The Pandemic May Be Ending, but the Church’s Fight Is Just Beginning

A hybrid church is needed to reach, engage, and serve more people.

Americans are trading their masks for their sunglasses as vaccine numbers rise and COVID-19 cases drop. But many pastors are wondering: will the public’s renewed fervor for the outside world include a return to church?

This question centered discussion during the second installment of Barna’s forums last week. Pastors and Christian leaders in South Florida, Kansas City, Columbus, and Dallas-Fort Worth gathered to learn how members of their local communities are practicing their faith and how the pandemic changed their engagement with the church.

Charlie Dates, pastor of Progressive Baptist Church in Chicago, shared early in each forum that, when the pandemic first hit, members at Progressive asked him if they could call off their congregational fast that had begun before the crisis struck. But as they persisted in the fast, many realized that they needed such a spiritual practice more than ever before. They began to find new ways they could minister to their hurting community members by partnering with others to distribute meals, Instacart codes, and laptops for virtual schooling.

“These are things that we should have already been doing,” Dates said. “But God has given us the blessed privilege of trouble.”

The COVID-19 pandemic was difficult to navigate, but it wasn’t the only challenge Dates and fellow pastors faced over the past year. Political unrest and racial tensions escalated. Unemployment and isolation rattled individuals and families alike. And shifting to digital church services and engagement not only presented a technological challenge, but, for many pastors, this transition revealed a theological tension: what role should digital spaces play in the gathering of believers?

The “blessed privilege of trouble” may not feel as painful as it did during the pandemic’s height, but pastors now reckon with this question in a new context, wondering if their pews will ever fill as they once did. Read More

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