The last week of November was busy and sometimes fraught, with urgent church council meetings. This issue is first about protecting us all and our value of promoting good community comes into play.
Methodist churches are obliged to follow the line of gatherings monitored by vaccine passes – see advice. I believe this means that uniting congregations with a Methodist partner will also adopt these procedures. If churches choose to debate the morality and the legality further, there are very useful links embedded in PCANZ advice. And, if you need to talk it though with a Partner, you are urged to contact healthandsafety@methodist.org.nz (Trudy Downes), your Presbytery Executive Officer/Secretary, or you Diocesan Bishop as appropriate.
The government’s own tailored advice for churches can be accessed here. Anglican Dioceses are promulgating separate policies – but in principle they consider vaccine-pass services as normative, while seeking to include those without vaccine passes virtually or in other spaces. In all of this, children under 12 years 3 months are currently exempt from the need to show a pass, of course.
