The Addict Pastor
I recently ran across an article by a prolific blogger and Pastor in Canada. I have respected Carey for years and have gained much wisdom from his writings. As a Pastor, I was a fan of the articles that he wrote and the content that he delivered. I recently came across his article discussing “Disruptive Church Trends that will Rule 2021 (The Rise of the Post-Pandemic Church)” and encountered conflicting thoughts going back to my days of leading people. Below, you will see that I will go through all 8 trends and offer a critique or thought to each.
Churches encountered the Pandemic in a similar fashion as culture. For the most part, there was a break in the meeting from week to week while churches tried to garner a handhold on the issues that the pandemic presented. This caused major issues in many churches, because there was a lack of money coming in from week to week. Churches that were more progressive in their thinking prior to the pandemic seemed to have sustained better than churches that were scrambling to become progressive during the pandemic. Those with an inclination to technology, online giving, and video venue services were solid during the pandemic from the research that is being and has been done.
Carey’s thoughts on the Post Pandemic church serves as a more broad brush stroke of the systemic and root issues that the America church deals with even without the pandemic.
1. The Majority of Attenders May No Longer Be In The Room
When I was leading in a church, the number one metric that we knew from week to week, month to month, and year to year was how many people were in attendance on a Sunday. We counted religiously. For those that were counting, there was great scrutiny in how they counted. I remember a period of time where counting was done differently, and this brought consternation to our staff and Lead Pastor, as it was not consistent, therefore not offering the same information as was previously reported. When the leaders gathered to discuss the downward attendance trend, the caveat was that we changed our counting practices and the previous way of counting was probably more accurate. The church went back to the way that it was, with bloated attendance numbers, and this offered a more positive outlook on where we were as a church.
The pandemic brought about significant cuts in attendance, especially as churches reopened for ‘business.’ Carey points out that churches are operating at 36% of the attendance that they were experiencing previous to the COVID 19 pandemic. While I understand that people not returning to church after a virus scare that we have experienced, I have also wondered if the other 64% that haven’t returned to church have not returned for other reasons, other than the pandemic.
Is it possible that the missing have decided that church simply isn’t worth the time or energy to attend? Could it be that church attenders are not seeing the value in consuming whatever their church has to offer and have found better ways to inspire their own faith? These are questions that I have had during the pandemic and even previous to the pandemic. When thinking about the early church, I am reminded that they did church in a persecution time period. If one was part of a church, it was possible that they could be killed at any time. The level of commitment was high, high enough that someone would die for the cause. This is clearly not the case in North America today. If 36% of people came back to attending the church, that number may show a more accurate picture of how many commitment based folks are ‘all in’ in the local church today, in North America.
2. Growing Churches Will Shift Their Focus From Gathering to Connecting
This may be true. But should this not have been a shift that happened years ago? If a church is all about gathering people, and that is the primary metric, it will eventually fall apart, because it has no backbone or skeleton to hang flesh on! Isn’t connection what Jesus is about while he walks on the earth a few thousand years ago? The pandemic didn’t bring good things to our culture or context, but maybe if this is what it brings to the church it could be a blessing.
For years, I argued with others on our staff and leadership teams about whether we should focus on helping people connect with others or whether we should instead get more people to the service to listen to a sermon. I always walked away from those discussions thinking that maybe it didn’t have to be one or the other. The more people that we had listening to sermons, the more likely it was that people might connect. Getting people connected in small groups seemed like a really important strategic part of our church context, and yet it was the weakest area of ministry for us (and for many other churches).
3. Some Pastors Will Try to Fill Auditoriums While Others Focus On Fulfilling The Mission
Wait. Aren’t all pastors supposed to be focused on fulfilling their mission? Should not have this been happening prior to the pandemic? It seems to me that the shift here is something that should have been going on well before churches were forced to shut down, and shut off their consumable goods to the community. Carey makes the statement that he “likes full rooms too, maybe a little too much to be honest.” When a Pastor is so focused on filling rooms with people, and that is the main goal, the mission tends to go by the wayside. Values get dumped in an effort to bring more people in. Programs shift to make sure that they are attractive to more people. The mission of God becomes irrelevant when the mission of the leader is to ‘get more people to listen to a sermon.’
Ironically, there are simply less people today than EVER before attending North American Churches. The trend of people walking away from the local church has been well documented the past 40 years with entire generations simply leaving, never to return. When I was in Youth Ministry, there were several studies done to show that the young adults that were graduating were simply disappearing from church attendance and would not return, unless they had children and thought that those children needed church experience. Is it possible that these disappearing acts simply didn’t see the value in attending a mission-less event?
4. Growing Churches Will See The Internet and Their Buildings Differently
It’s clear to me that churches in North America have resisted using the internet out of fear for decades. It’s a cultural norm that seems ‘new’ and ‘scary’ to some churches. Using technology has always been a difficult step to take in our churches in the United States. I can remember the first projector that we bought for our youth ministry in the early 2000’s. There were several older people that were part of our church who didn’t like the concept of not using the overhead projector or not using the hymnals that were in the back of the pews to ‘read the music.’ God might be disappointed in us, if we let dust collect on the hymnals in exchange for a digital projector.
The internet has offered the ability to maintain ‘butts in the seats’ during the pandemic. I know of a couple of churches who publish their weekly attendance similar to the following.
Attendance –
Main Campus Physical – 632
Second Campus Physical -134
Online Attendance – 565
Total Attendance – 1331
While the above may be a positive, ‘pat on the back’ moment for Pastors across the United States, I wonder if we are still measuring the wrong things. How many of those people are committed to Jesus? How many of those people are committed to the church and what it stands for? If people that were attending church (Physically or online) encountered any type of persecution, would those numbers change at all? I believe that they would. North America has a consumer problem and it does not discriminate within the walls (or online presence) of a local church. People come to be entertained, and so the most entertaining preacher, pastor, worship team, or stage presence will continue to see their numbers increase.
Carey makes several points that support my thoughts above regarding the issues with pre and post pandemic church culture. I’ve given more brief thoughts below about Carey’s last 4 points.
5. Content Alone Won’t Cut It. Community and Connection Will.
Content has never cut it alone. Content is clearly already present. We have the words of God on a page. And that hasn’t been enough. Breathing life into content with community and connection is one of the most difficult parts of any organism calling itself a church in the 20th century.
6. Generational Differences Will Become Clearer Than Ever
The attributes of generational ‘differences’ are the differences in the shared experiences that generations have. If you look at the studies that have been done on these generational differences, you will see clear representation of shared experiences that different generations have had. Some generations experienced the end of the war period. Some experienced a shift from no internet to the internet age. Some generations experienced a post 9-11 world. They are all shared experiences. When these differences are becoming more clear in a local church context, I believe that will have significant negative influence on the local church. The local church should be a shared experience across generations rather than highlighting the differences.
My own experience has been that when a church is cross generational in both it’s attendance and reach ability, it is more healthy. The leaders are more healthy, the church is more healthy, and the culture is significantly bolstered within that local church. If the generation gaps are more highlighted and there are missing generations, the church will experience a profound ‘generation gap’ and miss out on the abilities, talents, and thought processes of those generations.
7. The Political and Ideological Churches Will Lose Influence With the Unchurched
This has been happening for years before the pandemic. Churches that took a hard stance on an issue of political nature or cultural norming were seen as anti progressive, or even anti people by those that were not in attendance. It’s how the church developed it’s own identity in the mid 90’s to today. If you take a look at the perception of the church from those that don’t attend, the words that are often used are ‘racist’, ‘misogynistic’, ‘judgemental’, ‘hypocrisy-laden’ and several other strong attributes. I doubt that any church sets out to be any of these things, but the lens that has been developed because of the practice within the local church is negative at best.
This must be an area that churches take a serious look at if they are to actually help those that are not currently attending experience life and connection as Carey describes in his idealistic church environment.
8. Spiritual Entrepreneurs Will Thrive
Churches that have this trait present will thrive, in my opinion. Carey says “It’s the kind of radical determination, innovation and fierceness the Apostle Paul showed.” And anytime the church has shown this grit in history it has been rewarded with extreme abundant growth. If church leaders can find it in themselves to find and execute these gifts in their churches, there may be hope.
I’m hopeful. I always have been. Reading articles like Carey’s have brought me to tears in the past and present, because the stating of the trends in North America are abysmal. It’s defamation of the name of Jesus, the way that the North American church has seemed to operate for so long. Maybe it will take a Pandemic to change things around.
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