Dear Beacon,

Thank you for your resilience and flexibility these last few weeks, as the Delta and Omicron variants required Beacon to make a fast pivot back to virtual worship services. Your support has meant a great deal to all of us. We want to share our latest thinking on how we are proceeding with Beacon’s in person community life.

Each week our Leadership Team, in coordination with the Safety Team, is assessing the latest information for best practices in community safety, not only for Beacon but also for our larger community and the most vulnerable members of our communities. We are balancing the dual priorities of both physical and mental health, as we know that Beacon provides hope and meaning in this time of high anxiety, uncertainty, and despair.

In early December, the Safety Team began adjusting our Indoor Gathering Guidelines with the latest information from public health officials. We shifted our requirements for gathering from daily cases solely to looking at multiple criteria in our three New Jersey counties (Union, Essex and Morris): 1) new cases per 100,000 and 2) ICU hospital bed capacities. We are also monitoring both vaccination and mortality rates in our area, but we did not include those numbers in our criteria as the data for both, especially booster rates, was more difficult to access and assess.

As we are currently back in the red zone, worship services will remain virtual through January 23rd. We are hopeful that Omicron will peak soon and decline quickly.

While virtual services remain vital for providing a consistently safe weekly experience, we have heard from many of you, especially our children and youth, that in-person gatherings are critical for weathering the hardships of the pandemic. Therefore, we are maintaining our offerings of in-person small groups for all ages with virtual options. We encourage you to join a Community Group for adults, our youth groups and our children’s groups. All are offered both in person and virtually.

Our staff and leaders remain incredibly committed to providing Beacon’s worship services, small group gatherings and justice-centered activities. To that end, they are each mindfully choosing to limit their potential exposure and transmission of the COVID-19 virus. They remain vigilant in following safety protocols, including regular rapid & PCR testing, masking for all gatherings, and continued distancing. We are supporting them when they need to prioritize their personal lives and communities.

We want to thank you for the support and encouragement each of you has shown our leaders as they carry out our mission. The data is ever changing, and we continue to monitor it daily. With our new Communications Consultant, Mary Supley, onboard, we plan to regularly update you in Wednesday’s Spark with latest information.

If you have questions or comments, we welcome them at: leadershipteam@summitbeacon.org

We know that this latest round of variants, especially at the holidays, has been extraordinarily tough. We welcome you to contact careteam@summitbeacon.org to let us know how you are doing.

Sincerely,

Beacon’s Safety Team

Madhan Gounder, Carol Conger Miller, Alejandro Polo, Janet Roberts (Board Exec Team)

Dr. Tuli Patel, Rev. Dr. Robin Tanner, and Rev. Emilie Boggis (Leadership Team)