I’ve been reading articles about what life will be like after the pandemic. Lots of folks long for things to “return to normal,” but many commentators express doubt that things ever will be the same. For example, all the buffet restaurants in our area have closed, and most will never reopen. The Chinese buffet in our town has closed, and our granddaughter is really sad about that. Lots of employees have been working from home since March. For some companies that has gone so well, that the companies plan to downsize their office space or eliminate it altogether. This is expected to cause a major change in the commercial real estate market.
Some things will never be the same at our church. Before the pandemic, we offered a Sunday evening service. I was preaching a series of sermons on What Baptists Believe. We have not had a Sunday evening service since March 8th. Our senior pastor told me the other day that we’ll discontinue the Sunday evening services and just offer a few special events on Sunday evening. Since the pandemic, we’ve stopped using our communion plates and trays; instead, we’ve used the little Lord’s Supper kits with the wafer and juice in a plastic packet. The senior pastor likes how quickly we can observe the Lord’s Supper using those, and he plans to continue their use. The same thing is true for passing the offering plates. He told our church administrator to order permanent collection boxes, which we’ll place at the exits to the auditorium. We’ll never pass the offer plates again.
Several times a year, our church would do mailouts to all the households in our zip code. We’ve discovered, during the pandemic, that we can get lots more response from Facebook ads than we did from the mail-outs. The online ads save us lots of money, and they save trees, also. So, no more mailouts.
By necessity, we began offering an online service (video-taped) during the ten weeks that our public worship was shut down. The online services proved quite popular, and we have continued those, even after we resumed public worship. We hope to transition to live streaming our Sunday morning worship when high-speed internet becomes available on our campus.
Now, I realize that some churches had made the changes I mentioned above before the pandemic began; however, the pandemic brought these changes to our church.
What changes has the pandemic wrought in your church? What changes do you predict in the post-pandemic church? Will things ever return to “normal”?
Other than not passing the offering plate, ours hasn’t changed that much. We were already doing online services but we’ve improved the quality. A few of our Sunday School classes (Senior Adults) have not started meeting yet, but eventually they will. Our online giving was about 40% of our total and now it’s easily the majority. I agree though, there will be some things that will never be the same. We haven’t done the Lord’s Supper yet but we would be due to soon. Not sure how we are going to handle that. We’ve done baptism and didn’t change a… Read more »
We’re a small Deaf congregation in SC. Prior to the cessation of meetings, we were averaging about 16 a week, a number that signifies real numerical growth. Since the pandemic began, we’ve done live worship, recorded worship, live Sunday School and live Bible studies. Changes: Our members are more aware that Deaf people in other areas lack access to the Bible. This in turn has made them reluctant to stop the online portions, and have made them wonder about making more materials in sign language accessible online. Our members, desperate for interaction, have taken the initiative to plan game nights… Read more »
I will be honest about 2 things.
1. After 40 years of ministry, I’ve found this COVID ministry the most exhausting and difficult period of ministry.
2. We are open and meeting, but I have fear that we may not get back to “normal” – that quite a few people might use this time as an excuse to drop out.
Maybe I will wake up next week and everything will be normal.
Our senior pastor shared an article by Carey Nieuwhof with us in staff meeting: Church Attendance Is Dying, What’s Next?. (careynieuwhof.com/church–attendance–is-dying)
Basically, Nieuwhof says that church attendance was gradually declining already, and the COVID-19 crisis has accelerated that trend. He believes we’ll need to focus more on online ministry than in person ministry.
Perhaps the Lord will give us a new normal.
Health wise I discovered a new normal 5 yrs ago.
I be the future is forward, not backward.
Troy
Believe
We started meeting again last month. Right now we average about 40% of pre-Covid attendance. No passing of the plate, no handing out of bulletins, and no traditional altar call (having someone get in my face for prayer is probably not the best idea). I’m not sure when we will go back to some of these pre-Covid practices, but not anytime soon. I wonder if churches being forced to change and to go on a “program diet” is one good thing that will come out of all this. I have a feeling that many churches will never go back to… Read more »
As I wrote in the post, we won’t resume Sunday evening services. We discussed discontinuing them in 2019. We decided to give the evening service one last try in 2020, but we were not drawing many people in January and February. I guess you could say that our people voted with their feet.
Might want to try recording teachings and doing a Podcast for people to connect and listen to. Current generation doesn’t seem to go for a “Sunday Evening” service but they will listen to Podcasts.