THE ROCK CHURCH RESUMES INDOOR WORSHIP SERVICES
More than 5,000 worshipers attended indoor services at locations across the county on Sunday
• Reopening follows state decision that lifted COVID-19 capacity restrictions for houses of worship.
For the first time in more than a year, when Pastor Miles McPherson looked out into the Rock Church auditorium during Sunday’s service in Point Loma, the faces of his congregants were looking back. He was beaming.
“It was so good to see our family back together,” he said of the weekend service. “It was like Thanksgiving or Christmas when you get to reunite with your family and reestablish your relationships.”
Unlike some other large churches, The Rock hasn’t held indoor services since the state first announced restrictions for places of worship that aimed to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus. Following the state’s decision to lift mandatory restrictions for churches last week, The Rock welcomed people inside. More than
5,000 attended indoor services across four campuses on Sunday.
The decision, leaders said, has been months in the making. Planning
began in February when the Supreme Court lifted California’s ban on indoor church services, but maintained that the state was still allowed to cap attendance at 25 percent of a building ’s capacity.
Then, on Tuesday, the state announced that capacity limits on indoor church services were no longer mandatory, but still strongly encouraged. The updated guidance from the state’s Department of Public Health recommended that counties in the state’s purple and red tier, where the spread of the coronavirus is considered widespread or substantial, limit capacity to 25 percent of a building’s capacity. Counties in the orange and yellow tier, which includes San Diego County, were encouraged to cap capacity at 50 percent.
Leaders at The Rock did not choose to limit capacity, but they did institute several safety precautions. Auditoriums are cleaned between services, and high-touch areas like bathrooms, handrails and door handles are cleaned ev
ery 20 minutes. Congregants were required to wear a mask while entering and exiting the building, but could remove the mask during the service if they so desired. At the Point Loma campus on Sunday morning, many attendees removed their masks once seated.
Social distancing was not required, but ushers were available to help people find seats in less crowded areas should they want more space to themselves. People who weren’t comfortable with the idea of sitting indoors could watch the sermons on monitors outside, or stream the service digitally.
On Sunday, more than 300,000 were watching Rock Church services online. Over the course of the pandemic, more than 9 million people have streamed services.
“The truth is, people are dying, and we want to keep that in the forefront of our mind and be careful and be safe,” said Ricky Page, the pastoral overseer at The
Rock Church. “We do believe though that with the precautions we’re taking and the amount of folks that we have supporting our reopening efforts that we are a very safe environment. Probably safer than we’ve ever been.”
Karla Ghancous said The Rock’s online services have helped her share the church experience with her dad, who watches the same sermons from Poland. But she was overjoyed to be back Sunday morning.
“It’s my birthday today, and we’ve been gone for so long that it feels like a gift from God and Pastor Miles
that we can all be together again,” the newly turned 27year-old said. She said she still remembers the first time she walked into a service at the Point Loma campus.
“I kid you not, the Holy Spirit just caught me the moment those double doors opened and I heard the music. I’m ready to run back in right now.”
It was always the church’s intent to welcome people indoors again.
“We don’t realize how much we need each other, to look each other in the eyes, to see our faces and the expressions we’re making,” McPherson said. “Because we’re made for relationships. And when you take that away and when you get used to that, you lose something, and you just don’t realize what you lost until you get it back.”
Although the spread of the novel coronavirus has slowed in San Diego County, health officials reported 149 new COVID-19 cases and 11 more hospitalizations on Sunday. There were no new deaths.
According to the county’s most recent epidemiological report, about 2 percent of the people who were interviewed by county contract tracers after testing positive for COVID-19 reported visiting a place of worship in the two weeks before they got sick. Since March 2020, the county has investigated 72 outbreaks at faith-based locations, about the same amount that have been reported at restaurants without bars, and health care locations.