Reverend Dr. James E. Victor gazed Sunday at sparsely filled pews at the Mount Olive Baptist Church in Arlington, where ushers wore blue protective gloves. Two hand sanitizer stations stood in the lobby. The reverend urged those in attendance not to be afraid.

“We ought not be so intimidated by a little virus with a crown, when we’ve got a God who has many crowns,” Victor said. “Who will help us? The Lord who made heaven and earth.”

Victor called the worshipers to the altar, saying “To those of you who are not comfortable being that close to other individuals, we invite you to stay in your pews. For those who come we ask you to lock arms rather than touch hands, and sanitize your hands when we’re finished.”

Dozens of people, many of them older congregants, heeded his call and stood with their arms intertwined to hear the prayer.

“Because people of faith often need to gather in times of crisis and to convene in community, the decision not to have church was never really on the forefront of my decision making,” Victor said.

Houses of worship across the country and in the D.C. area sought to strike a balance between fostering community while avoiding the spread of a deadly disease. Local Episcopal and Catholic churches scrapped their usual Sunday morning services, events and activities for at least two weeks. Dar Al-Hijrah Islamic Center in Fairfax County suspended Friday prayers for the first time that anyone can remember.

Other religious services did continue, albeit with special provisions. A bar mitzvah took place Saturday at Temple Emanuel in Kensington, Maryland, but attendance was limited to 30 people.

Elsewhere, the Saint Katherine Greek Orthodox Church in Falls Church said it canceled school, but the priest still planned to use one spoon to distribute wine from a common chalice.

A Unitarian church in Arlington was among those cancelling but services for the public but live-streaming them instead.

These decisions about how to worship as a community come as churches have proven to be a particular risk for spreading disease. The first known case of coronavirus in Washington, D.C. was the rector of Christ Church Georgetown; later, a Loudoun County resident tested positive after attending that church. The city of Alexandria warned that a D.C. resident confirmed to have COVID-19 spent time at the Immanuel Chapel at the Virginia Theological Seminary.

Maryland and D.C. have already banned meetings of 250 or more people, and the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland announced it would close its churches, according to the Baltimore Sun. The Archdiocese of Washington D.C. canceled schools and Mass beginning March 14.

Midday on Sunday, Virginia Gov. Northam announced a ban on public gatherings of 100 or more people.

“This is a very fluid and dynamic situation. We have not mandated a quarantine, but we are strongly encouraging and urging people to avoid public gatherings of any kind,” Northam said.

Some religious leaders have said they are frustrated by a lack of clear guidance. “From an Islamic perspective, Friday prayers can’t happen digitally,” Saif Rahman, the director of public and government affairs, told DCist on Friday. “In order to suspend a command of God to perform a specific prayer, you need an imminent risk or a directive from an official.”

Arlington County declared a state of emergency Saturday, and Arlington County Board Chair Libby Garvey sent religious leaders a note advising each community to decide for itself whether to continue meeting. She urged leaders to take steps to reduce contagion “by increasing the physical distance between attendees, identify sick attendees, provide soap, hand sanitizer, tissues and trash baskets to throw them in, increase ventilation and clean frequently touched services.”

Blanche Watson was one of the worshippers Sunday at Mount Olive Baptist Church. Watson, 70, is an administrator at Fairfax County Public Schools, which has closed its doors in light of the public health crisis. Watson said she, too, has changed her behavior by stocking up on food and keeping mostly at home.

“I only go out now when it’s absolutely necessary,” she said. Asked whether church was absolutely necessary, Watson said, “I don’t think it’s a necessity because I can praise God at any place but I enjoy coming to the church. I enjoy my pastor Reverend Victor’s sermons, the warmth and love in the church.”

In the Saint Katherine’s Greek Orthodox Church in Falls Church, Father Konstantinos Pavlakos said he was following every precaution from the civil authorities, including telling his community to wash their hands, avoid greeting each other with a kiss, and refrain from kissing icons. Still, Pavlakos said the church would continue to share a spoon for distributing Eucharistic wine.

“It’s one chalice, there’s a spoon … and people receive from the spoon,” he said. “And at the end of the services, whatever is left, the clergy consumes.”

Asked if that was best practice during the current outbreak, Pavlakos replied that his church has kept the same ritual for its entire history.

“We had SARS, swine flu, we’ve gone through the plagues,” Pavlakos said. “We’ve never lost a priest or a parishioner. I don’t see why this would be any different for 2,000 years of history, why it would change today.”

Rev. Terasa Cooley, the interim senior minister at Arlington’s Unitarian Universalist Church, took a different approach. She said she decided Thursday to cancel in-person services and move them online.

“We have quite a number of elderly people,” she said. “But also, we feel we have an obligation to our wider culture, to our communities not to create circumstances where people might be exposed. Even if they recover …there is a possibility of them taking it with them and infecting other people.”

For Sunday’s service, Cooley said she recorded ahead of time to incorporate videos from guests who were supposed to speak. She stood in her church and delivered the service to a video camera and rows of empty pews.

“It was lonely,” she said. “One of the ways in which you really get your energy as a minister is to see the people you care about and feed off her energy.”

To counter the feeling, Cooley said she envisioned the people who needed the connection. She is looking for ways to knit her community together remotely, including with daily meditation videos and small groups that can meet together via videoconferencing.

Arlington lawyer Amy Shepherd, 48, tuned in. “We saw our ministerial assistant in his house doing the story for the kids of all ages, which the kids loved, because there was a cat on the table,” she said.

Shepherd was surprised at how much she liked it, too.

“It won’t ever fully replace in-person meetings, but I think in this time, as one of the speakers said, don’t think of it as social distancing,” she said. “Think about it as community care.”