Hey all,
In light of the governments recent announcement allowing churches to reopen with up to 50 people in attendance, we have been hearing some talk among people at Gateway who are excited at the prospect of returning to church in-person; some of whom have been asking when we will be opening our doors. While we are eager to begin holding in-person services once more, due to the complexity of the governments regulations, we have made the decision to keep all our services online until we can safely host larger gatherings once more.
The reason behind this is simply due to the complexity of the government regulations we would be required to follow; regulations that restrict our attendance to 50 people (requiring we hold up to 5 services each sunday to accomodate not even a third of our regular attendance), require parents to keep their children with them at all times, prevent singing during worship, and would require us to have people removed from the premises if they exhibited any potential symptoms of COVID – such as a cough or runny nose.
We respect our governments decision to implement these requirements, and fully acknowledge that these regulations are in place to promote public safety. However due to the shear volume and complexity of the rules and regulations we would be required to enforce, we have decided that until we are able to safely host larger gatherings (in following with the governments recommendations), we will continue to broadcast our Sunday services and special events; such as our Live Prayer & Prophecy night on May 27th at 7:00pm.
We know that this news will be disappointing to some, but please understand that we did not make this decision lightly. Rather, after an abundance of prayer, we decided that this was the best action to take in order to promote safety, to honour those in leadership over us, and to ensure that we continue to reach people in our city with the love of Christ.
We thank you for your understanding in this matter, and look forward to a time when we will be able to meet in-person once again.
Thank you,
Darien Chaffart
Associate Pastor,
Gateway Alliance Church