In some ways, the pre-pandemic world of 2019 seems like lifetimes ago.
So much has changed in society since that time (gas prices, anyone?) that it takes some straining to even remember how “normal” used to be defined.
For churches across the country, the ideation of a weekend worship experience has also been forced to morph through multiple iterations in just three short years.
“Prior to 2020, we really wanted you to experience church in-person and all of the benefits of being ‘here.’ So we would post that weekend’s message online, but that was it.”
—Charlie Vansant, Director of Production and Media, Grace Fellowship, Pickerington, OH
While some ministries may still be loath to embrace the “new normal” and are readily wishing for a return to “the way things used to be,” others have leaned into the changes that have come from adapting to a post-pandemic society.
Sue Arambula, the Pastor of Innovation for ONE, A Potter’s House Church in the Los Angeles area, started in that role just weeks into the Covid outbreak in 2020 and, along with other ONE leaders, was thrust into the forefront of exploring what their new ministry identity could become.
“Pastor Toure (Roberts) knew that God was calling us to ‘pivot,’” she says, in “the way we were both seeing and doing things. We knew one thing, [that] church is not a building. So, what could church look like if we stepped outside the box?”
In those early days, ONE reacted like many ministries did, pursuing relationships on a micro level with church attendees who suddenly were disconnected from their church community and fighting isolation. From phone calls and text messages from church leaders, to prayer services over Zoom, it was an all-hands-on-deck approach to creating personal ministry touch despite the restrictions imposed through physical and social distancing.
However, for churches like Grace Fellowship, a multi-site church based outside Columbus, Ohio, it was the macro approach of pursuing a fully online experience that really created the most impact during that season.
Hidden benefits
“The biggest shift we’ve made since 2020 is having an actual presence online with our services,” says Grace Fellowship Director of Production and Media Charlie Vansant.
“Prior to 2020, we really wanted you to experience church in-person and all of the benefits of being ‘here.’ So we would post that weekend’s message online, but that was it. After we were online-only for roughly four months in 2020, we re-gathered and still wanted to give people both options,” he continues.
The shift to offering a fully accessible live stream (along with the on-demand option) paid immediate dividends for the church, as it did for many other similar ministries across the nation, allowing viewers to experience an initial first impression of the church before choosing to connect in person once they were comfortable doing so.
“As a church, we’ve seen real fruit from the online strategy by seeing people discover the church online first and move to connecting in-person,” Vansant says. “We've been able to directly track around 150 people who first engaged us online and moved to in-person,” he continued, adding that they are also aware anecdotally of several dozen others who made the same transition.
While there are likely numerous churches that have had similar experiences to Grace Fellowship, with an online experience leading to increases in both the digital and physical audiences, churches that focus on using an online expression solely as a front door to bring attendees back to a physical building may be missing out on some of the benefits offered by increasing their ministry’s digital presence.
“I think a better question is what is the ‘why’ of physical,” posits Jeff Reed, Founder of THECHURCH.DIGITAL and DigitalChurch.Network and current digital strategist for NewThing Network. “If our churches are wanting to be successful digitally to drive people to attending their physical building, then they are missing a huge potential of what digital can do.”
Accessibility expansion
Reed goes on to explain that the current ideology of web ministry expression has gone beyond an initial call to action, i.e., “see our product digitally and then progress to an in-person experience at a physical location,” and has evolved towards creating virtual community and a decentralized church experience.
It’s the idea that attending church now might be less about being present in a physical building and more about being able to find community and ministry engagement in whatever manner is most accessible to me.
This is the vein in which Life.Church’s recent unveiling of its Metaverse campus has resided. By creating a fully virtual online community that creates an environment for people worldwide to engage with others, the church is counting on this platform being an entry point into the lives of people who may be reticent to attend church in a physical space.
“Our metaverse service is reaching a brand-new group of people who were already in virtual reality or who have recently discovered it, many of whom haven’t been to church in a long time, if ever,” points out Rachel Feuerborn, the Life.Church public relations manager in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
People-focused vision
While there will always be detractors to drastic changes in ministry expression (“[The] Church, historically, has been averse to cultural change,” Reed opines in a recent post on his blog for the Leadership Network), there is no doubt that as the times change, how the Church adapts to presenting its Gospel message must change as well.
But the good news is that with a broader acceptance of online communities, there may be a smoother road to deploying innovative platforms to reach those potential attendees over time.
“I no longer feel the pressure I once felt to be implementing all the latest and greatest in technology today,” says ONE’s Arambula. “We’re more concerned with owning where we are at and allowing technology to enhance our efforts. Yes, we are working to create content for VR, starting at AR for children’s education, [and even] sandboxing with holograms and metaverse. However,” she continues, “we want to introduce things that are sustainable and true to who we are.”
So, it’s not about using technology for technology’s sake, or the desire to implement the latest and greatest to try and stay on the bleeding edge of what is new to society. It’s about a thorough and objective evaluation of church resources, understanding a ministry’s own unique vision and calling, and then adapting to variables with the discernment needed to know which way to pivot.
How that is then implemented, and with what technological tools, will always vary from ministry to ministry. The medium may change, but the Message will not.
And, as Arambula wisely notes, neither will the ultimate vision. “People have been and always will be the priority.”
