Columbiana’s Grace Church has come up with creative ways to keep members safe.

A series of stories highlighting reopening efforts post-pandemic continues today with a look at some local churches.

COLUMBIANA — While Gov. Mike DeWine and Dr. Amy Acton ordered many businesses to close in March to slow the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, religious buildings weren’t necessarily subject to those mandates. However, most churches voluntarily closed and offered virtual or drive-in services.

But as the state is slowly opening back up, DeWine has offered up many suggestions to ensure safety. Grace Church in Columbiana has thought of creative ways to make sure everyone is comfortable during the return to mass.

Pastor Rob Joy said that while streaming wasn’t necessarily an option given the older demographic of the congregation, they initially thought of other ways to bring the mass to the people.

“I had a service that was printed up on the liturgy and a sermon and everything online,” Joy said. “My daughter plays the piano, so I would make a sound file of a couple hymns and put that on.”

On Easter, the church transitioned to a parking lot broadcasting service, and they have stuck with that strategy ever since. Joy delivers the mass from the back door near the parking lot, where people can park and their cars and listen to the mass through an FM radio station.

“People really seem to like it,” Joy said. “They feel safe about it, and I just step out the back door, so it’s a pretty smooth process. People are just feeling good right now, and I would say most of the people are still coming.

While members of the church are meeting to discuss the procedures to get back into the sanctuary, Joy said he doesn’t have any expectations on when that will happen. For right now, he is pleased that the congregation feels safe with the current set up.

Joy much prefers the parking lot service opposed to posting the service online, because it gives him more of a chance to connect with the congregation.

“If I can see them, it makes a big difference,” Joy said. “The parking lot service has a feel of being together more than a streaming service would. I’m really happy with it right now.”

— Scott Lendak

SALEM — If church members at Emmanuel Lutheran Church in Salem happen to look up to the choir loft, they’ll notice a shower curtain surrounding their organist.

That’s one of many signs of caution being taken against the coronavirus and put into play as area churches welcomed their flocks back to the pews.

The seating arrangements look a little different, too, with some pews roped off and marked with signs that say no seating.

Emmanuel Lutheran Pastor Alan Smearsoll said it’s been an evolution, getting used to all the rules and helping the church members get used to the rules.

“It’s certainly a challenge trying to figure out how to abide by all the requirements and pull it off. We erred on the side of caution,” he said.

To control the flow of people, he explained entry is limited to the handicapped entrance off of Filbert and ropes block access to certain pews, with every third pew open. There’s also tape on the pews to mark off 6 feet for social distancing between members.

Currently, the in-person services are held at 6:30 p.m. Saturday and 9:30 a.m. Sunday, with a service also available on YouTube. The ropes are moved between the two services so people aren’t sitting in the same pews as the previous service and caretakers clean all the high-touch surfaces.

The wearing of face masks is recommended, but not required. Plus, every pew has bottles of hand sanitizer where books used to be. With the hymnals removed, information is shown on a monitor, but Smearsoll said singing is not recommended because the act of singing can propel droplets.

Attendance has been low, with each service averaging about 20 attendees.

“I think a lot of people are still hesitant about going into spaces like that,” Smearsoll said.

After more than two months of facing an empty church while taping the YouTube service, he said the first words out of his mouth the first weekend were “it’s nice to be preaching to people in the pews.”

— Mary Ann Greier

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“Open Again: the same message, just in a different way”

On May 17, we had permission from our district to go ahead and open our services (three times a week) with special restrictions and precautions due to the coronavirus. We had to watch a 45-minute video on safety precautions to protect all of the participants in our church. We have learned to rise to new heights- not losing any of our spirituality while combining the physical safety of our people with heightened sanitization procedures. We are still having wonderful church services, we are just doing things in a different way.

When you come to our church, both doors to our foyer are propped open so that there is no hand-contact on our doors, reducing the chance of transmitting any illness. Many mornings, we have a greeter near the foyer, but we do not shake hands or hug at this time, even though that is a big part of who we are.

Next, we have a sanitizing station with Clorox wipes, hand sanitizers, and professional/hospital-grade disinfectant spray that kills multiple viruses, even on cloth surfaces. We also offer masks for those that wish to wear them, and this is as good a place as any to explain the rules we have in place for the health and safety of our congregation:

— You are not allowed to come with any fevers, runny noses, coughs, or illnesses of any kind.

— No hugging, kissing, or shaking hands outside of your household.

— Alternating rows of seats are roped off to maintain social distancing between families.

— We do not use an offering plate, but have opted instead to use an offering box in the rear of the sanctuary to reduce hand-to-hand contact.

For additional safety, at the end of our services, we dismiss row by row. On the spiritual side of this, we still engage in clapping, singing, and worshipping, and we have set up individual chairs (6 feet apart for safety) in the front of our church for Family Altar. Family Altar is a time to go and pray for situations in your life, such as finances, marital problems, spiritual growth, sickness, or just a plain thank you to God for all He does. We offer this every service because it is a part of who we are. It allows us to grow ever closer in our relationship with God.

Covid-19 has also opened up a new dynamic doorway that we were forced to use during our closure, and that is Facebook Live. We can easily have 70 to 270 people watch our services live or re-watch us throughout the week. Again, delivering the same message but in a different way, we are going to do a Vacation Bible School in a box. This will be passed out in a drive-through format in our rear parking lot, with our volunteers wearing gloves and masks, on Saturday, July 11. Each box will contain activities, snacks, stories, and music for the children in our community, and we will post a live video each morning during the following week for the children to get a sense of interaction and to help them get connected to God.

Overall, the spirituality of the people has been great, the music has been wonderful, the presence of God in our services is precious, and most of all, we are going the extra mile to keep the church sanitized. After every service, we spray all of the seats, the bathrooms are scrubbed, light switches are sanitized, and all of the doors are wiped down in preparation for the next service. For families with small children, we have also assigned them dedicated rooms off of our sanctuary so they can listen to the messages while tending their children, and keep the small children from interacting with one another for the health and safety of everyone involved. It is still the wonderful message of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, but we are trying to make every effort to keep our families safe from this pandemic. Our motto here is “Trust God, Be Safe.”

— Pastor Brian Brown and the congregation of the Lisbon Church of the Nazarene

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EAST LIVERPOOL — For Grace City Church, pastors Jeff and Lisa Smith missed their spiritual family and are glad to be back.

Lisa Smith explained Tuesday afternoon that 100 percent of the congregation isn’t back on site, but the number is slowly growing since the pandemic struck.

Entering week four since reopening its doors, the Smiths never had lost a step, though Lisa admitted that it was more difficult to keep in touch.

Grace City Church was instrumental in operations of many of the pandemic-related efforts, such as no-contact hot meal deliveries every Thursday to the porches of shut-ins.

Those efforts continued Tuesday afternoon as the church hosted a drive-thru food distribution.

Lisa Smith explained that Gordon Food Service GFS) reached out them to assist them in distributing hundreds of pounds of food through a U.S. Department of Agriculture program.

In addition to sharing their weekly 250 lb. delivery with five other area churches, volunteers prepared frozen pasta and pork dinners for distribution by drive-thru.

The meals either can by boiled in a bag or microwaved and the only condition is that recipients must be Ohio residents, she explained.

Most of the couple’s congregation is back, although the state never officially closed churches. However, the Smiths have attempted to assure that attendance is done safely, offering stations throughout the facility, where hand sanitizer and masks can easily be accessed and encouraging social distancing whenever possible.

It definitely has been a learning curve, she acknowledged that they were able to try out on the church’s Leadership Team, which had came back two weeks earlier after growing weary of being away.

She said they were extremely concerned about their more elderly members, who had limited online access if any at all.

Each church is approaching the situation differently.

For example, Brenda Johnson of Sheridan AME (African Methodist Episcopal) Church in East Liverpool said that she is still waiting for their overseeing body to allow parishoners to come back to in-person services.

Across the river, Steve Cummings, pastor of Chester Church of the Nazarene, was spending his Sunday morning with members of the church’s musical team, rehearsing for their 11 a.m. service.

They have been offering in-person services since after Mother’s Day, he explained during a break.

The church had offered two services (one for the elderly and immune suppressed with the second for everyone else) for two weeks in an attempt to keep social distancing and numbers down.

Generally, the church has one service for all its regular 80 attendees. However, after seeing that approximately 36 were coming between the two services, Cummings made the decision to combine them  henceforth.

The pastor added that they also have been taking other precautions, including staggering attendees in pews; propping the doors wide open during services and trying to encourage social distancing. However, he, like Smith, acknowledges that always isn’t successful especially due to the happy reunions.

Cummings said that the church plans to continue streaming their services on social media, although the numbers have dropped some churches opened their doors.

For example, the first week’s services had gotten 700 views but they have consistently declined hundreds of views until stabilizing at 200.

It has been a rough year for the Chester Church of Nazarene, who lost their parsonage to a fire on January 5. “2020 hasn’t been pretty for anybody, but the community has been so generous,” he explained. “God is good.”

— Stephanie Ujhelyi, staff writer