Reservoir Public Health Practice Update

March 16, 2022

In this week’s newsletter, pastor Steve shared an update to our public health practices and procedures at Reservoir.   We will continue to monitor COVID data and adapt as needed as we join the city of Cambridge and other neighboring communities in loosening up our health restrictions.  If you prefer to worship online, we continue to be on YouTube each week  – live at 11:00 a.m. on Sundays – and continue to have community groups that meet online as well. More details below.

Public Health Practice Update

1) We are not pre-registering anyone for Sunday services, as we already began last week. On-site check-in of kids and youth continues. We continue to ask that you stay home on Sundays if you are sick or have had any recent COVID exposure.

2) On Sunday, March 20th, we shift to being a mask optional building. This is in line with the thinking and guidance of almost all public and community institutions in the communities we serve.

3) For now, our Sunday kids and youth programs will continue – for kids and adults – to be mask-mandatory. (This higher precaution is due to the lack of availability of vaccines for our youngest children and our eagerness to welcome back as many kids and their parents as possible to our Sunday programs for them. Our kids and youth team will appreciate continued communication from parents and caregivers on what will best serve you as we continue to evaluate this going forward.)

4) To protect our community, our church staff still need proof of vaccination or weekly proof of negative COVID testing as a requirement of employment. (This is not a change.)

5) Out of an abundance of caution, our designated volunteers for the kids church program still follow our staff guidelines – vaccination or proof of negative COVID test – for their leadership. But parents of children who are participating in the program with their children do not need proof of vaccination or a negative test, just as their children don’t.

6) We’re going to be working on more environmentally friendly, sanitary approaches to communion service in the weeks to come.

7) We will continue to evaluate indoor food and drink service (e.g. bagels and coffee). For now, we will focus on rebuilding our CAFE team for outdoor food and drink with the option to switch to indoors. We need at least five-six volunteers signed up each week before this can resume. Contact Ivy to sign up to volunteer 1-2x/month.