How local churches, synagogues will worship at this holy time of year despite COVID-19
Charlotte area synagogues and churches are helping worshipers celebrate Passover, Holy Week and Easter despite the COVID-19 pandemic that has shuttered their worship halls.
The Jewish holiday of Passover begins at sundown Wednesday and ends at nightfall next Thursday, April 16.
For Christians, Holy Week began with Palm Sunday on April 5 and ends Saturday, the day before Easter.
Most congregations locally and nationwide are offering services online.
Temple Israel on Providence Road in Charlotte, for instance, held its Siyyum Bekhorim — Fast of the First Born — service on Zoom Wednesday morning. Members will likewise view the Passover evening service, scheduled for 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, on Zoom.
Other services, including Saturday’s Shabbat morning services, will be live-streamed.
Both the Zoom and live-stream services are on the synagogue’s website, TempleIsraelNC.org, Rabbi Howard Siegel told The Charlotte Observer on Wednesday.
Selfies in the pews
Some congregations, including Matthews United Methodist Church, are adding special touches to compensate for their barren pews.
On Saturday, at least 100 selfies from members of the Matthews church will be placed in the church, well ahead of its online Easter Sunday services, said the Rev. Chuck Wilson, the senior pastor.
The church will continue to add printouts of members’ faces throughout the COVID-19 government stay-at-home orders as people send them in to the church, Wilson said. COVID-19 is the disease
At Myers Park Baptist Church, leaders have encouraged its members to have bread, along with a cup filled with wine or juice, available at home to celebrate the sacrament of Communion during streaming of its Good Friday services.
Becoming the norm
On Palm Sunday, Bishop Peter Jugis of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Charlotte launched a series of six live-streamed Holy Week services tracing the events of Easter.
He conducts the services in an empty St. Patrick Cathedral in Charlotte, each live-streamed for about 400,000 Catholics across Western North Carolina.
Priests across Western North Carolina in the diocese continue to offer “drive-through” confessions and hold daily Masses through their cellphones and webcams on Facebook Live and YouTube.
“Our priests continue to carry out their ministry faithfully in the present distress of the coronavirus pandemic, which quite possibly is a distress unprecedented in all their years of priesthood,” Jugis said in a statement.
For the Catholic diocese and congregations of all other faiths, steering members to online worship became essential in March as government stay-at-home orders prevented gatherings of 10 or more in North Carolina and other states.
Now, in the holiest of weeks for Jews and Christians, it’s the norm.
This story was originally published April 8, 2020 at 3:53 PM.