It is no longer news to say that COVID presents a unique challenge to the American church. Every pastor I speak with mentions challenges associated with COVID, and the challenges continue to linger. Just this week, a pastor friend ministered to a family who lost a young father to COVID pneumonia and a church in our community had to cancel services again because of a COVID outbreak among their membership. All of this in November of 2021, nearly twenty months after the pandemic began.
Rather than a bump in the road, COVID has presented long-term challenges to the church. Many of those challenges may prove to be permanent changes.
However, in all of the pontificating about the challenges of COVID, few people (if any) seem to suggest that the American church may have created some of these problems. Many people are content to blame those who have walked away, or blame COVID, or blame the secularization of culture. However, COVID didn’t create the problems. COVID simply revealed the problems. In churches where masks and politics brought division, the underlying issue was not political, but rather, a lack of unity around the gospel and the mission of Christ.
Why aren’t people returning? We can blame secularization and pandemics, but people are returning to all of the things they deem important. Very few people will not gather with their families for Thanksgiving this year. Football stadiums are full, basketball arenas are raucous, and the Braves filled stadiums and sports bars when they won the World Series (Go Braves!).
Why aren’t people returning to church? They believe other things to be more important. Why?
The answer is uncomfortable: the church itself may be the biggest reason why her members do not believe church is essential. When a church speaks of Christianity only as a personal relationship with Jesus instead of a communal relationship with Jesus and his people, church members have no real reason to cling to the church. When churches refuse to create structures of accountability, church members have no one to answer to. When churches turn a blind eye to all the things that draw her members away from church fellowship (especially travel sports and recreational activities), then church members begin to believe that church attendance and fellowship is optional rather than essential. When church attendance is more like a concert experience instead of actual worship and discipleship, people find better music and entertainment elsewhere and they get discipled by cable news, internet personalities, and social media.
Church leaders are avoiding the elephant in the church sanctuary to their own peril. One of the greatest reasons that churches are struggling post-COVID is that churches did not prioritize discipleship and Christian community pre-COVID. When church was just one more thing to do out of habit, it didn’t take long for that habit to be replaced with something else.
When a church is a family filled with love, care, ministry, and discipleship, people longed for the return of their church meetings.
Why do I believe this so strongly? Because not every church is struggling.
Some churches are actually thriving.
In strange ways, COVID has spurred growth in some churches just as it has created significant decline in others. Which churches are growing today? Those with a healthy ecclesiology and strong discipleship structures. Churches with vibrant small-group ministries found ways to stay connected through shut-downs and quarantines. Churches that care well for each other shopped for groceries for the sick and delivered soup on doorsteps. They made phone calls and sent greeting cards and connected on ZOOM and FaceTime. Churches that cared well for each other committed to small “quarantine” groups within the church body so that they could prioritize community and fellowship even when the world seemed to be falling apart.
Healthy churches got healthier during COVID because they were united around Christ and were committed to Christ’s body. When life became difficult, healthy churches found ways to care for each other and reach out to their communities. Healthy churches became places where people could escape from the anger, hostility, and politics of 2020 and 2021 and focus on extending love, hope, healing, and help.
What can you do if your church is struggling to recover from COVID?
- Stop blaming everyone else. It is never fun, but the first place to look when things go wrong is always in the mirror. There are probably lots of reasons why people are not coming back to church. You can’t fix all their issues. You can fix your own issues. Look in the mirror. Ask yourself honestly if the church culture itself could be a contributing factor to the lack of engagement post-covid.
- Do the right things now. The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago, and that is also the best time to emphasize discipleship within your church body. The second best time is today. If you realize where problems exist, don’t wait a year to begin to resolve them. COVID has created flexibility in churches that was not present before. Use the crisis-induced flexibility to make positive changes.
- Don’t lose hope. The church belongs to Jesus. Seek him first. Trust in Christ to provide for and take care of his church.
- Reach out to those far from Christ. When things get hard in the church, it can be tempting for us to turn our focus inward. Don’t neglect the Great Commission as you seek to fix the problems inside the church.
- Go after the ONE. Jesus was clear. Sometimes we must leave the 99 to go after the 1 sheep who has strayed. Make an effort to reach out to those who have not come back.
- Do not neglect the new people God has brought to you. Every pastor has stories of struggle from COVID, yet almost every pastor I speak with also mentions brand new people who have shown up. People have been connected through livestreams and facebook groups. As you try to reclaim your wandering sheep, do not neglect to care well for those that God has recently brought into your fold.
- Embrace simplicity. I’ve been in dying churches, and we have bought the lie that if we were busy, we could get healthy. So, we programmed and we scheduled. However, many healthy churches are simple. They are focused on gathering for worship, gathering around the Word for fellowship and discipleship, and reaching the world with the gospel. Don’t make it complicated. Busyness will make your people tired, but it does not necessarily equate with health.
The church is essential. When Jesus was dying on his cross, he looked at John and instructed him to care for Mary. Mary, Jesus’s widowed mother, was probably estranged from her other children because of her commitment to Jesus. Jesus expected that the church would care for Mary. The church was essential to Jesus.
We must teach our church members that the church is essential. Is a personal relationship with Jesus necessary? Absolutely. However, that personal relationship with Jesus also unites us to our brothers and sisters in the church. There is no relationship with Jesus that remains personal. The church is never optional. The church is essential, and healthy churches that are thriving post-COVID understand that reality and are living that reality out every single week.
Your church can do it too.
