Dear APC Family,

Recently, the Ontario government announced additional changes to Covid-19 restrictions and includes the number of people that can gather for services. The capacity for churches at this time is 50%. These new restrictions are currently in place until January 26.

Our number one priority at all People’s Church is your health and safety. In fact, from the beginning, our church has been very proactive, and the policies and protocols that we created and put in place from the start of Covid-19 are being used by many other churches in the nation. 

We believe that the church is essential, that people need to gather to worship God and have fellowship and community. It has been our objective to balance the spiritual needs of our congregation as well as public health requirements.  

Since the beginning of these latest capacity restrictions, we have not yet reached more than 50% attendance capacity in our church. We have utilized a service registration process in the past; however, we have not found this to be an effective system for a multitude of reasons. Instead, we are adhering to the 50% capacity by monitoring the number of people in the sanctuary and turning people away at the door if that capacity is reached. 

Please note that we have put many protocols in place such as:

• Using professional cleaners that not only clean the building but sanitize the air and all high touchpoint areas such as door handles and light switches every Tuesday and Saturday
• Between the 2 Sunday services, the staff uses spray sanitizers on the sanctuary chairs as well as disinfecting all high touchpoint areas such as door handles
• We have also purchased air purifiers
• We encourage everyone to wear a mask – we provide free masks to anyone that requires them
• We provide hand sanitizer at both entrances and all over the building
• We communicate the screening process in written and oral form
• We have removed the collection of offerings, altar ministry, onsite food service and other ministries in order to reduce contact
• We continue to encourage people to social distance in the sanctuary by monitoring where people are sitting and moving people around if necessary
• We even went as far as to cancel two Christmas Eve services.

If you are still not comfortable with all of these measures, please join us online!