SANTA CLARA—Pastor Jack Trieber of North Valley Baptist Church, a South Bay church which defied government shelter-in-place orders by continuing to hold indoor services, announced he would would start holding outdoor services. Trieber announced the decision to move services to the parking lot on September 16, according to ABC7 SF.
In an outdoor sermon on September 16, Pastor Trieber preached on the roof of the church and told the congregation sitting in their cars, “I don’t wish anything evil to happen with authorities. Tonight was the right decision to move out here.”
“It’s fun up here,” he told the church congregants who honked at him in their cars. “These are difficult days…different days but you are making it wonderful.”
The sermon from September 16, can be accessed on the video archive page of the North Valley Baptist Church website.
On Facebook, journalist Dan Noyes shared his correspondence with Santa Clara officials. The fines for North Valley Baptist Church’s defiance of shelter-in-place orders reached $112,000 before Pastor Trieber declared his compliance with the indoor worship ban in his outdoor sermon.
Noyes said Pastor Trieber was contacted by senators who claimed that they gave President Trump Trieber’s personal phone number, and that he admitted his decision to comply with the City and County of Santa Clara officials. Noyes wrote in a Facebook news update, claiming that “he did not pursue connecting with the president because he chose to obey the county’s directives.”
The Facebook news update noted that Pastor Trieber rescinded a decision he made to protest the local government.
“Trieber also claimed he was prepared to unleash a flood of one million emails from supporters to local government offices, but decided against that avenue.”
The City and County of Santa Clara have been in the “red” tier in the State of California’s 4-tier color-coded system for tracking COVID-19 trends in various counties. The four tiers include widespread (purple), substantial (red), moderate (orange), and minimal (yellow) according to the California government.
Church Moves Services Outdoors After Fines Reach $112,000 (IN PROGRESS) was originally published on San Francisco News
