Dozens of parishioners, few seen wearing masks, trickled out of The Arising church on Virginia Street in Crystal Lake on Sunday afternoon, hopping into vehicles that nearly filled a large parking lot, while other religious organizations across McHenry County have taken steps back from in-person worshiping as the COVID-19 pandemic rages across the region.

Many of The Arising churchgoers gave one another hugs and handshakes in the parking lot with bare faces and ungloved hands before parting ways.

“People are free to choose to stay home if they want,” said Nick Slaughter, pastor for The Arising, who was reached by phone Sunday morning. He noted the church posts content online for its members to view and declined to allow the Northwest Herald to take photographs of the Sunday service proceedings, ending the conversation suddenly because he said he was walking into a meeting before the service.

Other parishes are taking a more cautious approach as COVID-19 remains on the loose with an increasing number of new local cases and hospitalizations.

In the hours before people were trickling out of The Arising, the Rev. Susie M. Hill of Nativity Lutheran Church in Wonder Lake bid her congregants farewell via Zoom after a service held entirely remotely. And Senior Pastor Kurt A. Gamlin of First United Methodist Church in McHenry over a livestream solemnly discussed with worshippers the pandemic’s growing death toll in the country and the church leadership’s difficult decision, made as a new round of mitigations went into effect Friday statewide, to restrict in-person attendance to 10 people each Sunday until further notice.

The Methodist church also is requiring reservations for the seven spots open to the public since three people, including Gamlin, are required to produce the online livestream of the service, and it also has instructed Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts troops with ties to the church to stop meeting for now, Gamlin said. He asked that those who do start to attend in person under the reservation system wait until Thursday before booking a new reservation to attend on back-to-back Sundays, to give people of faith who did not have a chance to go a previous week enough time to sign up.

He remains unsure how the church plans to handle services leading up to and on Christmas Eve, when there normally is heightened interest in attending church and experiencing holiday music live.

“That’s a meaningful time,” Gamlin said. “Those songs are wonderful songs; they’re so musical, both secular and sacred. We will get through it, but it will not be anywhere near the same.”

Hill said both she and her congregants were discouraged when they to again stopped hosting in-person worship after the last Sunday in October, as the COVID-19 caseload was ticking up in Illinois and across the country. They had successfully pulled off in-person services for about six weeks before moving back to the Zoom-only delivery, she said.

“It is very hard for pastors right now. We’re not allowed to go into the hospitals, we’re not encouraged to go see those who are sick in their homes,” Hill said. “So it’s very hard for us, because how can we do that one-on-one ministry if we can’t have that one-on-one?”

With the help of her husband, Martin Hill, she performs the service weekly without her mask on in the empty Nativity Lutheran Church building. A second camera shows a close-up of her face because one of the church’s members attending online depends on reading lips, Susie Hill said.

There has been an “amazing” rise in the number of families being served by the church’s food pantry, she said.

For the 90 minutes the pantry was open Wednesday, 107 families came for help, and another 54 came Thursday, Hill said.

“We’re still doing ministry during COVID-19, just finding new ways. We’re finding new ways to be God’s hands and feet,” she said. “We’re staying strong.”

The Islamic Center of McHenry County in Crystal Lake also is pulling back on gatherings. Starting next week, according to a post on its website, the center will perform two Friday prayers instead of one, at 1 and 1:30 p.m., with no more than 20 people allowed at each because of growing COVID-19 cases in the community.

The Arising earlier this year was given warnings by Crystal Lake police for continuing to hold in-person Sunday services during the stay-at-home phase of the Illinois government's response to the viral outbreak. It appeared to again keep live worship going after the additional set of state-ordered restrictions, known as Tier 3 mitigations, went into effect Friday.

While the new round of mitigations does not directly place new limits on religious activities, it declares funerals should be held with no more than 10 family members of decedents and says all in-home gatherings should be limited to household members. Meeting rooms, banquet centers, private party rooms, private clubs and country clubs are not allowed to host gatherings, according to the government order.

“We just want people to be free,” Slaughter said. He did not return follow-up messages asking for additional clarity on the numbers of live attendees to recent services nor on the importance of holding the services in person during the pandemic.

Multiple people seen exiting The Arising declined to be interviewed about why they feel it is critical to their faith to attend church in person amid the public health crisis. One woman, who took a photograph of a reporter observing people exiting from a sidewalk distant from the building before declining to be named for this story, said, “You have to come inside to know, that’s where you feel it.”