The Church after Covid – Where Is It Going?
A recent Christian Post article reports on a Barna study of church participation during the recent “lockdown” weeks of the Covid-19 crisis. The Christian Post article opens with this:
One-third of all practicing Christians haven’t been watching either their own church online or another church’s streaming worship services since the state lockdowns in response to the coronavirus, new research reveals.
Before we get anxious about this, it might be helpful to understand what is meant by “practicing Christian.” Here is the definition provided in the Barna report:
Practicing Christians are “those who identify as Christian, agree strongly that faith is very important in their lives and attend church at least monthly (prior to COVID-19).”
According to Barna, then, these are the criteria:
- Self-identification (“I am a Christian.”)
- Profession that faith is very important in my life
- Self-attestation to a minimum attendance pattern of “at least monthly”
To start with, we have a definitional problem. An organization like Barna needs to define categories in some way, but their criteria leave a lot of room in the category for people who I would have a hard time categorizing as “practicing.” To be sure, every circumstance is different. We have some saints as members of our church who haven’t attended for months, even prior to Covid. However, they are ill or elderly and shut-in. They would be there if they could be there, but they cannot. Nevertheless, people of that sort would count as practicing in my books but be “outside” the circle defined by Barna. On the other hand, the Barna definitions would include in the circle a large number of people I would have a hard time categorizing as “practicing Christians.” If you are able bodied, yet you only wander into church once a month, you would fit Barna’s categories, but miss out on mine.
In order to discuss this problem and any solutions we can offer, we will have to decide how to overcome the hurdle of definitions. Should we define the circle as broadly as Barna or should we narrow the definition to satisfy someone like me? Perhaps it will help to discuss the situation from a narrow and a broad perspective.
From my narrow perspective (and from my even narrower, small-church pastor experience), it seems to me that healthy churches should have little trouble with attrition even during crises like the virus shutdowns. In a healthy church, you have a large percentage of the body meeting at least weekly but even more than that interconnecting and interacting on some kind of daily level. Church life is the life of a healthy body. We connect during the week, we know when someone is hurting, and we support one another in moments of personal crisis, weeping with those who weep, but we also meet mundane needs like baby-sitting and pet minding and so on. Tying these human relationships together is a strong central focus on Bible preaching and holy living.
All of this will take on various perspectives depending on the particular context of a given local church, but my guess is that most churches in fundamentalist to conservative Baptist circles are fairly healthy in this way. There are challenges in building body life in various situations – our church is small, so “everyone knows everyone” but our church is spread out, some driving close to an hour to attend our meetings (which they do, faithfully). A larger church might have to fight the depersonalization that can happen in big groups, but on the other hand, draw from a tighter geographic radius.
In any case, the churches that I am thinking about in fundamentalist/conservative circles are very concerned about the life of the body and work hard to build it up and maintain it. That is not to say that some will not fall through the cracks, even in the healthiest of churches. Nevertheless, most churches of this sort care very strongly about the spiritual and emotional life of their members and work hard to maintain it.
In the post-lockdown world, healthy churches are likely to be almost reconnecting at “full strength,” again depending on size and circumstances. Our small group is able to hold services (somewhat reduced in frequency) in conformity to distancing recommendations. If we were larger, we would do as we hear of others doing, holding multiple “spread out” services so that we can persist in gathering together as the Bible calls us to do. In the meantime, we also continue the daily contact with one another in various ways.
We do have a few who are a little cautious about getting out due to their risk factors. These have not yet come back to our services, but we are providing “video replays” which they tell me they are faithful to watch. During the closedown time, they, along with the rest of our saints (including many seniors), faithfully joined our online “gatherings” and continued to support the work of the church financially as well. Isn’t it likely that this experience is true of many other serious-minded Christians in faithful, Bible-believing churches?
So arguing from a “narrow circle” definition of “practicing Christians,” churches need to persist in doing those things that contribute to spiritual health. Faithful Bible reading, prayer, fellowship, interpersonal love and accountability — all of these things will produce faithful Christians and healthy churches.
Well, let’s turn to the broader circle definition. The “once-a-month or more” Christians who “self-identify.” According to Barna, one third of these have dropped out. They’ve “fallen out of church.” What should be done about them?
One fascinating observation in the Barna study is that of the Millennials (the youngest set in the survey), one half of the group have “fallen out.” They aren’t attending physically or digitally. This is the most “connected” group, the techno-generation, but they have been most likely to drop out. The Barna article observes:
“Though younger generations might be more accustomed to digital routines and innovations, their tenuous relationship with institutions seems to persist during this era of digital Church. These trends highlight the importance of churches continuing to reach out to and disciple the next generation, especially those who are seemingly falling away during the pandemic.”
The long-standing trend among younger people in churches of all kinds has been towards a decreasing Christian testimony and/or church involvement. From my reading, the trend is not dependent on the relative “strictness” of local congregations. All denominations, liberal to conservative to fundamentalist, find the younger generations increasingly drifting away.
Many innovations in “church experience” find their justification in the idea that we need to create a relevant atmosphere for the younger generations in order to retain them for the future of the institutions. We can argue about the relative merits of that kind of strategy (and we do), but it seems to me that any sort of strategy like this is self-defeating. What it seems to say is that our institutions are more important than the individuals we are trying to reach! We observe the loss of the “young set.” We fear that us “old ones” will die, and our churches will die with us, unless we “do something.” So we say to the young set something like this, “Hey, look, we can adapt to your ways, we can be ‘cool’ just like you, come on and join us and help us keep our churches going.” What kind of appeal is that? “We need you, so we’ll do anything to keep you.”
What does that say about the gospel, if we cheapen it to simply keep our churches going? What does that say about the value of individual souls who are turning away from “the church” and pursuing all manner of philosophies, life-styles, worldly pursuits, and the like? Should our concern be for perpetuating the church or for evangelizing the lost and disillusioned?
To be fair, the statement in the Barna article says, “reach out and disciple,” and evangelism is disciple-making after all (see the Great Commission). Yet the problem, it seems to me, is not that we need to “rev up the Christianity of professing Christians,” but rather that we need to care for the lost condition of confused and haphazard people who really don’t know Christ at all.
The kind of fellowship I describe in our small church is a beautiful experience. I hope you have it in your local church, and if it isn’t what it ought to be, I hope you are working hard to improve it.
But I think the key to the future is that we must forget about maintaining institutions and care more about winning (and really winning) individual souls for Jesus Christ.
Don Johnson is the pastor of Grace Baptist Church of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada.