Dear W family,

Ministry is in full swing as we enter the fall despite the pandemic continuing to cast a shadow over all of our activities. We continue to pray for the Lord’s mercy and grace as we adapt and persevere in welcoming sojourners home to the joy of following Jesus together in these difficult times.

Our COVID-19 response team continues to monitor the situation here in Houston and as a result, has updated our response plan to more accurately reflect our church’s response as well as to have more realistic triggers based on the Texas Medical Center’s (TMC) daily COVID-19 dashboard.

At this time, we will continue to remain in our current response level, level 3, which requires check-in when you come and the wearing of masks for our worship services. Some of the updates we made to the response plan include:

• Level 4: A requirement for public ministry coworkers (e.g. worship team, teachers, etc) to either be vaccinated or have a negative PCR test 3 days before serving;
• Added serving of food as it relates to the different levels;
• Updated the trigger points based on TMC data

As we look at the trends of COVID in our area, we are hopeful that in the next couple of weeks, as the case counts continue to decrease, that we may be able to reduce our response level to 2 in the event that there are less than an average of 1000 cases per day.

As we continue to monitor the situation, we are thankful to hear that many of our people who have gotten sick with COVID-19 had received the vaccine and recovered quickly. We highly encourage those who haven’t already received the vaccine and are able to get one to do so as soon as possible. This will not only help to lower your risk of COVID but will also help to provide a level of protection for those who are not able to get vaccines yet, such as our children.

In addition, we ask all who come to worship with us on Sundays to continue wearing masks as it continues to be an effective method of reducing the transmission of COVID in communities where vaccination status is not known. Because we want to welcome everyone to come back to in-person worship regardless of vaccination status, asking everyone to wear a mask is something we can all do to reduce the risk to each other. We appreciate everyone’s understanding and cooperation as we persevere through the pandemic together.

There may be a time in the future when we may need to go back to a more restrictive level in our recovery plan; however, as long as the vaccines continue to be effective in reducing the risk and symptoms of COVID, we will remain in our current level. Please continue to pray for God’s mercy in this pandemic and for God’s wisdom and strength for us as a body of Christ to persevere in proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ. If you have any questions regarding this update, please email us at covid@whcchome.org.

Your brother in Christ,

Pastor Nathan