Dear W family,

May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ fill you with peace and steadfastness in these ever-changing times!

As all of you are aware, the COVID-19 delta variant continues to heavily impact those who are unvaccinated in our city and around the world. And while we are increasingly seeing the variant also affect those who are fully vaccinated, I am thankful that the vaccines available to us here in the US continue to provide significant protection from and reduction of COVID-19 illness.

In an effort to improve our communication regarding our COVID-19 recovery plan and in response to the increasing presence of the delta variant, the COVID response team met this week to both revise our recovery plan and to move us to a different level in the plan. Please click to enlarge the graphic below to see the overall plan as well as our current level as of 8/6/21.

You may have noticed that it looks drastically different from our previous table. Please take some time to review the plan. The reasons for this revision are:

• To clarify the different levels and trigger points for each step of our recovery plan;
• To remove any confusion with similar colors and language with Harris County’s threat level.

To briefly summarize the changes, we will be moving to Level 3 as of this weekend, where we will:

• Limit indoor capacity to 66% room capacity;
• Require pre-registration and/or check-in for all gatherings;
• Maintain social distancing of 3 feet;
• And require masks for all who are on-site including those who are on stage, regardless of vaccination status. This includes the worship team, emcees, and preachers.

The reasons behind this move to level 3 are that:

• It has been shown that fully vaccinated people are able to transmit the COVID-19 delta variant;
• We do not require people to be vaccinated to worship with us on Sundays, and so masks continue to be an effective tool in reducing the risk of transmission; and,
• We want to welcome families with unvaccinated children to worship in-person with us on Sundays.

I so appreciate the feedback and thoughtful questions from many of you during this time – please know that this update reflects much thoughtful discussion and consultation with medical experts as it relates to our particular community at W. Your prayers and support in the midst of these changing times help to anchor our church on Christ as we weather this storm.

Please continue to pray for our church and for our city as we continue to navigate the pandemic while continuing to stay focused on our mission of welcoming sojourners home to the joy of following Jesus together. We highly encourage those in our community who are able but have not yet gotten the vaccine to get vaccinated as soon as possible so that we can see the end of this pandemic soon.

If you have any questions or comments regarding this update, please email covid@whcchome.org. Thank you for your prayers and partnership in the gospel!

Your brother in Christ,
Pastor Nathan