Church that planned live Easter service cites COVID, will close

A church that opened last year with plans to conduct a live Easter service during the COVID pandemic is closing.

The Rev. Joseph Guy said Open Arms Community Church’s last service will be a virtual service on Feb. 28.

Guy last year announced plans to open the new church with a live Easter service attended by 35 to 50 members. At the time, state mandates prohibited gatherings of 10 or more people.

Guy, the church’s lead pastor, eventually canceled the live service. Instead, the Easter service was livestreamed, and Guy said the church never was able to recover from the live service’s cancellation.

While an established church may be able to more easily transition from live to virtual services, “when it’s a new church, you’ve got to make that personal connection with people,” he said, and not being able to do that “was just too much to overcome.”

Church members gathered for their first live service on Father’s Day, Guy said, but “we just couldn’t generate the crowd that we expected because it had been so long from Easter to June.”

Other services, mostly virtual, followed, but Guy said participation never exceeded 50.

The church’s final service will begin at 11 a.m. Feb. 28, and can be seen on Open Arms Community Church’s YouTube channel.

Contact John Przybys at jprzybys@reviewjournal.com. Follow @JJPrzybys on Twitter.