Your Worship or Your Health? Part I

Fellowship, Communion and Viruses:
Considering Our Worship and Our Health

One cannot avoid hearing or reading about the concerns over both the seasonal flu and the much-heralded H1N1 virus (which has nothing to do with pigs.) I have received a host of advice about how the church should respond, via e-mails and journals, in the daily news, and in discussions at deanery meetings and clergy days with the diocese. I have drawn four conclusions from all of this input:

1) It is not clear which is filthier – our hands or our mouths;

2) We minimize the risk of spreading disease if we wash our hands for at least 20 seconds (the time it takes to hum Happy Birthday twice) frequently, or use an alcohol-based sanitizer;

3) We minimize the risk of spreading disease if we sneeze or cough into a handkerchief or our sleeve at the elbow; and

4) Having done #2 and #3, and short of sealing our houses with plastic wrap and staying inside (as one local resident did a few years ago), there is not much else we can do.

At the same time, many organizations – especially schools and communities of faith – are struggling with the question of how to modify institutional practices to minimize the risk of spreading the flu. The main question at Trinity comes up in the context of worship, specifically during the exchange of the peace and at communion. The usual proposed solutions are commonly an ecclesiastical version of the quintessential hold-up line: "Your Money or Your Life!" Posed by churches, it comes to: "Your Worship or Your Health!"

Tomorrow I will continue this discussion with the exchange of the peace during worship.

And don't forget -- the African Children's Choir comes to Trinity Church on Wednesday evening for a 7 p.m. concert -- don't miss it! There is no charge for admission, but a free-will offering will be taken to support the work of the African Children's Choir School in Uganda.

Have a blessed day! Your brother in Christ, Don+