The Covid pandemic is not over yet. On the plus side, more than 50 percent of Douglas County residents are now vaccinated. On the minus side, the numbers of cases in Nebraska still look very similar to the numbers of cases we were having a year ago, when everything had just shut down. Those numbers will need to come down quite significantly before we make real progress in returning to the building.

The Safety Task Force continues to meet via Zoom and have email discussions. We have drafted a plan for return, but it still needs some discussion, tweaking, and Board approval before we publish it. We have been pulling ideas for reasonable guidelines from a number of other church’s plans. Our present thought is to loosely follow the model that Countryside Community Church has published, at least in terms of using a total of the biweekly number of cases in Douglas, Sarpy, and Cass counties as our benchmark numbers.

We are hopeful that we can get some outdoor activities going for RE very soon, as the weather warms. After that, if cases in the Tri-county area begin to drop consistently, the plan could go into effect, allowing some small groups to begin using the building for meetings.

~ Ed Bok