A Mother’s Day church service held in violation of California’s coronavirus public health orders resulted in the exposure of over 180 people to the virus.
The Butte County Public Health Department first announced Friday that it had begun a contact tracing operation to respond to a religious service “where a person with lab-confirmed COVID-19 attended.” On Sunday, pastor Mike Jacobsen of Palermo Bible Family Church (PBFC) confirmed to the Los Angeles Times that PBFC held the service in question.
The COVID-19 carrier who attended the service did not receive a diagnosis until the day afterward, Butte County officials said. And Jacobsen claimed in a live-streamed sermon Sunday that the person was asymptomatic at the service and only began feeling sick the following day.
“They didn’t do it intentionally, they didn’t come to church intentionally,” Jacobsen said Sunday. “It was never my heart to put our church in harm’s way. That’s never been my desire.”
Public health officials sounded a slightly less sympathetic note.
“Despite the Governor’s order, the organization chose to open its doors, which resulted in exposing the entire congregation to COVID-19,” the health department said in a statement. “This decision comes at a cost of many hours and a financial burden to respond effectively to slow or stop the spread of COVID-19. Such decisions can place great risk on the County’s ability to continue opening at a faster rate than the State.”
Jacobsen did not respond to TPM’s request for comment. He said during the livestream that he had been contacted by the sheriff’s office following the service. Jacobsen also said that two church members had been in the hospital in Sacramento, but he did not describe their condition or say whether their hospitalizations were related to coronavirus.
Acknowledging the exposure during the livestream Sunday, the pastor said he understood that others believed the in-person service was a mistake, but said he disagreed.
“I didn’t feel like the decision we made was irresponsible, and can I tell you, we still don’t,” Jacobsen said.
Earlier, he compared the decision to Peter’s decision to follow Jesus’ command and walk on water at the Sea of Galilee.
“Some have said, ‘That wasn’t using good common sense,'” Jacobsen said, referring to his decision to hold a Mother’s Day service.
“I might ask you, was it common sense for Peter to step out of the boat onto the stormy seas of Galilee to go toward Jesus? No, there was no common sense in that. Faith has nothing to do with making sense.”
“I want to be like Peter,” the pastor said later in the service. “I want to leave what makes sense — the comfortable boat that everybody else is in. If I have to step out in front, I want to do so. I want lead with a passion because my heart is in the right place. My desires for the people of God and those who do not yet know God is in the right place. I want to be one that wins the harvest for Jesus Christ.”
Butte County’s public health department did not respond to TPM’s request for comment. But it said in its statement Friday that it was working to establish testing for everyone who attended the service.
“Individuals attending the service have been notified of their exposure and instructed by BCPH to self-quarantine,” the department said. “Information about how to
monitor themselves for symptoms, how to contact BCPH and what to do if they become symptomatic has been provided.”
In a live-streamed Bible study last week, Jacobsen compared depriving in-person worship as akin to taking “an infant out of the arms of its mother,” the Times noted. During Sunday’s service, he used a similar analogy.
“It would be like me going to somebody else that has children and saying to them, ‘You know, I can tell you how to raise your kids better than you can.’ But I can’t, because those children belong to somebody else.”
I don’t really care about the worshipers who might get infected for breaking public health orders. That’s just culling the herd. But just think of all the innocent people those worshipers might infect.
Doesn’t get it and doesn’t care to, either. Just like Rump, he doesn’t think he did anything wrong because he did what he wanted to do therefore that has to be right. Total narcissist who thinks other people are just props in his world.
If the government was telling churches that they could not hold services because they didn’t want people to worship God or say the name of Jesus, then churches should not obey it. The Constitution protects the rights of worshippers to not have governmental interference when it comes to who, what or how we worship (and how we respect the rights of those who choose not to worship).
But if the government is telling your church not to meet together because doing so would create a health crisis that would cause undue harm to your congregation as well as over-burden the health care facilities of your area, then the wise thing to do is follow the directives. They are not saying you can’t worship; they are saying that you will have to find ways to worship that will not harm other people. For those who maintain that “We should obey God rather than men”, the Scriptures also say in Romans 13:1-2, “Everyone is to obey the governing authorities. For there is no authority that is not from God, and the existing authorities have been placed where they are by God. Therefore whoever resists the authorities is resisting what God has instituted; and those who resist will bring judgment upon themselves.”
This pastor should have placed the needs of his flock, and the clear directives of his local authorities, above his supposed need to have in-person corporate worship. The pastor is supposed to be a shepherd, and a shepherd always protects the flock even at the risk of his own life and comforts.
Oh, and I’ll just leave this tidbit right here…
COVID-19 isn’t going anywhere for quite a while, guys. Those irresponsible scum who insist on “liberating” their State? Assume that all of them are infected and act accordingly.
Gotta keep that sweet, sweet collection plate revenue coming in.