We know many of you are looking for the day when we can re-open the church building. You may have heard, in this next stage for re-opening Saskatchewan, the Government is allowing churches to re-open provided they follow quite strict guidelines. The guidelines were established in consultation with Faith Leaders, including Phil Gunther, our Provincial Director of Ministry.
Council met last week to review the requirements and we have concluded that for now having services in the church building would not be practical. We will continue to monitor the situation and we are praying that restrictions will ease. To give you an idea of some of the requirements:
- we would have to have individuals pre-register each Sunday,
- we would have to pre-assigned seating with social distancing,
- we would have to control peoples entrance and exit, one family at a time, maintaining social distancing
- no-one would be able to get up during the service,
- no singing without masks,
- People in the higher risk groups are not recommended to attend (the majority of us fit that group).
Given this, hopefully you will appreciate the decision we have made and we pray that it won’t be much longer before we can gather.