Key pastors at large local Assemblies of God churches endorse COVID-19 vaccine clinics
"The idea is to go where the people are," said former Springfield mayor now overseeing outreach COVID vaccine clinics for Jordan Valley Health Center.
Gregory J. Holman
New public health measures like a mask mandate or lockdown to curb the Springfield area's current COVID-19 surge would be "unenforceable," Springfield Mayor Ken McClure told reporters Monday at a news conference held at an Assemblies of God church campus just west of town.
Instead, local political, public health and church leaders encouraged Ozarks people to focus on what the leader of the local health department called "the path forward" — getting vaccinated against the potentially deadly disease.
Outreach vaccine clinics are now being hosted at some of the area's largest evangelical congregations, officials said Monday.
Health department leader: COVID-19 vaccine is 'the path forward'
They urged residents to take advantage of free local opportunities to protect themselves from severe illness through ongoing pop-up clinics facilitated by Jordan Valley Community Health Center.
"I encourage people to wear masks, particularly during this time," McClure said. The mayor, like nearly everyone else, wore a mask during a Monday morning news conference put on by the city, the local health department, Jordan Valley and James River Church.
"That being said," McClure added, "mandated masking had its role. It served its purpose making sure that we all had time in this community to get the vaccine readily available and widely accessible to all age groups, now it goes down to age 12."
McClure said in his opinion a new mask mandate would cause some people to think vaccination wasn't necessary. He said such a measure would also "dilute several needed resources" from the Springfield-Greene County Health Department as it tries to convince a frequently skeptical public to vaccinate.
"People know whether they should wear a mask," McClure said. "People know whether they should get vaccinated — and they should."
More:Greene County's COVID-19 cases up 44%; Missouri cases surge 49.4%
Katie Towns, interim director of the health department, agreed.
"At this point the masks have always served a temporary purpose," Towns said, "and that was to get us through to a solution that would give us lasting, sustainable immunity, and that's where we are."
She added, "We have to keep allocating and supporting resources toward the vaccination effort, which is why we're here today. We're so glad to have other partners come to our aid and really step up and support these clinics. This is the path forward."
Joining the call for community residents to vaccinate where they worship, or at another outreach location, were pastors from two large local congregations: Central Assembly of God, on Boonville Avenue in north-central Springfield, as well as James River Church, which has four campuses in Ozark, Springfield and Joplin.
Carter McDaniel, executive pastor at Central Assembly, said his congregation has taken the pandemic very seriously from its onset, changing "operational practices" to promote safety.
On hosting vaccine clinics, McDaniel said, "This is just the next logical step." He added that it was "encouraging" to see other churches join the effort.
McDaniel said there's nothing in Assemblies of God's doctrine of Christian beliefs that would preclude believers from getting vaccinated.
But he said folks in his congregation have had a variety of responses to the notion of vaccinating against COVID-19. Because it's seen as a private matter by many, he said Central Assembly has not formally surveyed its congregation about vaccine attitudes.
More:James River Church to host community COVID-19 vaccination events
Some, like McDaniel and many congregation leaders, were "ready to get (vaccinated) as soon as it was available," while he said others were "skeptical" mainly "because of who they see for it," an apparent reference to resisting calls to vaccinate made by perceived political or cultural adversaries belonging to communities outside of conservative Christianity.
But McDaniel said "there's a big group in the middle" that's simply trying to make an informed decision.
A smiling David Lindell, one of James River's pastors, said the church was "grateful" to put on outreach clinic events at four church facilities in Springfield and Joplin this week.
"It's our hope that in hosting these COVID vaccination events at each of our James River Church campuses that those who are unvaccinated will be encouraged to get vaccinated against COVID," Lindell told reporters.
This week, four clinics were planned with James River Church, which has at least 11,000 weekly congregants and is the sixth-largest Assemblies of God congregation in the United States, according to church data collected in 2017.
On Monday, the outreach kicked off from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at James River's large west campus near Battlefield.
Former mayor says outreach clinics 'go where the people are'
The public was responding to the vaccination call Monday, former Springfield Mayor Bob Stephens told the News-Leader: 40 people showed up to be vaccinated within the first 45 minutes after the Jordan Valley mobile unit on site, emblazoned with the phrase "GREENE COUNTY CARES" down its side, started serving patients in the spacious church lobby.
Stephens was hired by Jordan Valley in April to oversee outreach vaccination clinics in hard-to-reach neighborhoods and communities, as the News-Leader reported earlier. He said to date, the local outreach clinics have distributed 1,100 to 1,200 doses of vaccine against COVID-19.
That's a relative drop in the bucket compared to earlier mass clinics held at Missouri State University, which Stephens said processed 5,600 doses, or at a Jordan Valley Health clinic set up in a former grocery store on Grand Street that distributed as many as 1,500 doses per day during springtime.
The James River Church clinics could easily allow the number of outreach doses distributed to double over the course of the next few days, Stephens said. He added that he thinks other large churches will follow James River's lead in hosting clinics in the near future.
Stephens said patients at clinics like the one held at the church Monday had the option of choosing the one-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine, or the two-stage Moderna or Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines.
After getting the first stage of the vaccine, Stephens urged patients to make a second-dose appointment at another outreach clinic by visiting jordanvalley.org/covid, which has a full schedule of available clinics.
Otherwise, Stephens said Jordan Valley Express Care at 618 N. Benton Ave. holds walk-in vaccine clinics Monday through Friday beginning at 8 a.m. On Tuesdays, the walk-in clinic closes at 6 p.m.; on the other days, it closes at 5 p.m.
More:Springfield hospitals struggle with staffing, ventilators as COVID-19 surge continues
Patients should bring their COVID-19 vaccination record card to their follow-up appointments and a filled-out vaccine consent form, if they are between ages 12 and 17, Stephens said.
"The idea is to go where the people are," Stephens said by way of explaining the clinics' purpose, and he noted that James River Church was the first very large local church to come out with a strong endorsement for vaccine outreach clinics.
Springfield longtime AG church headquarters
Coming from the intense Christian movement born out of the Los Angeles Azusa Street Revival in the early decades of the 20th century, the decentralized Assemblies of God denomination has been headquartered in Springfield for 103 years.
The church is an influential flagship of Pentecostal Protestantism, counting at least 62 million adherents in 190 countries around the globe, with mission outreach and social assistance efforts in many of those locations.
More:Health Department encourages vaccines by hiring help in communities hardest hit by virus
Pastor, sobriety coach says he was vaccinated Monday
John Alarid, who according to his LinkedIn page is a leader with Freedom City Church and a sober-living center, as well as a two-time graduate of Evangel University, took to social media late Monday morning to announce that he'd been vaccinated, along with his spouse.
"We just decided to go ahead and get the Pfizer shot," Alarid said in a video posted to Facebook. "And the reason we did is because of the rate of COVID cases in Springfield, Missouri right now, and the Mercy and Cox hospitals are full."
Alarid said he'd been hesitant to receive one of the vaccines against COVID-19 because they had not been subject to long-term studies.
"But we figured that the risk is worth it, considering that COVID has taken out a lot of lives even in the recovery (from drugs and alcohol) community, and the recovery homes that we oversee, we just had an outbreak."
Alarid added, "We wanted to be a good example ... We believe that God protects us from the fowler's snare, deadly pestilence and poison. So we prayed and we said, 'God, if there's any unknown side effects we're not aware of (we know) that you will protect us.'"
Missouri continues battle with Delta variant
Meanwhile, the local push for vaccination through vaccine clinics linked to religious communities and other locations around the Springfield area comes as Missouri continues to make its way through a COVID-19 gauntlet powered by the Delta variant, first documented in the Show-Me State when it appeared in Branson wastewater in May.
Data collected by the New York Times shows the Springfield metro's new case COVID-19 case load is roughly nine times the countrywide rate of U.S. new daily cases per 100,000. The Branson metro stands at more than 11 times the national rate, while the Joplin metro was more than eight times the national rate.
Over the week ending Sunday, Missouri ranked second among the states where coronavirus was spreading the fastest on a per-person basis, a USA TODAY Network analysis of Johns Hopkins University data shows.
More:Citing COVID-19 surge, Springfield Public Schools reinstates masks for students, staff
With 1.99 percent of the country's population, Missouri had 7.29 percent of the country's cases in the last week. Across the country, 43 states had more cases in the latest week than they did in the week before.
In the latest week, coronavirus cases in the United States increased 47.5 percent from the week before, with 136,187 cases reported.
To date, the state health department reports that Missouri has dosed at least 2.78 million people with COVID-19 vaccines out of a population of more than 6.1 million, with just 2.43 million people fully vaccinated.
More:Mercy Hospital orders all employees to get vaccinated against COVID-19 by Sept. 30
Temporary staff arriving at Cox, CEO says
Steve Edwards, president and CEO of CoxHealth, wrote on Twitter early Monday afternoon that the Springfield-based health system had 125 COVID-positive inpatients, and a staggering 34 percent symptomatic positivity rate.
Staffing shortages that have plagued local hospitals in recent times were being addressed for Cox by the arrival of 141 "traveling" nurses and respiratory therapists, Edwards wrote, with 66 more scheduled to start by July 26.
Edwards wrote Monday that a "brave" nurse passed him the following note: "We feel broken, but we are not, we will continue to serve, help and support."
Reach News-Leader reporter Gregory Holman by emailing gholman@gannett.com. Please consider subscribing to support vital local journalism.