Photo Provided a newly ordained minister Jane Schockey who now pastors in Toronto conducts a prayer and communion service at Vance Memorial Presbyterian in December. Gloves and masks have become a part of ministerial gear for such events, according to Vance Pastor Erica Harley.

WHEELING — The short take on COVID-19 and worship in the Ohio Valley? Vaccines have been more than a literal shot in the arm. Clergy report the faithful are trickling back to churches and temples as disease count continues to drop.

The longer view? Worship ranging from Roman Catholicism’s high church to Vineyard’s rock-and-roll style to Sabbath services at Temple Shalom hasn’t just flexed, clergy also say. It has bent in a varied-venue way that’s likely to stay on when masks are nothing but a memory.

Here’s how a handful of area congregations see coping strategies sparked by the pandemic playing out over time:

On the last Sunday in February, Vance Memorial Presbyterian had Sunday school for the first time in nearly a year. Forty-five people were in the sanctuary by the time morning worship started and Erica Harley, pastor of the Woodsdale church, was thrilled.

She was also startled.

“A couple of children I hadn’t seen in a year came back,” Harley said. “The one was a toddler the last time I saw him. He’s a little man now. He doesn’t have a pacifier. He’s talking in full sentences. I’m 52. A year is a blip, but it’s half his life.”

That kind of COVID-initiated perspective has been brought a sobering and electrifying note to Harley’s ministry.

Like many pastors in the area, she has coped with COVID oddities. She wears a face shield while preaching and serves communion with gloved hands. She has seen attendance in her 400-seat sanctuary drop to a low of seven at one point last spring.

She, a pared-down choir and church technicians have learned to lead worship while both broadcasting via radio and livestreaming on the internet — sometimes reaching a crowd of up to 1,500 in the process. She has even conducted the ordination of a homegrown minister using ribbons rather than a traditional laying on of hands to signify communal prayer.

But, it’s moments like seeing the return of the little boy that really speak to her theological core, Harley said. Church is community.

“For some of the people, this is the first place they want to go,” Harley said of the comeback of communal worship. “I’ve had people tell me, ‘I got my second shot and now I can come to church.'”

And, while all the electronic worship will continue indefinitely given its reach, she suspects this initial wave of live attendance is only the beginning.

“It’s important that we get back and I think we will and that there’s a bit of a revival coming,” Harley said. “People have been sitting at home for a year having an existential crisis. ‘Is this is what life is about? Is this all there is?’ The church has answers to questions like that. It’s going to be good for us and it’s going to be good for them.”

Chris Figaretti, lead pastor of the Vineyard church, sees the same kind of potential to reach new populations.

“COVID has been an interesting ride,” Figaretti said. “It’s forced us to tighten up our online strategy.”

Figaretti figures the rapid changes forced by COVID have actually pushed Vineyard down what would have been a five-year path in a single year. Pre-COVID, the church was already livestreaming weekend services full of the rock-on music for which it is known.

Since COVID, it has morphed that primary service into a more intimate form. Speakers now look directly at the camera, imagining a living room audience rather than engaging the crowd of hundreds that previously gathered at Capitol Theatre. Music is simpler.

And, there are the other “venues” that Vineyard has explored thanks to COVID. After e-churching exclusively for a couple of months, live services resumed outdoors at Heritage Port during 2020’s warmer months. Those services reached live and virtual crowds as much as 25 percent larger than pre-COVID.

When fall rolled around and national “comeback rates” were still dismal, however, that’s when Figaretti said even more change began.

Vineyard launched Church at Home. More than 90 homes — some of them outside the Ohio Valley — now host small groups each week. Vineyard pastors record a second, even more intimate service for these clusters to share.

“I think it’s awesome — the Amish church meets technology,” Figaretti said of the new style of weekly worship. “They’re getting together, having a meal … having community.”

That said, Vineyard will resume live services over Easter weekend at its Warden Run campus in addition to Church at Home and livestreaming of the live service.

“It’s time to get back together,” Figaretti said. “God uses even things that we perceive as bad for good. And, there’s a lot of good that’s going to come out of this.”

Rabbi Joshua Lief can relate to the Vineyard’s living room worship. But, in Temple Shalom’s case, such events have also included a dining room.

As the temple hasn’t had any live services since COVID began — other than outdoor High Holy Day observances last fall — the Lief home has been as much of a part of reaching the faith community as has the sanctuary.

The family gathered around their dining room table to share their Hanukkah celebration via Facebook this winter and is preparing to do the same for the upcoming Passover celebration. It will be the second such e-celebration for the spring holiday, with the first garnering more than 300 viewers, some of whom participated with called-in readings, he said.

Sabbath services are still filmed and livestreamed from the sanctuary. Lief also does a livestreamed lesson highlighting Jewish thought and law each weekday from the temple.

Lief is optimistic that the leap to livestreaming — from wherever it is filmed — will be good in the long term. But, like his Christian counterparts, he’s ready to return to live services. The temple hopes to worship outdoors on its own lawn this summer.

“When you can’t share the cookies and punch afterwards and give someone a hug and wish them a ‘Shabbat Shalom,'” that is missed,” he said of looking forward to a healthier day.

But, worshipping at home or flipping events such as fundraisers to drive-through format has been worth it, he noted. This is particularly true as Lief said the congregation has lost a handful of people to COVID and doesn’t want to lose any more.

“It’s being a part of something larger than ourselves even when we’re apart,” he said of a year of pandemic changes and sacrifices. “We’ve been proud of the things that we’ve been able to pull off.”

Darrell Cummings, pastor of Bethlehem Apostolic Church, hears what Lief is saying. His Pentecostal church, located in North Wheeling, was well known for its large-scale charity before COVID. And, thanks to some serious creativity, it still is.

Not that it’s been easy. When an initial COVID lockdown began in March 2020, it couldn’t have hit at a worse time, Cummings said.

“We had purchased everything already,” he said of supplies gathered for an Easter giveaway, one of four such annual church events. “We had no way to store it. We ended up having to take that loss, which was huge for us. But, we were able to pivot and to make it a drive-thru at Mother’s Day.”

Bethlehem Apostolic didn’t just pivot, they prevailed, he noted. The church did another drive-thru giveaway in June, a response to families struggling with COVID-driven job losses. It also hosted a drive-thru COVID-testing clinic around the same time.

This is the same season during which the church was expanding its online presence and encouraging congregants to use such services as an app that allowed them to watch livestreamed preaching and music on their phones.

“We’ve done things that we’ve never done before,” Cummings said with a laugh, noting that he is also responsible for part of the oversight of 13 sister churches in the Ohio Valley. “I told the other pastors: ‘This is my first pandemic. I’m hoping it’s my last, my only pandemic.'”

But, should the need arise, he said Bethlehem Apostolic is ready.

He plans to continue with e-churching – even though he said it’s frustrating to not be able to tell viewers are watching for one minute or for an entire service. It’s been a reliable way to reach not only his own congregation of 50-60, but it’s put the church in touch with viewers in places as far flung as Africa and Brazil.

Reaching the Masses

Even though it’s operating on a much larger scale – Ohio County alone has five churches — Tim Bishop said the Roman Catholic Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston agrees.

“All of our parishes offer Masses via livestream or Facebook Live,” said Bishop, diocese spokesperson. “These broadcasts have very high viewing numbers.

“We have learned, through the pandemic, the importance of technology to engage the faithful in the Diocese. We plan to continue that outreach in the future.”

Bishop noted all local churches also continue operating in person, under a Diocese-wide protocol introduced in May 2020 and updated in September. This includes such details as how to distribute bulletins safely and collecting attendees’ information should contact tracing be necessary.

It also includes provisions for everything from communion to weddings to be celebrated in a health-positive way – a point of balance in a very strange year of church. Another balancer has been maintaining a sense of humor in addition to all the plastic gloves and bottles of sanitizer, Bishop added.

“On a personal note, I have learned that it is very difficult to blow a candle out with a mask on!”