Churches Should Be Saving Us from Covid-19

Why aren't churches and church leaders leading the drive to fight this pandemic? They should be the examples of encouraging everyone to mask up and take preventative measures to protect one another and comfort those that need it, during a time which is scary for us all.

The philosophy of christian teaching I follow is all about taking care of people who are hurting, feeding the poor, protecting the vulnerable, and loving people - whether they deserve it or not, whether they are like us or not, whether they ask for it or not. 

Churches that follow that philosophy should be our 'First Line Response'. They should be the shining example of being willing to brave a little (or a lot) of inconvenience in order to take care of others. Mask drives should be right up there along with food drives and clothes drives. 

We should be relying on pastors, preachers, and other faith leaders to wear masks, call on their congregations to wear the masks and follow the recommendations of our medical professionals. They have a (literal) pulpit from which to urge people to protect themselves and others so that we can all live better and end the pandemic sooner.

Churches should be setting the example of how to congregate safely in pandemic times. And some are taking steps in that direction, things like:

• physically distancing during services
• only accepting payment by app so there's no passing of plates
• promoting the online streaming services over attending in person
• doing parking-lot/outdoor drive-in services, even drive-through communions and christenings 

But ALL churches should be serving the community by encouraging their members to be examples of helping everyone by being the best, most careful, most considerate members of the community. Following all the regulations and recommendations. 

Think how awesome it could be... 

• A member of the church contacts her neighbors (at a careful distance), letting them know she's going to make a grocery run tomorrow, and she'd be happy to get groceries for several households together, to reduce the number of people that need to get out and be in the store. 
• Another member of the church sews masks and distributes them to anyone they see without them. 
• A church opens their space and provides members who are medically trained to help with testing and vaccine distribution (just like many churches do for voting). 
• Church-member counselors get training and volunteer to help make the calls to let people know they are positive and help follow-up with contact tracing.
• Pastors and preachers wearing masks where everyone can see them and urging their congregation to do so as well.
• Church service broadcasts could include educational bits about what to do if you've contracted Covid, where to get testing, and what to do to get the vaccine.
• Church members could deliver groceries and care packages to those in quarantine to make it less difficult to stay home as needed.
• Churches could raise money to help with expenses for those out of work because of business shut-downs.

Churches could make a huge difference in this pandemic. They could actually be a driving force in taking care of (read: loving) the entire community.

Instead, I see pictures of people at churches without a mask in sight, gathering shoulder-to-shoulder, spreading everything to everyone. And 'church people' refusing to wear a mask, going in all the stores, running roughshod over every measure put in place to try to protect us all. In fact, I think almost every one of the 'church people' I personally know have contracted the virus at some point.

Church people, do better. Church leaders, teach better. Churches, be better.