and they have done that and we are letting our congregation know all along the way as you've heard what is going on with our reopening strategies and we said at this point we are going to look at mid July for reopening so we let our staff know last week on Thursday our pastors made that announcement in worship live in all weekend services this past weekend and the next step we are doing just happened right before i got on this call we had a what we call town hall today with our entire staff and we pulled them into the sanctuary and we practiced on them we have put tape at the bottom of our pews right where you would sit down every two feet and so we had our leadership team be our ushers and greeters today as everyone came in and we seated them the way that we have worked through on our plans and then we explained to them the process that we've been going through the last three months we had a leadership task force we had a medical task force we met with our trustees twice we met with our staff parish and then we ultimately met with our executive committee who's planned all of our strategies that we've been in place and will be putting into place effective now so staff got to hear all of that today and that was such an important time that we spent with them this morning so that they felt informed for their own personal selves and knowing the safety precautions we're putting in place for them as well as our congregation and next week we will begin to make a series of videos that we will push out in all of our communication platforms so we will be sending by email a video of our pastors talking about our reopening strategies when that will be and what we expect that will look like we'll also put that on all social media platforms and it will as well be on the church website so that it's available 24 seven and we will continue to communicate these messages about our reopening every weekend until we get there one of the things that we think will find very valuable is having a preview weekend and we plan on doing that the weekend before we will actually be able to invite our congregation back and all those committees I just named to you we've let them know every step when we've been visiting with them that they're going to be our guests to come in and be our preview audience so that we can practice on them and some of them might be a little contankerous when they come to the door and they're asked to put on a mask and that way our volunteers and our staff will have a little practice by the time we're ready to really begin having our congregation come back in so that is kind of our process that we've been working through to this point the week right before we open after that preview weekend there'll be another email very detailed where we're setting expectations this isn't the new normal we don't want this to be normal it's just new and so that's the way we will discuss that with our videos that are going out in all of our platforms for communication this is new and this will be phase one of new we don't know when phase two will come but we will continue to communicate that with you and oh by the way as everyone has said we could go back to having the church have to close down again depending upon what happens and so what we have decided to do is communicate to our congregation that we have three sanctuary work worship services that we will be reopening one is on a Saturday evening and it will have an in-person focus we will still live stream it like we are now but the congregation that's there will be our focus on Sunday morning it will be more of a live audience type experience and we are shooting special videos so that when people come in we will be able to tell them what to expect there may be some musical pieces that will be filmed and they will be shown during that service but they won't be live in the venue with them and so just as our musicians and our musical staff have been so creative during this process we hope that that will continue and that might mean that they'll be seeing some taped pieces so we're going to communicate all of those type things before people arrive as well as all of the three major initiatives that we all know are so important we're a mask and that's going to be mandatory we will require everyone coming in to use hand sanitizer and we will ask them all to social distance so our communication strategy is just that we're doing it as often as we can to stay in touch and let people know what our plans are and i'll just add on to what kim said with our sanctuary we can typically see 1600 we think we'll be doing good to get about 300 so that kind of gives you an idea of the difference in how much the social distancing is really really going to matter we laugh and say we hope we have lots of families of six because we'll be able to get more in instead of lots of individual single people right so that is our strategy right now on communication and just as all of these things we know it's probably going to change by this time next week thanks so much kim okay sorry for offering all that information i think as we move into the next part of our of what we're offering today i'd like to talk a little bit about a piece that don underwood has done called keeping the five audiences connected and this is a little bit of a of a shout out we are in the process of host getting ready to host him to do a webinar on keeping these five audiences connected that these are the new audiences that have have come to be because of COVID-19 so i'm just going to go over these very quickly but i also want to just invite you to watch for the upcoming webinar that i think he'll be able to do a little more deeply so there are five audiences that are now a part of our churches highly engaged and the unafraid and those are going to be the ones that come to our houses of worship no matter what decision we make and when they say it's time to open they are going to be there at the high opening so that's the first audience our second audience is the highly engaged but cautious this is that audience that will return more slowly and in sputters and depending on the degree of confidence they will feel about safety and health and they'll start returning cautiously the next group is the highly engaged who will potentially never return or rarely return and really this audience oftentimes are our our seniors they're but not entirely they are they have good reason to have some anxiety about being out in public they have experienced the the effectiveness of our digital worship experiences and this may change the way that they engage our facilities and the local church and that forever so that group is a very important group and i'll go on to say what the next group is and make a couple more comments sorry go back the next group is the less engaged and you know that's a lot of of our membership they feel a great affection for the church they call the church this our church their church but they are not as engaged and they may have gotten even less engaged during this period of time and that's just one of the realities and then the last is the newly reached and it's possible that our online worship services have reached new people and have reinvigorated a less engaged group and so you know it's important to remember that these persons now feel very connected and and i think one of the things that when i was listening to don underwood speak about this is that we have to really be aware that all of these audiences are very important audiences for us to continue to engage and that we don't want to make a mistake by leaving some of these groups behind as we think about returning back to our buildings they are important to the viability of our churches the financial viability of our churches the spiritual viability of our churches and their staying connected to them is absolutely important so part of what i just wanted you to have a taste of is a piece that he is going to be doing that really talks about keeping engaged with all of these different audiences and continuing to have strong relationships with them so that you will continue to have viability in your churches so i'm going to stop with that i know that there are some questions but we're going to take the questions at the end of the time because i'd like us to move over to our small groups and my plan is to have the small groups be for about 25 minutes we have small group leaders that are going to be leading these groups and you'll have an opportunity to engage each of the topics and share your also your experiences in your knowledge as well as the leaders are going to help with the content so i thank you all i think if it's take a few minutes and i'll let mariel put everybody into groups we'll begin that particular component thank you thank you to all the speakers as well some questions or in comments if anybody has something that they'd like to put in the chat you can go ahead and do that kami while they're working on that some of the ones that came in earlier were questions about contract contact tracing and letting local officials know how do we respect HIPAA laws and let alert possibly exposed individuals if any of our presenters want to comment on that okay um so i don't know that we are under any legal obligation to notify anyone if we find out someone who was here had it it's more for us it's because the person it's my understanding that the when the person's diagnosed they actually have to reveal everyone they've been in contact with it's it's their responsibility and of course we can't give any names i mean even for staff if someone on staff was diagnosed we wouldn't be able to tell the other staff members who it was right and they're all going to figure it out i'm sure but so we just want to be able to know who was in the building so that when someone comes to us and says i need to you know give this information that we were able to do that we're able to share that information i mean i would want to know you know if i were exposed but i don't i have not seen that it is a you know legal reporting obligation kim can you also speak to i think you said you had waivers that you guys put together can you yeah i just sent a message yeah i just sent a message to kelly and i'm going to send the waiver to her as soon as we're done here and y'all want to figure out where you want to put that but i'm happy to share okay there's a similar question i see andy just answered it again kevin strunke had posted about church liability and andy's responses that jody is working on some of those details so well the next slide will be our ntc.org resource page if you're not already very familiar with it um that's where we put content as soon as we were able to have it and distribute it so it's a good first place to look for things like that um what does cleaning between services look like solutions types of wipes vacuuming is a different than our regular cleaning kim you want to speak to that yeah um so for us it looks like our right now it's going to be our custodial service coming in with you know backpacks of whatever spray stuff they decided wouldn't hurt the pews and would dry fastest um i don't know what that is our facilities director knows what that solution is um because you know you think well it's it's every other pew so why don't you just if you're going to do two services the pews that are blocked off the first service you just swap them out but you can't do that because somebody might have touched you know the back of the back of the other so you got to spray everything um so yeah that's essentially what we're going to do is just spray the place down that's the fastest way to do it you can't i mean the sanctuary our slides you can't wipe it down it would take forever and yeah i don't know what the name of the solution is that we're using but i can find that out okay thank you any other questions i didn't understand the call i didn't understand the comment that you can't tell the rest of the staff if a member of the staff becomes ill you can't give their name it's it violates their it violates HIPAA requirements yeah HIPAA doesn't cover us it's another patient they're not patients HIPAA only covers medical medical providers and their patients doesn't apply to us i'm not gonna i'm not gonna tell other staff members that which staff person has has covid i think that's personal private information so don't you think they deserve to know if they had contact with that staff member i'll tell them they had contact with a staff member that has been diagnosed they don't have to know which one all they have to know is they've been in contact with a staff member who has been diagnosed okay i suppose that's your prerogative um i want there's a couple of questions coming in the chat one of them is about different places people have sourced and we've had that on another call and i think there's a list and so um if it hasn't been put together i will try to source that list of places resources people are finding for cleaning supplies and information about them um and then the next one is um any mandatory requirements about closing in person worship if we find out someone had symptoms or a positive test and then anyone through a worship service has been exposed that's not my understanding you have to close but you have to clean we don't have those requirements listed on our website we would like for you to use wisdom um and your own leadership agency to make the right decision i i did have a pastor or church leader ask me what so what if someone does get come down with the virus what what would we do and and i said well my recommendation would be that you close for two weeks that that um i mean i realized that there's a difference in the population and those kinds of things in the northwest district but but if one of the churches that had 50 people in worship and one person came down with it and the way they congregate after church i would say we need to close down for two weeks at least you can see if anybody develops it so so i think you're right can you get a user your wisdom and but but anyway i know it's hard to close down a church with a thousand people in worship right well it's um it is time for us to close down um i think we were supposed to end at 3 30 so i'd like to be able to just stop for a minute and say thank you so much to all of our presenters today um once again you can go on our website and and to our coronavirus resources um and it's also under latest news uh you can also uh we'll take a minute you can cut and paste um the our presentation from today and that's in our chat at the very beginning um as well as the resources that we used that had the i believe had the checklist and also the rolling out plan um so that you can use them for your own resources thank you all for your faithful leadership appreciate so much the work you do at the local church whether you be a layperson a pastor someone on staff i really appreciate all that you're doing to be faithful at this time and to our presenters thank you for the resource that you brought today you have blessed us and we appreciate it so much you know god bless you all