Pastor delivers pro-vaccine message with love

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This article was published 05/10/2021 (1814 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

First, his message was “stay home.” Then, “get vaccinated.” Now, a year-and-a-half into a pandemic that has splintered relationships on the basis of vaccination status, a Steinbach pastor has switched to a nuanced conversation.

“This is a long-term thing. Right now, everything is (about) vaccines, but when this is all over, we’re going to have to find ways to live together down here,” says Kyle Penner, a pastor at Grace Mennonite Church.

After nearly a year advocating for public health and safety in the community where he grew up, Penner sees his role evolving.

“I will still gladly encourage vaccinations for everyone,” he said in a recent interview with the Free Press.

“I think the role has shifted for me to try to find ways to name some of the division and give tools to deal with our frustration and our anxiety and our anger, and try to find a different way through that.”

Penner began to speak out publicly last fall, when Steinbach had one of the highest COVID-19 infection rates in Canada. The Bethesda Regional Health Centre was overrun, Manitoba was weeks away from hitting peak second-wave intensive care admissions, and anti-maskers (largely from surrounding communities) chose to rally in Steinbach. Penner tracked local health data and took to Twitter. He started speaking to reporters, and never stopped urging his congregation, friends and neighbours, to do what’s best for the common good. He volunteers on the provincial government’s Protect MB Advisory Committee, has communicated public-health-order feedback from local churches to the province, and has personally convinced several vaccine-hesitant people to get vaccinated in a region that still has the lowest vaccine uptake in Manitoba.

Over 10 days last month, three people decided to get their first shots after speaking with Penner. His ability to successfully navigate these tough conversations may be thanks in part to his experience as a pastor, but he said preachiness doesn’t get the point across.

“I think anybody can do it. Anybody can say ‘I love you and I want the best for you,'” Penner says.

For others who try to have the vaccine conversation with loved ones, he breaks down the process into two steps. The first, and perhaps most difficult right now, is to make sure they know the relationship is not in jeopardy regardless of their decision.

“I try to explain that our relationship is not at stake,” he says, even if that means picking it back up when the pandemic is over.

The second step is finding a common goal: helping to keep hospitalizations down, supporting health-care workers, travelling, or going to a Jets game.

“Everybody has different reasons for not getting the vaccine, everybody has different reasons for getting the vaccine, and there’s got to be some sort of common vision that we have together. Once you’ve established we’re on the same team, and that your relationship’s not going to end in shambles in the next two minutes, then those conversations help better,” he says.

Each of the people he helped convince had their own reasons for ultimately getting vaccinated. In one case, Penner offered to help with some accessibility barriers to getting the vaccine: things like transportation and scheduling. In another instance, he offered to answer questions and help find information without pushing to change someone’s mind. And he exercised the power of inclusivity by planning to attend a vaccinated-only event with someone who needed a nudge off the fence.

Some people will never change their minds, but Penner says his work now involves telling people their place in the community is not threatened. Penner’s family has called Steinbach home for generations, since 1874, and those roots will remain long after the pandemic ends.

“I’ve often asked myself, how are we going to heal from this? I don’t have any great answers,” he says.

“I am holding on to hope that when this is all over, we’re going to have to work very hard at telling truths, holding each other’s pains, admitting we were wrong on some things, and trying to find ways to forgive people who have hurt us, or whose decisions have hurt us, directly or indirectly.”

The way through, he says, is not pitting the vaccinated and unvaccinated against each other. Neither side has set out to be selfish, Penner says, and shaming doesn’t work.

“We have to remember that we are not enemies, that we are neighbours, and we have to figure out: how do we live together? Both now, in the midst of a fourth wave, but also in the future, when COVID is not going to be the only thing that we ever talk about.”

katie.may@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @thatkatiemay

 

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