Vehicles fill the parking lot Saturday night at Kingdom Life Church in Oakland after police received reports the church was violating rules for gathering size during the coronavirus pandemic. Amy Calder/Morning Sentinel
OAKLAND — A crowd packed Kingdom Life Church in Oakland on Saturday night for an event featuring a California Christian worship leader and singer who has been traveling the country, preaching and protesting government restrictions on religious gatherings during the pandemic.
Reports of the church’s actions Saturday night come after the church had previously announced plans to cancel its 2020 Tenacious Love indoor conference that had been planned for this past weekend, citing an abundance of caution related to crowd sizes at indoor events.
The church wrote in a Facebook post it was canceling the conference “due to ongoing state regulations and safety concerns,” and “ticket holders have been emailed, notified, and refunded.”
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But the church announced prior to the weekend a “Worship Night” would be held there instead, and it would be live-streamed while also welcoming an in-person audience.
“There will be an overflow room downstairs and seats available in the balcony and sanctuary,” a church announcement read.
It also read, “Please avoid posting this online as you want to be very sensitive to COVID policies and general community concern for larger gatherings.”
Sean Feucht, 37, the pastor and featured guest from Redding, California, told the audience at “Night of Worship” on Saturday he had traveled to 33 cities across the United States recently, holding outdoor concerts and worship events.
“This is my first time leading worship in a church in probably four to five months,” Feucht said during the live stream.
At 6:57 p.m. Saturday, a caller reported to the Oakland Police Department the church at 191 High St. was violating an emergency ordinance. Police said they responded and monitored the situation.
Police also responded to the church Friday night after a caller, who asked to remain anonymous, reported being concerned about the church’s violating Maine Center For Disease Control & Prevention guidelines for gathering sizes during the pandemic.
Women walk from the parking lot Sunday morning to the main entrance of Kingdom Life Church in Oakland. Rich Abrahamson/Morning Sentinel Buy this Photo
Current rules under the state’s “Phase 2” protocols, last updated Aug. 5, limit gatherings to 50 people indoors and 100 outdoors.
“We responded (Friday night). We observed and saw the parking lot was full of cars,” Deputy Chief Rick Stubbert of the Oakland Police Department said in a telephone interview. “We obviously couldn’t take any enforcement action and we didn’t take any enforcement action. We just observed.”
Stubbert said police were aware before the weekend event that it was planned for Friday and Saturday, and they spoke with church officials about the need to follow guidelines.
“They assured us they would,” he said.
At about 7 p.m. Saturday, vehicles filed into the parking lot and people were directing drivers where to go. A man with “SECURITY” written on his T-shirt objected when a Morning Sentinel reporter took cellphone photographs of the parking lot from across the road, in a public space.
Stubbert said by telephone Saturday night that police were in the area of the church on another call and were aware of what was happening at the church.
“We’ve been watching it, monitoring it,” he said.
It is unclear how many people attended the event. Police plan to address the matter Monday “to see if there were any violations,” according to Stubbert.
He said the parking lot of the church appeared to be full Friday and Saturday.
“There have been a lot of out-of-state plates coming and going,” he said.
Contacted Sunday for comment, Jamie Dickson, senior pastor at Kingdom Life Church, said in a Facebook message that he was not sure how many people attended the weekend events.
“What a crazy time,” Dickson wrote. “We had canceled an annual conference and decided to do two worship nights for our local community and chose not to promote them to limit numbers and stream something online.”
Asked what the church did not prepare for a safe event, Dickson wrote the church sent a plan to local officials and informed police about what we were going to do.
“We have been in great dialogue for weeks with them,” Dickson said. “We set up three locations throughout the church that could leave room for social distancing and we streamed the service to them.
“Every person that came was offered a mask if they didn’t have one and given a personal hand sanitizer bottle and a sticker that said they were practicing social distancing. Space limitations were posted on bathrooms. Arrows on the floor directing people. And CDC guidelines were posted through the church.”
Dickson wrote he did not know how many people attended the events.
Vehicles fill the parking lot Saturday night at Kingdom Life Church in Oakland after police received reports the church was violating rules for gathering size during the coronavirus pandemic. Amy Calder/Morning Sentinel
“I didn’t count the heads but I know our security team did their best to ask everyone follow the guidelines we had in place.” he wrote. “We definitely had more people than we expected as we tried to keep it small and online-focused. But I’m proud of our team for how hard they worked to keep it safe and I think people are desperate for hope.
“They’re desperate for worship. Desperate for God. Desperate for light in this dark time. Online and in-person God showed up, people were healed and set free from depression and anxiety. Families were restored, people got their hope back. I couldn’t be more proud to bless our community with times and messages of hope in this really really dark and difficult time!”
Amy Cobb, who drives nearly daily between Rome and Waterville, said Sunday she had been following the church issue and was disheartened to see a sea of vehicles in the parking lot Friday and Saturday nights, and people entering the church while not wearing masks.
Cobb said she has had four family members in other states contract COVID-19, two of whom have died. She said she knows how serious the situation is and how important it is to follow health and safety guidelines. “I was really pleased when he (Dickson) announced he was canceling (Tenacious Love) because I felt like he was a community leader who was putting community first over what some people wanted,” Cobb said Sunday in a telephone interview.
She said when she discovered events were still being held at the church, she was disappointed and worried, thinking about the wedding held Aug. 7 in Millinocket that sparked an outbreak of COVID-19 that sickened many people in Sanford, Madison and other places and killed several who had not even attended the wedding.
Cobb said she was reticent to speak up about what she saw at the Oakland church over the weekend but then decided to do so because it is important.
“I say that I stand for things,” she said, “and it’s not really right to say you stand for things and never say anything.”
Meanwhile, during Saturday night’s worship event, Feucht referred to the fact his friend, Dickson, had canceled the annual Tenacious Love event that was originally scheduled for Thursday through Sunday, but Feucht helped convince him to replace it with “Night of Worship.”
“I’m like, ‘Ah, come on, bro, let’s do it,'” Feucht said, recalling his conversation with Dickson.
“How many are so thankful that we’re doing this?” Feucht called out to the audience, which cheered. “How many are thankful the leadership of this church is still doing this?”
The live-streamed event did not show the size of the audience, instead focusing on the musicians onstage and on Dickson, Feucht and others.
Meanwhile, Feucht preached and sang Sept. 6 at the “Let Us Worship” rally at the Capitol building in Sacramento, California, where media reported few people were wearing masks and thousands of people were packed tightly together.
As of Sept. 7, the coronavirus had infected nearly 20,000 people in Sacramento County, according to reports.
Before coming to Oakland on Saturday, Feucht said he was worshipping earlier in the day with 100,000 people in Washington, D.C.
He spoke about the evils of abortion and said that on Oct. 26, confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice nominee Amy Coney Barrett were to start. He said that the day before that, he wanted to see “400,000-ish” people gather on the mall there.
Calling this time “a prophetic moment in the history of America,” Feucht said “the blood of 60 million aborted babies are crying out for justice.”
About 2½ hours into Saturday night’s worship event at the Oakland church, Feucht was still preaching and singing.
On Sunday morning, Feucht preached again in the Oakland church. He spoke of dining in Washington, D.C., and sitting with “kings of the earth,” including Dr. Ben Carson, the sitting secretary of Housing and Urban Development, and Oliver North, the retired Marine Corps officer who is now a conservative political commentator.
Feucht said he gets applauded for breaking the law in other nations to worship Jesus, and he “doesn’t need a mayor’s permission to worship Jesus outside.”
“So many are against breaking the law in our own country to worship Jesus,” he said. “Very strange, right?”
He said he has been to all the virus “hot spots” and does not have the virus.
“Every place we go, God shows up,” he said. “Heaven is responding.”
Feucht said he “can’t wait to see the ripple effects from this weekend in Maine.”
“I can’t wait to see the local news try to twist and thwart and change and shift a narrative that God is writing that’s unstoppable,” he said. “I can’t wait to see a church that’s not going to back down.”
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