As you know, long before COVID, it was already difficult to get people to attend weekend church services.
Travel sports, weekends away, the death of cultural Christianity and a growing indifference and increased mobility meant that for most churches, attendance was flat or declining, and for growing churches, growing attendance was, well, work.
Post-COVID, as churches around the world reopen, it’s now like church attendance is further falling off a cliff.
After reopening, most churches are reporting 10-40% of their prior church attendance figures (which was already low for most leaders).
As far as online attendance goes, despite an initial surge, post-Easter 2020, only 18% of pastors now report that their online attendance is higher than a typical in-person week.
This means for 82% of pastors, even online church attendance is flat or declining, which is surprisingly like pre-COVID numbers where only a minority of churches were growing. (If you’re wondering where the numbers come from, the ChurchPulse Weekly podcast updates you on all the latest Barna Group research and data.)
Which raises at least two critical questions.
First, what on earth is happening?
And second, what’s next?
That’s what this post is about.
Let me start with some empathy by saying, I get it. I’ve led in the church for 25 years, and I promise you it’s only become more complex. Ironically, at the time when the world needs the Gospel the most, it appears to be the least interested.
This is also really hard—the current crisis is more difficult than anything you’ve led through.
I also realize that almost everywhere you look, it’s bad news.
But know this: the path to the good news is blazed by leaders who keep moving through all the bad news.
If you engage the tough news deeply enough, you’ll be able to move into the future stronger and with a much better approach that can help you advance the mission.
Please hear me. I don’t think people should stop gathering for worship. I’m just asking what you should do when they are.
With that in mind, as hard as they may be to digest, here are seven things I believe will help you and your team prepare for a stronger future.
1. DIAGNOSING THE SITUATION ACCURATELY (IT’S NOT MEDICAL, IT’S CULTURAL)
It would be very easy to diagnose the current low reopening attendance numbers as a medical issue.
And indeed, polls suggest some people won’t return to church as long as social distancing and masks are required, or until there’s a vaccine. After all, even Disney appears to be struggling with low attendance on reopening.
But what if the problem is deeper than that?
Consider the weekly church attendance findings below from Barna, released pre-COVID.
In every age category, weekly church attendance has dropped over the last 20 years.
Perhaps the first step out of the attendance crisis you’re experiencing is to diagnose it accurately: The current church attendance crisis isn’t medical, it’s cultural.
Sure, it’s easy to convince yourself it’s medical, and people may tell you it’s medical, but there’s in all likelihood something deeper going on.
After all, crisis is an accelerator.
Months into the pandemic, people have new habits: Participating from home, or, sometimes, not participating at all in church.
As a result, trends that might have taken years to materialize, arrive almost overnight during times of crisis (like, for example, the widespread adoption of working from home or the much deeper adoption of online shopping).
You can make a strong argument that the current low return-to-church attendance numbers reflect where the church might have ended up a decade from now. We just got there a lot faster.
As much as you may wish that weren’t true, ignoring it, arguing against it, pretending it’s not happening and arguing it shouldn’t be the case will not reverse it.
Denial is not a strategy (or at least not a very good one). Denying what you hate won’t get you and your church to a place you’ll love.
Accepting that this is probably what’s happening is the best place to start. Then build your future around it.
Pastor Jeff’s response to Carey’s analysis….
I am thankful our online worship participation is much higher than the national average by far. I trust that means you are finding the worship experience to be helpful and inspiring! I know we have to make the current worship experience a bit briefer (45 minutes or so) because of the nature of how we are conditioned when watching TV. We have a 40 minute show with 20 minutes of commercials unless you pre-record. Please let me know how we can improve the online worship experience for you! We want to make sure we keep people connected to Christ and Chapel Hill for the time we have to be away from the sanctuary.
Secondly, I really do, perhaps naively, subscribe to the idea that connecting people to Christ and the Church is really a matter of two things….(this is simple, not simplistic).
- Find a need and meet it.
- Find a hurt and heal it.
More often than not, when the Church flounders, it is because we are scratching in places people don’t itch (A Montana phrase for not being relevant) and because we aren’t out and about in the places to see, experience, even to understand the hurts of the people around us! A church that becomes inwardly focused is a church that becomes outwardly absent. We are not present generally speaking in the public realm. I was listening to a podcast recently which named the reality with the current racial protests…largely, the leaders of protests historically were people from the Church. Currently, the Church folk are a definite minority. We have somehow lost our “voice” as we seek to be faithful and fruitful in the world God loves.
Finally, I believe Jesus knew what he was talking about when he said that even the gates of hell cannot prevail against the universal Church. Somehow, someway we will continue, in the words of the hymn, to lift high the cross, the love of Christ proclaim, ‘til all the world adore his sacred name!
More to come next week….
Blessings!
– Pastor Jeff