As you have probably heard, the restrictions placed on public gatherings by the Province are beginning to ease. This has fueled our hopes of being together in person again. The difficulty is how to do this in a manner that is safe for everyone involved, while staying within the provincial guidelines, and still minister to the community.
Currently, we are allowed to have services but with no more people than 30% of the building capacity. Given the size of Keele’s building, that is 60 people. This would require us implementing a registration system for people wanting to attend in person.
We were ready to do that until the city of Toronto passed a by-law that requires all people to wear masks when indoors in public places. This means that if we open the building to the public, the singers and Grant would have to wear masks while singing and speaking. Hearing them would be difficult, especially for anyone watching the service online.
A survey of our members showed that a strong majority prefer to wait and see before deciding what the best course of action is. Therefore, Keele will be continuing with online services only, until we determine a better course of action for reopening. If we can figure out how we can allow the singers on the praise team and Grant, to not have to use masks while speaking or singing and still maintain good safety practices and compliance with the city’s new mask by-law, we will move forward with opening up our public space. We are investigating a few possibilities now.
In the meantime, we are looking for new and creative ways to create some avenues of fellowship. We are looking for people who have been watching the service on their televisions. If we could use our existing small groups, limiting them to 10 people, and then add a few more groups of 10 meeting around the GTA to watch and worship together and then have some time to talk and pray, that would be a huge help. If you would like to host an in-person watch party of 10 people in your home, please call or email Grant.