Churches look forward to welcoming more when capacity limits rise

After more than a year of online services and mostly empty pews due to COVID-19 health measures, a significant number of people soon will be allowed back to church.

The first step of Saskatchewan’s Re-Opening Roadmap will increase capacity at places of worship to 150 people or a third of the building’s capacity, whichever is less. Step One is scheduled to begin May 30.

Rev. Jim Chimirri-Russell, the pastor of Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Regina, has been doing his best throughout the pandemic, but he’s still looking forward to standing up and speaking to a more normal-sized flock.

“I’m always excited to have more people here, because the church is not meant to be empty,” he said. “It’s a very strange space to be empty.

“If you just walk through the sanctuary when it’s totally devoid of people, it just feels off. It’s meant and designed to have people in it; that’s the purpose for it. The more people there are in there, up to our limit, the better it works, and the more full and vibrant it seems.

“People are feeling the need, in a very pronounced way, for community, for being back together, for some kind of semblance of normal.”

In the early days of the pandemic, the church had to switch completely to live-streaming and podcast sermons, which wasn’t exactly Chimirri-Russell’s expertise right off the bat.

“It’s a huge adjustment … They don’t teach you much about video, audio editing or anything like that, so we learned by doing,” he said with a chuckle.

Then, when the church was allowed to open the doors to 30 people per service last summer, things changed. It still continued with all of its remote content, but also opened the doors to as many people as possible.

People had to book a spot at a service. When all 30 spots filled up, the church just scheduled another service at a different time.

Chimirri-Russell thinks spending time together is a major human need, and the pandemic has strongly highlighted that.

“Way back at the beginning of Genesis … (God) said something very true. After He’s done making everything … He says, ‘It is not good for man to be alone.’ I think over the last year and a half, we have learned that it’s not good for us to be alone. All kinds of things are possible for a while, but they’re not advisable long-term,” Chimirri-Russell said.

“To be divided from each other, to be forced to do all of your worship, to be forced to do all of your own study by yourself, means that you can’t do what it says in the Bible, which is to bear each other’s burdens and in so doing, fulfil the law of Christ.”

With the amount of space in Chimirri-Russell’s church, 100 properly distanced people should be able to attend. However, he’s not yet sure if it will be that full right off the bat.

“The question is, ‘Does everybody come back?’ That’s a great question …,” he said. “It has been the full calendar year now … For the people who were coming very regularly and have been gone for a year, how long does it take to snap back into being here? Do you just go back in or not?”

Still, Chimirri-Russell is hopeful this is a major step back towards normal life.

“I’ll be excited to have the legally prescribed number of people in here, and I’m hoping the legally prescribed number of people are keen to come back,” he concluded.