How the Pandemic has effected the church

[NewCreation435]

This is an interesting article by Dr.James White about five ways the church has actually been helped by the pandemic. If you don't want to read the whole article
his points are:
1. Churches have been forced to move from a weekend-centric, crowd approach to a seven-day-a-week, incarnational approach
2. Churches have been forced online
3. Churches have been forced to embrace social media.
4. Churches have been forced to innovate and change
5. Churches have been brought back to mission

I know this is true with the church that I attend because prior to this while we were using (or the pastor was using) facebook live, most of the churches I have seen were not using this, especially smaller churches. The church is also using things like zoom to do bible studies that they previously were not. The pastor is also on facebook live daily instead of just speaking once or twice a week. I have actually heard more from my pastor after the pandemic began.

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[tango]

I guess there are good and bad aspects to a lot of this.

It's bad when churches turn into little more than glorified country clubs that meet on Sunday (wearing Sunday best, obviously) and become a little huddle of frightfully proper individuals who are good at mutual back-patting and less good at welcoming anyone who isn't quite like them. Breaking away from a pattern like that is a good thing, although I don't know that anything the virus might have done would force such a change.

ETA: Anything that encourages the church to be the body of Christ every day, rather than a glorified social club for an hour or two on a Sunday morning, is a good thing.

Innovating and changing can be a good thing but only if the end result is a step forward. Change for the sake of change isn't necessarily a good thing - there's a lot of merit in "if it ain't broke don't fix it". At my church we have put the sermon online for years now but have never put the full service online because we have offered a time where people can share prayer concerns. At present we have suspended the sharing time, although it's more about not handing round a microphone than anything else, and so for now at least we're posting the whole service online. Going forward we need to decide which way to do this, considering both the needs of the congregation and a wider mission need. The last thing we can afford to do is break things for the real people who attend, in order to maybe reach unspecified people who may or may not benefit from the full service.

Embracing social media isn't necessarily a good thing. We use Facebook for our services but my personal view is that we need to keep things on our web site as well. Otherwise all it takes is Facebook deciding some aspect of the church breaches its "community standards" (whatever that term means today) and everything is gone without a trace.

 

[NewCreation435]

I guess there are good and bad aspects to a lot of this.

It's bad when churches turn into little more than glorified country clubs that meet on Sunday (wearing Sunday best, obviously) and become a little huddle of frightfully proper individuals who are good at mutual back-patting and less good at welcoming anyone who isn't quite like them. Breaking away from a pattern like that is a good thing, although I don't know that anything the virus might have done would force such a change.

ETA: Anything that encourages the church to be the body of Christ every day, rather than a glorified social club for an hour or two on a Sunday morning, is a good thing.

Innovating and changing can be a good thing but only if the end result is a step forward. Change for the sake of change isn't necessarily a good thing - there's a lot of merit in "if it ain't broke don't fix it". At my church we have put the sermon online for years now but have never put the full service online because we have offered a time where people can share prayer concerns. At present we have suspended the sharing time, although it's more about not handing round a microphone than anything else, and so for now at least we're posting the whole service online. Going forward we need to decide which way to do this, considering both the needs of the congregation and a wider mission need. The last thing we can afford to do is break things for the real people who attend, in order to maybe reach unspecified people who may or may not benefit from the full service.

Embracing social media isn't necessarily a good thing. We use Facebook for our services but my personal view is that we need to keep things on our web site as well. Otherwise all it takes is Facebook deciding some aspect of the church breaches its "community standards" (whatever that term means today) and everything is gone without a trace.

It is a problem for people who don't have facebook or don't want to be using that social media outlet because they are missing some messages from the pastor that are not on other platforms. I don't know what the cost difference is for the church to put sermons online or on their web site, but ours hasn't done that.

 

[tango]

It is a problem for people who don't have facebook or don't want to be using that social media outlet because they are missing some messages from the pastor that are not on other platforms. I don't know what the cost difference is for the church to put sermons online or on their web site, but ours hasn't done that.

To put something online just needs some web space. Registering a domain is pretty cheap - the provider I use runs $15/year and that includes anonymous registration (they know who I am but I don't get the endless spam from people who looked up my contact details). Web space is also pretty cheap - unless you need something huge you should be able to get it for $10/month or less. Some places offer free hosting to registered nonprofits. Then all you need is a web site - the cost of a web site can be very low for a basic site to as much as you want to spend.

It's good to let people see your message without requiring that they have social media accounts. I have a Facebook account but frequently consider deleting it - I just get so sick of my feed being spammed with irrelevant "sponsored" posts and political posturing and virtue signalling (from both sides).

 

[NewCreation435]

To put something online just needs some web space. Registering a domain is pretty cheap - the provider I use runs $15/year and that includes anonymous registration (they know who I am but I don't get the endless spam from people who looked up my contact details). Web space is also pretty cheap - unless you need something huge you should be able to get it for $10/month or less. Some places offer free hosting to registered nonprofits. Then all you need is a web site - the cost of a web site can be very low for a basic site to as much as you want to spend.

It's good to let people see your message without requiring that they have social media accounts. I have a Facebook account but frequently consider deleting it - I just get so sick of my feed being spammed with irrelevant "sponsored" posts and political posturing and virtue signalling (from both sides).

I get sick of all the negativity on facebook, but some of the contacts I have go back 30 plus years and I want to stay in touch with them

 

[tango]

I get sick of all the negativity on facebook, but some of the contacts I have go back 30 plus years and I want to stay in touch with them

I don't want to lose contact with people, although frankly some of the worst offenders on my Facebook feed are people I don't want to lose contact with, even if I frequently put them on timeout for political posturing.

 

[Lamb]

Our church has suggested continuing online services for those who cannot attend on Sundays. I think that's really nice especially during the winter months.

 

[tango]

Our church has suggested continuing online services for those who cannot attend on Sundays. I think that's really nice especially during the winter months.

One issue we have is that several older members don't have fast internet. Some don't have internet access at all. It makes it tricky to provide for them, so we end up burning CDs of recorded services and delivering them.