News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
River Community Church in Cookeville is adding a service where masks will be required.
This 8:15 AM service is being added this Sunday to try and get more churchgoers to feel safe. Pastor Steve Tiebout said this was about protecting his congregation when people are struggling during the pandemic.
“You know for one family they need that, for people that were highly at risk because of the disease,” Tiebout said. “I have friends, I have lost friends to the disease and I have friends go into the hospital for extended stay, so we know it’s a real disease,” Tiebout said.
Seating is still being kept at less than 50 percent of capacity. The mask required service comes first on Sunday so that cleaning can be done for those most at-risk.
When the scale of the pandemic started setting in, River Community Church saw the effects on the congregation. “We began to see, okay this things not away and we had a large chunk of our people not coming back and most of them were because of physical and medical reasons,” Tiebout said.
The church members who were using the online services spoke out about what they need to come back in person. “I began hearing more and more say, if you had a service where everybody had a mask not just some of your people but everybody, I would feel comfortable coming back,” Tiebout said.
The two mask optional services have new times, due to cleaning protocol. The later services are set for 9:30 AM and 11:15 AM.
