Trey McKnight:

Hey, everybody, my name’s Trey McKnight, and we’re so glad that you are with us today. I’ve got Frank Bealer with me. Frank, how far back do we go?

Frank Bealer:

Days. It’s been several years.

Trey McKnight:

I’ve known Frank for a few years. A lot of you know Frank as well. Since we’re talking about health and safety right now, Frank has a ton of experience working in churches—large churches, smaller churches. Currently, he serves as an Executive Pastor in a church. But you also sit in the seat at the Phase Family Center as the CEO. So you’ve had a lot to deal with through all of this.

Frank Bealer:

I think all of us have a lot to deal with. It’s kind of unique because Phase Family Center has a preschool, it has a coworking operation, and it has events. So needless to say, the center has been impacted greatly. And then we are trying to make room for churches on the weekend. So there are a lot of moving pieces to the Phase Family Center.

The first moving piece we had to navigate was figuring out when to close the preschool—following all kinds of very defined regulations and not-so-defined regulations. And then we had to navigate trying to figure out when to reopen and what that’s looked like. It’s definitely been quite the journey.

Trey McKnight:

Yeah. I feel like a lot of people are currently thinking through a lot of what you guys have thought through. You guys have been open for a couple of weeks now, right?

Frank Bealer:

Yeah.

Trey McKnight:

I think nationwide different jurisdictions and different governments are taking time to figure out: “When can we reopen? When can we do things?” Many churches are thinking through that right now. “When do we reopen?” They’re asking all the questions surrounding that. So how has the reopening been for you guys so far?

Frank Bealer:

One of the hardest things for me has been the fact that all of us independently—all our organizations—have been wrestling and having these long meetings. We’re asking: “How do we apply this?” And I’m sitting there going, “Gosh, there’s been so much time spent on this.” But I’m super thankful. Because it just feels like for weeks I was looking at the news and trying to figure out how to share information in my own little silo with this organization or this organization. And we were all doing the same thing.

Trey McKnight:

You must be an Enneagram three: You don’t want to ask for help, right?

Frank Bealer:

That’s right. It’s like I could have picked up the phone. You know me too well. But now, here we are open. We’ve been open for a couple of weeks. Obviously we don’t have everything figured out, but we have started to see some patterns of how different families respond to opening, and they have the choice to do that.

Trey McKnight:

I was going to ask, how are parents responding to all this? Is there hesitation?

Frank Bealer:

It was interesting. We tried to give people like “choose your own adventure” options. They could start on the 11th, the 25th, or withdraw from our program. They had the option to say: “I’ll come back when it’s all settled, or when there’s a vaccine or whatever.” We didn’t know what to expect, but what ended up happening is that around 30%—almost exactly 30%—were like, “Doors are opening, we’re there.” Ready to go. Most of the families when they showed up—and we can kind of go over protocol and how we tried to apply all that—but most of them didn’t have masks on. They were still washing their hands, sanitizing and stuff, but they were pretty comfortable.

But then two weeks later, we had just over 40% show up. So now 70% are there.

Trey McKnight:

That’s growth. That’s a good thing.

Frank Bealer:

It is a good thing. 30% are kind of going, “We love you. We’re just not quite ready yet. And maybe we don’t even know when we’re going to be ready.” Honest conversation. But it was interesting, because you might try to do some anecdotal polls and figure it out, but you really don’t know what to expect. And it’s the same when we open our churches. We don’t know if we do a family service, or if we start to let kids and students get together. What parents are going to give permission? When are kids and students ready? We have all kinds of anecdotal information, but we need to start to see people move. So it at least gave us some idea of how a pocket of parents in a community—a very diverse pocket of parents—respond. 30% or 40%—we’ll see later. That was how it played out.

Trey McKnight:

Yeah. You say there’s a lot to think about. What things did you guys have to think about leading up to opening the doors? What questions did you ask yourself?

Frank Bealer:

First, we had to wrestle with: “Who are our audiences?” We had to think about our teachers and our staff. We’ve got a few staff members who are auto immune-compromised. So that’s a whole thing. Then you’ve got kids. How do we take care of them? You’ve got parents and their emotions and feelings and politics or whatever it is—that’s influencing that. So we started there and then it was us going, “Okay, as we craft messaging, and decide our safety protocol based on licensing bodies and governing bodies that are telling us some practical things and some giving us direction for our interpretation—both those things are affected there.

But in the midst of that, we realized that we had to start with some parent messaging to say that and I don’t know that we say this well as a church typically—whatever your decision is, it’s a great decision. If you’re not ready for your kid to come back, you’re doing awesome as a parent. You’re making the right decisions based on the information you have.

Trey McKnight:

Just a constant reinforcement.

Frank Bealer:

And if you’re ready to go, awesome. We’re with you, we’re going to do everything we can to keep your kids safe. But that constant partnership with parents to go, “You know what? We’re all working with as much information and sometimes it feels like there’s lots of words, but little information.” Parents are dealing with the same thing. They’re looking at other parents going, “They made this decision and I didn’t. And gosh, my kid’s missing out on camp or whatever it may be.” It’s so difficult to decide.

In my household, I have two middle schoolers and two high schoolers who are now done with school. So actually, now I have a middle schooler going to be a high schooler. That means I’ve got a middle schooler, a high schooler, and a college student . . .

Trey McKnight:

Full house.

Frank Bealer:

And one in the military. So with that plan in place, they’ve all kind of got it. Even just deciding when they could hang out with friends again and when they could have a sleepover—all those things. So reassuring parents that we understand that and that as we release a plan, we want to be as clear as possible with our plan. You can figure out where you fit in—giving that permission is going to be really, really critical. I think even more so with parents of students, because students may not always agree with what their parents want. Where with preschoolers, they’re kind of like, “Oh, whatever the plan is.”

Trey McKnight:

They just kind of go with the flow. They know, “Okay, what Mommy? Yeah, cool. We’re going to do that.” I totally get that. I work with students too, and it’s been interesting. The organization that I work with in doing summer camps. The differences in the feedback we get from parents, from our student pastors (our NextGen pastors), and what the students are telling us. For students, it’s: “Please don’t cancel camp.” They’re like, “Whatever we got to do, let’s make it happen.” And then, of course, the parents are asking all of the questions. “How do we do this?” I think there is a lot of value in what you were saying before on giving parents permission to think through it and make decisions for themselves.

Frank Bealer:

And certainly as youth pastors—it’s one of my biggest coaching tips for a youth pastor—never take a win at the cost of a parent.

So we’re thinking through all that—we’ve got these different people groups that we’ve got to take care of. And we’re thinking through that messaging. Then we’re asking, “How do we build a plan that’s clear and concise with how we’re going to reopen?” And, first of all, “How do we comply with all standards? Shouldn’t we exceed those standards in some way? What does that look like? Where do we want to exceed those?” And where are we like, “Whatever they say is good?” So figuring that out and then figuring out, “How do we give people multiple options to reenter?”

We recently developed a plan for our church that’s like, “We’re going to do this for this month. Then this, then this.” We’ve got this ramp-up strategy. At the bottom, we state that it can all change. It’s to be determined if this is accurate. But we also have to say, you may not be ready to jump in here, but that’s okay. Jump in here or jump in here. Giving that permission ended up being gold for us, by saying there’s multiple entry points. Instead of being like, “We’re open on this day and if you’re a volunteer or if you’re a student or you’re a parent, and you’re not ready, then something’s wrong with you because we’ve made the decision.”

So the church is simply sharing a plan. Like our preschool had to share that plan. Then we say, “How do you feel about that plan?” And how do we start to talk about, “Here’s a way to enter in, here’s a way to enter in? If you want to wait until then, this is what it might look like.” Just to give some of that confidence.

Trey McKnight:

I love how you’re giving options for people to make decisions on their own in the communication you’re sending out. I think without you explicitly saying it, you’re offering so much value and really saying, “Hey, this is a partnership. This is something we’re trying to figure out together. We’re going to be here, but you make the decision that you need to make.” That’s great.

Frank Bealer:

This is a word that I use a lot of time with our teams. Sometimes if you’re not careful, that feels squishy. It’s like, “Okay, if you’re not careful, you can fall on the end of you don’t really have a plan.”

Trey McKnight:

It’s so undefinitive.

Frank Bealer:

So we’ve got to say, “Here’s the plan.” And we’ve got to be overly clear. I believe to say, “Here’s an overview of the protocols. But if you want to drill down, here’s the specific chemical we’re using for sanitizing. And here’s the brand of mask. You can drill down as deep as you want to.” That’s good for some people, but we’re going to keep a good plan. We’re communicating, “We just want to let you know, we’ve determined what we think is best based on all the information we have. There’s room for you to figure out where it works for you.” So it’s a both/and.

Trey McKnight:

Yeah, that’s good. Squishy. I like that. So you’ve been opened for a couple weeks now. I’m sure looking back over the past couple of weeks, there are probably things you are seeing now. We can have a plan, we enact the plan, and then you learn from the plan. So what things have you noticed that have been missing from either the original plan, or things you’ve had to implement in the two weeks since?

Frank Bealer:

It’s interesting. When we were closed—we were closed for almost exactly two months, two months and a couple days. Now, we’re a preschool. That means that we could have been open the whole time. We’re exempt or whatever, whatever I’m trying to think of.

Trey McKnight:

Essential.

Frank Bealer:

Essential. Yeah, that’s it. So we’re essential. We didn’t have to close, but we felt like that was best. Two months. In the middle of that, we asked ourselves, “How do we make most use of this time?” So we overhauled our database and our billing system. It was funny because this was not the intent, but it would have been a huge mistake if we hadn’t done it.

Opening day, Monday, we had all of our support staff at the center, along with all the teachers and directors and everything, because we felt like, “Oh, people are going to have issues checking in, or the system is not going to work, or they forgot their code or whatever.” The interesting thing was the system launched fine, but parents needed to talk. They weren’t ready to just follow the system.

So some parents walked up and were like “bye kid.” And then they didn’t leave. Our check-in protocol had no parents coming through the front door. So they check-in at the door, and we took the kids. But all of the adults lingered. They didn’t hurry off to work because they were uncertain, and they don’t even know what work looks like right now. It’s weird. They wanted to stay. So we avoided a mistake because our team was there—ready, willing, and able to answer questions and encourage and make sure parents were talking. We may not have been staffed properly if it wasn’t for that system overhaul we had done. But because the system overhaul was there, it actually taught us a big lesson that on the 11th, when we opened, we had more staff there.

Frank Bealer:

Then here we are going again on the 25th—but we’ve learned that we better have plenty of staff there, because now we’ve got a new round of parents coming in who aren’t sure. They’re uncertain about things too. So when I think about the church world, when it comes drop off for students or Sunday morning, everything’s going to take longer. It’s not, “Did we do the sanitizing or the QR check-in code so you don’t even have to touch the screen? Did we bar code scan your kid or whatever. Put a sticker on their forehead.”

Trey McKnight:

We followed all the guidelines.

Frank Bealer:

Followed all the guidelines and the parents are going to be like, “Bye.” It’s almost like a mission trip. Suddenly the kid’s like a missionary going out there in the field and on the other side of it, the parents are still like . . .

Trey McKnight:

What do we do now?

Frank Bealer:

What do we do now?

Trey McKnight:

Especially having the kids home for all this time. It’s like, well, I don’t know what to do with my hands.

Frank Bealer:

So I think churches need to have ushers ready to go, because it’s going to be the fourth song of worship before some parents make their way into the service because they’re wanting to check. They’re just wanting to be reassured that they’re making the right decision and asking, “What are we doing?” And, “How’s it going?” They have questions that won’t always fit in the info guide. Yes. You’ve said all those things. They can read them for themselves. But as far as these feelings and emotions they’re having, we need to have extra staff around and extra leaders. When I was on staff at Elevation Church, on holidays, whenever we were doing a presentation of salvation or anything like that, we always asked staff spouses to come be an extra set of hands because we would have more conversations develop.

Then you have new families coming to the church for Easter or whatever, and we just know there’s going to be more conversations. We have to know that at our reopening, there’s going to be a few weeks when we have to be ready for a bunch of extra conversations. So if you try to do a good, old-fashioned check-in model with the proper protocol, you’re going to miss an opportunity to minister to people. That’s going to be a big deal, and we could have really missed it. I’m telling you this because it was a total blessing that we happened to overhaul our system, or we would have been fumbling all over ourselves because we didn’t expect for parents to linger and kind of camp out.

Trey McKnight:

I love that it happened by accident. I don’t want us to miss this, and you’ve said this, the fact that even as we’re thinking through all of these things, we’re thinking through, “How do we reopen? What are the things that we need to be doing in order to prepare for the reopening?” In church world, we have a tendency to think about the program, to think about the content, to think about the production, and all these things. But we need to reframe it to say that this is about the people. And when we think about our preparation, we need to not only ask: “What are the processes we need to go through to make sure everything is prepped and clean and ready to go?” But we also need to be asking, “What do we need to do to serve the people in the process?” I love that. It’s such a good insight that probably came as you’re saying . . .

Frank Bealer:

A surprise.

Trey McKnight:

Yeah. Surprise. But it gets back to the heart of ministry in that it’s all about the people. You can do all the things, but at the end of the day, you need to focus on what the people need at this moment.

Frank Bealer:

Yeah, and when everybody at church shows up around the same time, you’ve got one small window—they’re coming to get ready for church. If we’re not ready, we’re either going to look unprepared or we’re going to look uncaring. So it’s going to be a big deal.

Trey McKnight:

Now, with that said, there are guidelines we have to pay attention to. So for you, you were trying to think through things on your own and asking, “What do we need to do and how do we need to figure this out?” But at some point you started reaching out and seeing, “Who can we glean from to figure out what procedures need to happen? What guidelines?” So where do you go for the guidelines? What outside resources do you turn to? What things are you looking to give you at least a little bit of a hint on how to make sure we’re compliant or within recommendations? Where have you gone for that?

Frank Bealer:

It’s interesting. So we have to remember what the organization is for. So the CDC. Their job is to stop the spread of a disease. They’re going to put out protocol or a plan, which is totally fine. But it may not have the practical steps that we need to do church or do the learning center or whatever it may be. And there are all these other organizations—like the World Health Organization—and all the stuff that’s helpful and news is somewhat helpful. But for us, what we found, and I think it’s a sweet spot for the church is that every state has a licensing body that helps preschools open and operate. And if you treat teachers like volunteers at preschools, how can we learn from how they interact with kids? Who should wear masks; who should not wear masks? How should we take temperatures? In the licensing body, you have a passionate group whose sole job is to make sure that families are cared for and all these rules are applied in a healthy way.

Trey McKnight:

In any situation, not just in a pandemic.

Frank Bealer:

Right. So as they started to translate and say, “Here’s some things we think we should do.” Our posture was we’re going to exceed whatever they say. We’re not going to go to the extreme, but we’re going to put an exclamation point on whatever it is they set as standard. That’s going to be our minimum baseline. That was super helpful. As a church, I never looked at that governing body for resources because they never had any influence over my world as somebody who was passionate about kids and teachers—in our case volunteers, in the church world. But now I’m like, “Wow, there’s something really there.”

So that became something that was a great filter for us. Then as we’re working to expand in D.C., I’m looking at that body and I’m sitting there saying, “Wow, they’re being really consistent about some things even when it felt like some other organizations were leaving so much up for interpretation.” I realized that I’m just going to make somebody mad, however I choose to do it. So that ended up being really, really helpful.

What I’m kind of cautious of is we have a clear plan. Our main church has a plan of like, “Hey, when you register your kid with us, we’re somewhat responsible for your kid, but we’re not taking all the liability.” I don’t know that we need to overhaul everything and put COVID in everything. We’ve got flu and everything else. So I don’t know if that’s where it’s at. I think maybe reach out to your insurance agent. Most churches have a specialized church policy. I’m certain that those organizations have put together some good protocols. So we should at least lean in and hear what they have to say. Because once again, they’re working really hard at a big board table somewhere trying to figure it out too. So let’s hear from them.

Frank Bealer:

At the end of the day, we have to figure out what’s a requirement that is not up for conversation versus what’s up for interpretation—just like we do with Scripture and anything else. We try to figure it out. And so, I think for us to go, “Who are we leaning in on when we say we’re leaning on them.” That gives our families confidence that we’re doing it right.

Trey McKnight:

They’re credible.

Frank Bealer:

Yes. They’re credible. So the challenge is that if we point to certain websites, they don’t get specific enough. Once again, it doesn’t lean into that interpretation side. There’s a little nugget there for churches when it comes to the application or the governing licensing body of a state for childcare programs and afterschool programs because they’re passionate about some of the same things, and they’re getting very nuanced and practical with application.

Trey McKnight:

That’s great. To get very practical with what you guys have done, what protocols have you guys implemented? Mask wearing, cleaning, all those things.

Frank Bealer:

Mask wearing by staff is currently a requirement in our state. So that was a foregone conclusion. We aren’t requiring kids to wear a mask or anything like that. But we’re also careful in our messaging to make sure if a kid does arrive with a mask, that’s not weird for the other kids or we kind of navigate that. We need to be prepared for that. Same with volunteers in our church. We may say, we’re not going to require that. But a couple of volunteers may show up with masks. We need to make sure that’s not weird for them or anybody else or freak anybody out.

Trey McKnight:

Start feeling the shame and the guilt, like, “Should I have . . . ?”

Frank Bealer:

So in photos of reopening, making sure you have that picture of, if you have five volunteers ready to greet you if one has a mask, that is important in this season because it’s going to happen.

Trey McKnight:

Again, going back to permission.

Frank Bealer:

That’s right. Taking temperature at the doors. We’re just taking the temperature of all staff. There’s no reason for us not to do that with volunteers and staff in my mind. I mean, parents shouldn’t worry about that at all. That’s a good protocol.

Trey McKnight:

Let me ask you a little bit on that. Just because I think if you’ve got different-sized churches, we’re working with some that have 20 people who show up on a Sunday, some that have thousands. What does that look like? Taking temperatures? Is there a slowing at the entrance of the door?

Frank Bealer:

Great question. To me, what we’re trying to do is identify if anybody may have symptoms. So I think we shift where we do our team huddles. So they’re not spread out across the whole building, but it doesn’t mean that they all have to be outside before they come in. But let’s do our volunteer huddles however we choose to do that, and then have three or four or five thermometers. They’re touchless. They’re not expensive. And it sends a message.

Frank Bealer:

Now, do we do that for every student? I see less of a concern for students than kids, because if kids haven’t been in school, they haven’t been exposed to it. You don’t want to make it too wonky for them. You can do that in a video you send out beforehand that says, “Hey, you’re going to see some people in some masks and you’re going to take your temperature.” Give them toy thermometers to try out or whatever. We can figure it out.

Trey McKnight:

That’s a great idea.

Frank Bealer:

There’s a way to smooth it over. With students, I think it could become a norm. And it’s okay. So I think it’s a “choose your own adventure” kind of thing. Like it’s not going to be a heavy requirement. I think it sends a message to parents and kids that we’re not going to want somebody who’s sick to walk in. And we’re going to be sensitive to that because yes, somebody could be asymptomatic. And that’s up for conversation. We can’t always eliminate that, but we can certainly eliminate it if we know somebody’s sick, and we’re just putting that barrier up. We’re doing it. We’re doing it in a good, measured way. And it’s working.

Frank Bealer:

Drop off and pick up, I think is a really critical rethinking for student ministry on how far do parents get to get in. Let’s narrow the amount of exposure. When I think student ministry, I think of a bunch of students crammed together with sweaty worship and games. So we’re not doing games where you’re all throwing around a ball, because now everybody’s touching it and we’re just handling all the germs. So that’s probably not right right now, but there are plenty other games we could play.

When we think social distancing for students, maybe we don’t have massive sweaty worship together, all crammed up front. Everybody comes to the front of the stage. It’s like we have this giant room, and they’re all in a three-foot by twenty-foot little band right up front. Maybe we shouldn’t do that. But social distancing may not be six feet apart by every student, but we’re going to narrow their exposure. So to parents, we’re saying, “Hey, we’re going to have 10 kids together.” At Phase, two teachers and eight kids is our gathering no matter what. That’s who’s together.

Frank Bealer:

Each of those groups have their own bathroom. If they go to a common area, it’s sanitized between the next group coming in. We have sanitizing staff, literally, that go in and sanitize spaces. It sends a message. Now there’s all this stuff on the news. Do the germs live on that cup for two minutes or 10 days? I don’t know. But it’s us doing our due diligence to say, “If there are common areas, we’re going to clean those.” We are sanitizing every day, every night. And anytime there’s a room that’s passed through by different groups of kids before they pass through.

So for us, to sanitize, we use little sprayers—like the little backpack sprayers for weeding your yard that you pump up. You can get chemicals that sanitize that you spray fabrics and beanbag chairs and all that. It’s not expensive. If you’ve got to flip the service really fast, there are these things called electrostatic sprayers. That is the same thing. They just dry faster, essentially. That’s what I understand. I’m not a technician, but something like that.

Trey McKnight:

No, you’re the expert now. Go forth.

Frank Bealer:

We’re going to change my title at the end of this. I’m no longer CEO of Phase, I’m CEO of the CDC, electrostatic connections, whatever. It’s fine. But I have done a lot of research on this trying to figure out how do you flip a building and how do you get ready? So I think treating chairs in an auditorium—that’s where people’s minds are going to go to. Groups with students. They’re going to go to buffets of food. We’ll talk about that in a second.

They’re going to think about kids crammed together. So it’s like, no, we’re spaced apart. We may even do some worship together in a very large room. But we’re going to be six feet apart from the next group of 10. So we’re going to narrow your exposure to 10 kids. I don’t know how to narrow it where everybody’s six feet apart, but we are going to practice social distancing via small groups. We can at least do that because you may not have a facility where you have that many small group rooms where everybody stays alone the whole time.

I think there’s little things like that. I do think we’ve got to get our mind around food in student ministry. You can’t just open up boxes of pizza and have all the kids climb in, or have everybody scooping with the same handle. That’s just gone for a while. So it’s pre-packaged individual food, Rice Krispie treats, or whatever it is. I think that’s kind of a must right now. I think you’re just asking for some heartburn and challenges if we don’t address that one.

Trey McKnight:

That’s good. As we’ve had those conversations about BigStuf for the summer, a lot of what you mentioned, we’re implementing. We just released a document the other day about some of the precautions we’re working on and that we will be taking this summer. Normally we have 1,600 people in our room and like you said, it’s like sweat worship. Everybody’s up front. So we’ve already said, “Hey, we’re probably going to split our sessions. We’re going to do double sessions.” We can reduce the number of people in the rooms so we’ve got no more than “X” number of people in the room. Everybody stays spread out. We’ve already told them, “Hey, no rushing the stage. Maintain your seating area.”

Trey McKnight:

I love the idea of small groups together. No more than 10. You can get with the people you came with, but nothing larger than that. We’ve thought through the food as well. Thinking through, instead of having everybody gather their food and eat it together under the pavilion. We’ve all been sitting across the table from somebody and some food hits you in the face or something—we deal with middle schoolers. So we’re looking at a model to be able to have the students grab their food there and then go eat as small groups on the beach or in your room or whatever.

Frank Bealer:

That totally works. Then it’s like, “Okay, where are we propping the doors open?” So every single person is not touching the door on the way out. I mean, those are little things, but it’s as we get to that nuance level, it gives reassurance to parents that we’re doing what’s best for their kids. We’re doing all the best we know how in light of what we’ve been called and asked to do. I think that’s all that could be asked of us. If I’m thinking about BigStuf, I’m thinking about, they’re all going to get there somehow.

So it’s like, BigStuf needs to produce a document that says, “This is how you should sanitize your bus. Here’s how you need to wipe everything down. And when the kids all get off to go to the bathroom, you’re wiping everything down again.” Just best practices of going, “Yeah, we’re putting the kids on the bus, but here’s how we’re keeping it safe and doing those kinds of things.” Totally good things.

Trey McKnight:

Anytime my team is thinking through the experience as a whole, and I think this is so pertinent even now is, before you open your doors, walk through as if you were an attendee. Think about all the things that need to happen from the time that they set foot on your campus or before they even get there, what are things that they can be doing? What are things that you can be doing now, as you’re walking through, as an attendee, you start to think about those little things.

Oh, I’ve got to touch this door as I walk in. Oh, I’m going to receive a bulletin from somebody as they’re handing it to me. Maybe we don’t do that now. But I think there’s so much that we can get from actually experiencing it ourselves. You start to pick up those little things. These are the things we need to think about. How can we change this? How can we adjust it to make sure that we’re doing everything we can, our due diligence?

Frank Bealer:

And the good thing is we can. I think this isn’t a good thing, but it is our reality. I expect most churches are going to open with less numbers. There’s going to be a ramp-up.

Trey McKnight:

It’s inevitable.

Frank Bealer:

So you’re going to have space. You’re going to have to be like, you’re not thinking back to the day we closed, when we had an epic Sunday and it was packed out. That’s not what we’re coming back to. And so you’re like, “Okay, I’ve got room to play with here. Let’s try to move things around a little bit. Let’s figure out the best scenario. Let’s go outside when we can.” Those kinds of things.

Trey McKnight:

Sure. That’s good. You mentioned earlier, but say for temperature checks that you have a student who registers a temperature. 100.5, I think is the standard. 100.6. What do you do with that student at that point?

Frank Bealer:

Probably my favorite thing on the CDC website is there’s a very specific protocol for faith gathering organizations, for other businesses, for schools. It’s like, “You notify this group of people this way. This area is closed down for sanitization. Sanitization, not sanitation. This is closed down, but that doesn’t mean this has to stop.” And initially, it was kind of like everything that’s affiliated with that organization and space is closed for 14 days.

Trey McKnight:

Shut it all down.

Frank Bealer:

Shut it all down. That’s not the case anymore, but there’s a very practical list of best practices. These are the things you should do and how you should respond when you have a gathering and this happens. Here’s how you notify them. It’s very practical and it makes sense that the CDC would have very specific things because they’re trying to eliminate the spread of the virus.

So in that case, they’re like, this is a very specific protocol of who to notify and when and how to make it work. So in preschool, the interesting thing is that temperature is really critical because we have tons of kids who are teething. They’re running a temperature. Now it doesn’t typically go over that. So we may see a temperature, but it doesn’t mean it’s exceeding that. And so for it to be a little warmer and a kid, a little fussy, that’s fine. We can’t overreact, but we want to be sensitive to it and be wise. But there are some great resources on the CDC website, very practically, this is our commitment of how we’re going to notify you.

Frank Bealer:

Just like in children’s ministry or student ministry, if you have lice or something else, there’s a kind of best practices on how you notify everybody, check your kid’s hair. Not for you. You don’t get lice.

Trey McKnight:

The check for me is pretty quick.

Frank Bealer:

It’s just a quick check. All good. But anyway, so there’s a clear protocol.

Trey McKnight:

Yeah. That’s good. Well, Frank, this has all been incredible information and I don’t want to belabor anything, but I do want to ask as you guys have thought through this, maybe from your experience or as you’re thinking through continuing to move forward, what’s the best way to communicate how you’re keeping everyone safe to both parents and to students?

Frank Bealer:

I think it’s a good observation that they’re two different people groups. It’s much easier with preschoolers or parents because you’re just talking to parents.

Frank Bealer:

For parents, this is the time that we over-communicate. We have the summary of what we’re going to do, and you can drill down as deep as you want to go and on a regular basis.

So if we’re saying we’re going to open the church in three months, and then two months, we’re going to do this dabble on thing where we’re going to start to try some stuff out or whatever it is, a family service or whatever it is. That doesn’t mean we don’t talk to them again for two months. And we’re not just doing a hype rally where we’re like, “Oh, we’re so excited. Countdown begins.” We’re saying, and this is what came in this week. And 88 bottles of hand sanitizer just arrived, or we’re making a Boomerang of opening up the box of hand sanitizer. Those kind of things of like, we got it. It’s still moving them on that plan.

Trey McKnight:

Almost inviting them on the journey as we’re moving back toward . . .

Frank Bealer:

Yeah, we’re figuring this out together. I think that’s for parents. So we’re just over-communicating this time.

Frank Bealer:

Then with students, it’s really unique because most students’ schools closed before most protocols changed. I mean, students weren’t wearing masks. They were washing their hands, and they were telling them to be more cautious, but most schools were done before it really kind of built here in the U.S. So our re-entry as a church is their first experience with a lot of the stuff. Some of them it was the first experience getting out of the house. Maybe they could have a couple of friends in their small friend group that they were allowed to hang out with, but they’ve kind of had to either do that or sneak out and go play football or whatever. And parents think they’re with one person. They’re trying to figure that out.

Frank Bealer:

But as far as coming back into a standard protocol way of operating, we’re introducing that to them. So we have to start to normalize some of the behaviors. On our Instagram, we’re showing students. Three students—one with a mask and that’s okay. They’re all still having fun. I tell you, this surprised me. I was capturing some video for Phase recently, and we’ve got a guy on our team. His name is T.J. And he’s just laughing and happy and just a great guy. He has this fun little mask. And when we did this sweeping slow-motion, putting on the mask to communicate a message to parents, you could tell he was smiling ear to ear, even though most of his face was covered. You could see it in his eyes and his ears, you just see that everything was lifted.

Frank Bealer:

Students need to see that. We need to see that warmth that communicates that it’s all going to be okay, whether your small group leader chooses to wear a mask or not. So we’re introducing them to that. I think in the midst of that, we have to go back to that idea we discussed earlier, it’s going, we’ve got our plan. We think this is best. You choose where you want to jump in. And I think the biggest challenge for student pastors, and this is one that we can’t own for them, we can’t standardize for them. There’s no website that’s going to help you with this. There’s a responsibility and burden on you to make sure that not only are kids safe, but that parents don’t feel like they’re losing if they’re not ready yet for their kid to get involved.

Frank Bealer:

So my daughter recently, they just opened up her dance school. She’s starting to practice. They’ve got a few competitions that have been moved to later in the season or whatever. And some of the students are back and some are still Zooming in. Her dance instructor, the owner of the studio, has done a great job of making them all feel included, even though some of them are there given high fives, we’re not supposed to do that, but they do that. Then some students aren’t there yet, but there’s still the shout outs and that connection there.

So I think if student pastors are thinking about  getting everybody back together, they should ask: “How does the kid who’s not being allowed to come yet still tuning in not completely feeling left out?” That’s going to be something for us all to solve.

Trey McKnight:

Yeah. So no FOMO during this time, student pastors. Don’t create the FOMO. You want them to be there of course, but you just want to make sure that everybody’s included. Gosh, this is such good conversation. As we’re all thinking through over the next few weeks. How do we reopen? As we’re having this conversation over the next few weeks, whether you’re opening next week or you’re going to be opening four months from now or six months or whatever that looks like for you, keep coming back because we’re going to continue to have these conversations and think through these things.

I love the things that you had to say, Frank. This is such good value to help us all figure it out together. So thank you so much, Frank, for joining us.

Of course, as we go through this journey, if you need any more information on any of this at all, you can follow us at orangestudents.com. Frank, again, thank you so much. My name is Trey, and we’ll see you next time.