UUSG Re-Opening Statement for Fall 2021

Update as of Thursday, September 9, 2021:

Re-Opening this SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 12th!!

 
We are all systems go for in-person worship. Here are a few reminders, updates and some additional information about the re-opening.

• In-Person Services. We are offering two Sunday services at 9am and 11am. Come give the early service a try! You will love it!!
  

• Online Service. One online service will be offered at 11am. This will be in a “hybrid” format, both in-person and Zoom. Zoom invites for online service will be sent out on Saturday afternoons, and the Zoom link is also always available on our website.
  

• Masks. For the safety of all, we will require masks for all. If you are in the building, masks will be required. Following guidance, we recommend double-masking, or preferably disposable surgical masks, or, better still, N95/KN95-type masks. We will provide disposable masks for those who do not bring them.
  

• Vaccinations. We encourage everyone to get vaccinated if you are safely able to do so. While we are not going to be asking for proof of vaccination, if you are an adult and not yet vaccinated, we ask that you continue to join us via Zoom.
  

• Singing. Everyone knows that our music is central to who we are and how we do things. Due to the added risk of indoor congregational singing, we are being asked to avoid it for now. So, for now, there will be no group singing during indoor worship – which means that we will not be singing (or humming) hymns, the doxology, or our Song of Praise during Sunday worship services.
  

• Offertory Baskets. These will be visibly placed at the entrance to the Sanctuary. While we will not be “passing the basket”, online giving is always available through PayPal and Tithe.ly.
  

• Space yourself out. Please plan to sit with your family and space yourself out from others.
  

• RE. Both RE and our new program, Arts and Exploration, will be offered beginning Homecoming Sunday!
  - 9am – Arts and Exploration (K-8 kids will be escorted to their groups, please plan on dropping them off near the Memorial Garden)
  - 10am – RE (kids will be moved from A&E to RE or be met outside and escorted in)
  - 11am – Arts & Exploration (K-8 kids will be escorted from RE to A&E or be met outside and escorted in)

• Social Hour. Our tent from 3rd Street will be moved to the front of the church. Please bring a chair, your own coffee mug or cup for water. Coffee and water will be served.
  

• Picnic at Wheeler Park. Our Homecoming picnic is this Sunday at 1pm at Wheeler Park pavilion. Please bring a chair and your own lunch. Lemonade, water and dessert will be served. RSVP here.
  

• Feel ill? Stay home! If you are feeling poorly, please take care of yourself and your neighbors, and stay home.

 
Sometimes best-laid plans do not happen. While we are all systems go today, conditions may change between now and Sunday. And if they do, you will receive an email stating that we are reverting to 10am online worship.
 
PAY CLOSE ATTENTION as our hybrid invites will always go out on Saturday afternoons and indicate an 11am service. Should services revert to all online, that Zoom invite will be for 10am.
 
You can ALWAYS check our website (uusg.org) to receive the latest status. The color coded circle will provide you with immediate information.
 
As always, if you have questions or concerns you want to raise, reach out – to Rev. Scot, the Office, the Board, or the Task Force. Know that we’re doing our best – to be safe, to be responsible, and more importantly, to be together.
 
We miss you all. Can’t wait to see you!

Update as of Thursday, August 26, 2021:

We are busy behind the scenes preparing for Homecoming Sunday! As we plan for the coming weeks and months, please bear in mind that we remain in a very fluid situation vis-à-vis COVID-19. We are monitoring public health metrics closely and remind all of our members and friends to remain vigilant and to continue to be flexible, understanding and patient. In an effort to keep you all up to date, here is the latest news.

Services: 

• We will have services at 9 am and 11 am. Due to capacity limits, we will be able to have up to 60-65 people for each service. We are encouraging those who can, to attend the earlier service as the 11 am service will probably fill quickly due to its popularity.

• Zoom access is offered for the 11 am service. The link will be sent out (as it has been for the past 17+ months) and is always available on our website, uusg.org.

• We will have music, but not sing. We will have a donation basket, but it will not be passed. We will have peace, but not pass the peace.

• Masks are required at all times....at all times!

• Children under the age of 12 will not be in the sanctuary, but can attend A&E and RE (see below)

• If you are not vaccinated, please utilize Zoom and enjoy the service from home. And, please know that we strongly encourage that you get vaccinated, if you are able. We are able to offer in-person services because we are vaccinated, making it as safe as possible for all who attend.

RE:

• RE will be offered at the 10 am “middle hour” between services.

• During the 9 am and 11 am services, kids can participate in Arts & Exploration (A&E).

• Two RE meetings are scheduled: Tuesday, August 31st and Thursday, Sept 2nd at 7 pm. If you are planning on having a child attend RE and/or A&E, please attend one of these meetings.

• We will try to have the kids outside as much as possible.

• All kids will be required to wear masks.

Social Hour:

• Social Hour will be held outside, underneath an open air tent. And yet another reason to celebrate...coffee will be served.

Homecoming Sunday Picnic:

• We ARE planning to have a picnic at Wheeler Park.

• Cupcakes and cookies (!) and drinks will be served. Otherwise, please plan on bringing your own lunch and chair to sit on.

• Please RSVP through this link so that we can plan accordingly for space and have an accurate headcount.

How will you know if the risk level in our County rises and we revert to online services again?

• On our UUSG website, uusg.org, you will find a very visible color code. We are following guidance from the CDC and COVIDActNow.org. We are specifically looking at risk levels in Kane County.

• Risk levels are assigned different colors (green being the least restrictive and black being the most restrictive). If the color is green, yellow or orange, we will be having in person meetings. If the color is either red or black, we will have a 10 am service only via Zoom.

• If you click on the color code on our website, details relating to the “risk color” will appear. You will find info about services, RE, coffee hour, and other church meetings.

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UUSG Re-Opening Statement, August 2021

UUSG Members and Friends,

This past year-and-a-half has been a marathon for so many of us, hasn’t it? We want you to know that Rev. Scot, the Board, and the Re-Opening Task Force all agree – we are very much looking forward to being together once again! And this is why we are delighted to share our re-opening plan with you!

First, we’re planning to offer two Sunday services at 9:00am and 11:00am. In addition, the 11:00 service will be offered in a “hybrid” format, both in-person and Zoom. Zooming into these services will be much like Zooming over the past year – there will be opportunities to participate, and the in-sanctuary experience will be captured live and broadcast to everyone on Zoom. Even better, we’ve invested significantly in technology to improve the remote experience. More, the sermons will also be made available by YouTube, so folks that cannot attend live or virtually can nevertheless catch them when their schedule permits. Join us as you are, wherever you are!

Second, our sanctuary is being updated and refreshed as we speak, an update that honors our history, adds vibrancy and energy and enables our hybrid services. We’ll soon be able to bring our members attending virtually “into” the sanctuary space, and also bring high-quality guest preachers into our sanctuary from wherever they are, anywhere in the world. New equipment and technology are being installed now, and we are planning to have our fresh, new look ready in time for Homecoming this September.

So here is the reality...while we are planning, organizing, and working toward our long-awaited return, we want you to know that we are also paying attention to the realities of our time. We are aware that we must be responsive to the developing circumstances here in Kane County, circumstances that will require some responses from us as we make plans to gather back together.

Following guidance from the Unitarian Universalist Association, Kane County government, the State of Illinois, the CDC, WHO, the Federal Government, and others, UUSG will be requiring the following:

• Masks. For the safety of all, we will require masks for all. If you are in the building, masks will be required. This includes Sunday worship services, Religious Education programming, Team and Committee Meetings – everything – even if you are just visiting. The science has shown, concretely, that wearing masks is very effective at curbing the spread of COVID-19 and the various variants, and even more importantly, protecting our membership from getting COVID-19 in the first place. Following guidance, we recommend double- masking, or preferably disposable surgical masks, or, better still, N95/KN95-type masks. We will provide disposable masks for those who do not bring them.

• No Singing. Everyone knows that our music is central to who we are and how we do things. As always, the Worship Team and the Music Director will be working to craft engaging and uplifting experiences, but since the added risk of indoor congregational singing is dramatic, we are being asked to avoid it for now. So, for now, there will be no group singing during indoor worship – which means that we will not be singing (or humming) hymns, the doxology, or our Song of Praise during Sunday worship services.

• Vaccinations. We are a welcoming and inclusive community. Since the beginning of the pandemic, we have consistently emphasized that being together, safely, is our first concern. We strongly encourage vaccinations for all who can safely get them. While we are not going to be asking for proof of vaccination, if you are an adult and not yet vaccinated, we ask that you continue to join us via Zoom (see the note about RE, below).

• Feel ill? Stay home! If you are feeling poorly, please take care of yourself and your neighbors, and stay home. Unfortunately, we are now seeing COVID-19 variants making significant progress through our communities. Some of these variants are significantly more virulent and more contagious than the variants from earlier in the pandemic. These new variants are also capable of infecting vaccinated individuals. While it seems to be the case that such “breakthrough” infections are unusual, they are being reported with greater frequency. So, if you are feeling ill, or even just “under the weather”, or maybe you’re “having a bad allergy day”, please consider getting tested, and until you feel better, plan on attending from home. If you have been ill, or have recently tested positive, we ask that you self-quarantine for at least 2 weeks before returning to worship with us in-person at UUSG.

Okay, so much for “the rules”. Here are some of our guiding thoughts and some of our current challenges.

Our plans have always been to “follow the science”. Back in May, we had clear guidance: get vaccinated and get back to normal. It’s now August, and that guidance is very different. We also expect that guidance to change over time, and that is why we are being careful today. And as of today, we believe we can re-open and do it safely, if the above guidelines are followed.

As you know, our beautiful and historic sanctuary is not large. We can seat, according to the Fire Marshall, about 120 people max. However, with a sanctuary our size and with our current ventilation, even while wearing masks and not singing, we will still need to be at significantly less than full capacity to reach acceptable risk. We need to be closer to 50% of our in-sanctuary capacity to stay within the recommended margins. However, with significantly lower ceiling heights, our common room is more of a concern.
 
To address the sanctuary capacity guidelines, we are going to be limiting seating. We will also offer two worship service times to choose from. Recently, one congregational survey showed a clear preference for in-person attendance at the second service. To help manage everyone’s safety, we are going to ask people who normally attend the later service to consider attending the early service. And while we all want to be together, remember  that, with our tech investments, our online experience will be really great!

To address the common room capacity guidelines, we need a more aggressive approach. To that end, we are going to be moving the middle-hour “coffee hour” outside, at least for now, where concerns about ventilation are moot. We are looking into canopies/tents and chairs to help make the front lawn, the hospitality “room”.

So let’s talk RE....For K-12, we will be offering RE programming! We are planning to mirror our local school guidelines and availability, but there will also be a few changes to our past approach. To keep the in-building numbers low, and also to facilitate a new “middle hour” anchor to our Sunday morning experience, we’re moving RE to the hour between worship services at 10:00 am. Youth will be outside as often as possible. Remember, masks for all will be required at all times.

Additionally, there will be a new offering during the services called Arts & Exploration (A&E), a time when school aged kids, up to middle school, are provided the opportunity to build community – playing games, reading, hanging out. Not only does this benefit the youth, but it also provides parents and other adults a distraction-free worship experience.

Youth registration for all programming will begin Monday, Aug. 16. Parent meetings with program details will be held for all who register the week of August 30.

At the moment, we are considering making access to the restrooms available, but access will be limited. That said, we’re going to ask folks to not line up or to linger, to run the fan, and to remain fully masked at all times.

And last, but not least, we are still planning on having our Homecoming picnic at Wheeler Park. We are working out these details, but please mark it on your calendar and plan on joining us!

While we have this plan in place, there is a chance that we will not be able to execute it. We are continually monitoring a number of indices and COVID statistics. If the Governor moves the State or our Region backwards to a different re-opening phase, or if the local school board reverts to a remote schedule, we will obviously comply. Short of that, we are tracking information from a variety of reputable sources to make our assessments. We are “following the science”. Our assessments, imperfect though they are, are nonetheless made with the best intentions and with the broadest concerns addressed.

To sum up: we are planning to open and be together, come Homecoming, Sunday, September 12. It may not be exactly like we’ve dreamed about, all those months ago, but we are hopeful. It is our belief that being together, even if imperfectly and cautiously, will be a joyful thing – and something that is long overdue.

Rev. Scot, the Board, and the Re-Opening Task Force will continue to meet, to talk, and to keep informed about developments and evolving information. We trust you will have patience with us as we navigate all the concerns for all involved. As always, if you have questions or concerns you want to raise, reach out – to Rev. Scot, the Office, the Board, or the Task Force. Know that we’re doing our best – to be safe, to be responsible, and more importantly, to be together.

We miss you all. Can’t wait to see you!