Houses of worship get OK to reopen this week, but not all are ready

Nevada’s houses of worship have received the go-ahead to resume live services this weekend, but many in the Las Vegas Valley are taking a pass, at least for now.

Area houses of worship were closed several weeks ago in a coronavirus-prompted shutdown of several weeks. On Tuesday, Gov. Steve Sisolak announced that in-person worship services may resume Friday as part of Phase Two reopening with attendance limited to fewer than 50 people and social distancing guidelines that keep people at least 6 feet apart.

That last part confuses the Rev. Paul Marc Goulet, senior leader of the International Church of Las Vegas, which is scheduled to have services this weekend at all three of its campuses.

Goulet said services will be shorter and feature a handful of musicians rather than a full choir. However, he wonders why his largest sanctuary, which seats 3,000, would be limited to 49 people.

“Basically, we want to follow the rules. We’re just trying to figure out what they are. Is it 50 percent or is it 50? It’s kind of silly if it’s 50,” he said.

Liberty Baptist Church took reservations for four services this weekend, one more than usual, and all are spoken for, said the Rev. Matthew Teis, executive pastor.

Teis said the church has been preparing for several weeks to create a social distancing service using a 50-percent-of-capacity standard. So, he said plans are to hold Sunday services of about 200 people in an auditorium that usually would see up to 650.

Teis says he respects Sisolak. But, he says, “I’d just say we are doing what we believe God wants us to do.”

Meanwhile, many houses of worship are passing on live services this weekend. Bishop George Leo Thomas of the Diocese of Las Vegas said no public Masses will be available to Southern Nevada Catholics this weekend, although televised and livestreamed Masses will continue.

However, Thomas said he plans to issue an order next week to bring back public Masses starting June 6 in a way that conforms with Sisolak’s attendance and social distancing requirements.

Those Phase Two constraints are “a blessing in disguise,” he added, because they “give us time to do a dress rehearsal for when larger numbers are allowed and to get our protocols in place.”

In-person services at New Song Church in Henderson also won’t return until the weekend of June 6 and 7, said the Rev. Paul Block, lead pastor.

“We’re not ready,” Block said “We just have a lot of apparatus to put together. We’ve got to retrain our volunteers. It’s just a challenge to do it in a hurried fashion.”

Communion will be offered only in the form of bread, with no wine, and distributed by Block, who will be masked and wearing gloves. Offering no wine is a break with Lutheran tradition, he says, but it won’t be the only one: He plans to move Sunday’s celebration of Pentecost — when Christians believe the Holy Spirit descended on the apostles — to next week.

Masjid Ibrahim will be open for Friday prayer, said imam Shamsuddin Waheed, “but we’re going to be limited to a maximum of 50.”

However, Fateen Seifullah, imam at Masjid As-Sabur, said no reopening date has been set there.

“We’re still going to be a little behind making necessary preparations” such as mounting sanitizer stations and disinfecting surfaces, he said. “That’s going to take some time.”

“We have to be responsible and do everything we can. So we’re excited they’re starting to pull back some restrictions, but now there’s anxiety about how do we accommodate this?”

Rabbi Shea Harlig of Chabad of Southern Nevada said observance of the holiday of Shavuot will take place there Friday.

“We will follow all of the guidelines,” he said, including social distancing, the required wearing of face masks and congregants bringing their own prayer books and prayer shawls. Congregants also may attend only by reservation.

“People have been calling for weeks (asking) when are we opening,” said Harlig, who considers this first weekend a trial run to ensure that congregants can help the synagogue to reopen safely.

The Rev. Linda Stanley, pastor of Zion United Methodist Church in North Las Vegas, has no date to resume in-person services. For now, sanitizer stations are being installed, fabric-seat chairs have been replaced with plastic chairs and seating has been rearranged to cover social distancing.

“Folks think, ‘Oh, we’re going back to church.’ No, you’re going back to a different church. It will never be the same again.”