The Prairie Grove United Methodist Church Council met last night, May 16, 2021, to vote on several important items related to worship in person at our church in light of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the updated guidelines from the CDC. The council voted specifically to align our masking policy with the CDC and to eliminate the need to register for worship.
The council agreed to align our mask policy to align with the CDC. This means that, for vaccinated individuals, masks are no longer required. You can read the recommendations from the CDC for fully vaccinated people here. If you are unvaccinated, you can find the CDC policies and recommendations on masks here. In general, the church will not require masks for vaccinated individuals and will still recommend them for individuals that are unvaccinated or have other health issues. Speak to your doctor if you have any questions around your specific masking needs.
The council also moved to eliminate the need to pre-register for worship using the link we provide each week. Since we are no longer limiting worship to a specific number of socially distanced seats, there is little need to know ahead of church how many people are planning to attend. Our church is currently set up to seat 176 people in worship. In late 2019 and early 2020 we averaged around 100 people in attendance, and the council feels confident that we will still be at that number, maybe a little higher, for the foreseeable future. If we start averaging more than 150 in worship at 11 am on Sunday’s we will start discussion on multiple services.
If you have any questions around the policies of our church. Please reach out to Doug Stumbaugh, Nathan Gastineau, or Carl Palmer. All of our church members and regular attendees are encouraged to attend the monthly church council meeting to provide feedback and comments.