By Justin Horey
Trying to summarize how churches are resuming in-person worship after the 2020 quarantine feels a bit like a tribute to Dr. Seuss: Some are meeting, some are not. Some are indoors, some are out.
But while reopening plans vary across a wide spectrum, churches that have decided to postpone in-person worship, even as local municipalities began to lift restrictions, have much in common. Most of them are large, with attendance of 1,000 or more. Many of them minister in cities with left-leaning political ideologies. And all churches—regardless of their reopening plans—are eager to minister face-to-face again.
Despite their desire to meet, these three congregations have decided to wait.
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Community Christian Church (Nottingham, Maryland)
Community Christian Church had been streaming its 11 a.m. Sunday service prior to the shutdown in March, but senior minister David Robinson and the leadership team quickly realized the church’s existing online experience needed to change during the COVID-19 quarantine. Previously, Community’s livestream included just the Sunday sermon, without any worship music. The church quickly added worship to its online services this spring, along with Communion and an online host to interact with participants in a live chat. Still, Robinson said the services lacked a fun quotient—something of a hallmark on Sunday mornings at Community Christian.
“[At first] it didn’t feel right to have fun with a livestream,” Robinson recalled. But one Sunday morning, at the end of his sermon, Robinson crumbled up the last page of his notes and playfully threw the paper ball at the camera. That week, he heard from numerous church members who loved that lighthearted moment, and a tradition was born. Now, the church regularly looks for ways to make the online services playful. Most livestreams also end with custom animation drawn by an artist from within the congregation.
When other states began relaxing restrictions on restaurants, churches, and public gatherings in May and June, Maryland was slow to change its guidelines, and the residents—including churchgoers—generally didn’t push for change.
“It isn’t a religious freedom thing here in Maryland,” Robinson said.
As a result, Community Christian has not faced a lot of pressure to reopen. The church’s leaders still prayerfully considered the decision and consulted with other churches.
“From the beginning of this pandemic, we sought out a ton of counsel.”
The church also surveyed the congregation about the possibility of reopening, and the results were split almost evenly between the four options presented.
So far, Community Christian has chosen not to resume in-person services—but not just for the reasons above. Perhaps most significantly, the church’s leaders believed that social distancing and other restrictions on gathering in Maryland would have meant that in-person services just wouldn’t be the same as before the shutdown.
Attendance at Community typically averages about 1,000. Based on reports from other churches of similar size, the church expected a fraction of those attendees to attend if on-site services resumed this summer.
“My understanding is the larger the church, the lower the percentage of people who resume attending in-person services after the COVID shutdown,” Robinson said.
Ultimately, the largest single factor in Community’s decision was not the quality or the numbers—but evangelism. Since its beginning in 2006, Community Christian has focused on reaching people who weren’t part of any church. Right now, the church is actually reaching its unchurched neighbors more effectively than ever before!
“I personally have friends that I’ve been inviting to church for years and they wouldn’t show up—but they’ve watched the online service,” Robinson said.
When local schools reopen their campuses for in-person classes, restaurants remove the strict regulations for indoor dining, and indoor and outdoor sporting events are taking place in Maryland, then, Robinson said, Community Christian may resume in-person worship on Sundays. But Robinson holds that plan, and all others, very loosely right now. “If people start clamoring, that may change,” he said.
Robinson said the church’s decision on when to reopen will be based largely on local and regional factors. He said the Community team has been considering desires and expectations of those around them throughout the pandemic; they have asked themselves questions like, “What’s happening in Maryland,” and “What’s the feeling at the church?”
Community Christian Church has not banned in-person meetings altogether, though Sunday services are all online.
“We are encouraging people to meet in small groups with social distancing,” Robinson said. The church has encouraged people to host socially distanced “watch parties” on Sundays, and the congregation has offered drive-through food drives through its food pantry.
Instead of the usual summer baptism party—which normally includes face-painting, food trucks, and other fun stuff—Community held a modified outdoor baptism service on the church campus, which allowed people to watch and celebrate. Robinson said nearly everyone wore a mask.
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Bow Valley Christian Church (Calgary, Alberta)
Bow Valley Christian Church is one of the largest Christian churches in Canada, and like most congregations in that country, it stopped gathering for in-person worship services in March.
“All of us really want to get back together,” lead pastor Steve McMillan said, but as of this writing the church had no plans to resume its on-campus services.
The Canadian government, the province of Alberta, and the city of Calgary have all strongly encouraged churches to delay reopening. Authorities are not enforcing limits on religious gatherings, but they have issued what McMillan called “strict and detailed” guidelines. Calgary was in Phase 2 of its reopening plan and some local congregations had chosen to resume in-person meetings at the time of his interview, but McMillan said churches had been issued 12 pages of instructions for possible gatherings. There is currently no capacity limit for places of worship in Phase 2, but the 2-meter distance requirement remains. McMillan summarized the guidance by saying, “If you can avoid meeting, don’t meet.”
McMillan and Bow Valley Christian believed it was “most honoring of the government and health experts” to stop meeting back in March, and they feel it is still “permissible but not beneficial” today. Furthermore, McMillan said the decision to forgo gathering sends a positive message to Bow Valley’s non-Christian neighbors that the church is genuinely concerned about their health and well-being.
“There is a very real physical danger” of being together, he said. Paradoxically, he concluded, “We can love our neighbors by not gathering.”
Prior to the pandemic, Bow Valley was “fairly well set up for streaming,” so the church has not faced serious technical challenges. In fact, while acknowledging that attendance “is super hard to measure” because there’s no way to know how many people an online “view” truly represents, McMillan believes the church’s ministry is effective right now. Bow Valley’s livestream allows it to connect with people the church has never reached before; McMillan called the online audience “a pre-evangelistic mission field.”
Of course, after months of online ministry, Bow Valley Christian Church is offering much more than Sunday worship services on the web. The church hosts prayer times on Facebook and shares brief worship videos with its social media followers. The youth program has had “great success on Zoom”—setting all-time records for attendance—and most of the church’s community groups have embraced digital ways of connecting. Bow Valley even launched more online groups for new attendees this summer.
McMillan said the congregation is tentatively planning a soft launch in September, but neither he, the church, nor his city are in any hurry. He said, “We do have the support of the congregation.”
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Christ’s Church of Flagstaff (Arizona)
Flagstaff, Arizona, is a college town. It’s also home to a large regional hospital, and it is located not far from the 27,000-square-mile Navajo Nation. Based on those considerations, pastor Chris Reed said, “It makes sense to not put people in jeopardy” by meeting in person.
The Flagstaff Medical Center has treated COVID-19 victims from all over Northern Arizona during the pandemic, and a number of local healthcare workers attend Christ’s Church of Flagstaff. Reed and the team at Christ’s Church “didn’t want to create more demand for medical services” by reopening too soon and contributing to the outbreak.
Sadly, the Navajo Nation “has been hit hard by COVID,” Reed said, and many Native Americans are part of Christ’s Church. In light of the outbreak on the reservation, the church felt it was best not to risk additional exposure for its Native American members.
After more than four months of streaming its Sunday services, Christ’s Church had planned to resume in-person worship on July 12, but a surge of new cases of coronavirus in the weeks leading up to that date persuaded the church’s leaders to postpone the reopening. At the time of this writing, local schools are not planning to meet until at least October. Rather than setting a date for on-campus worship, Reed said Christ’s church is going to “wait and see” about reopening.
The congregation is “taking it a month at a time right now,” Reed said. As of midsummer, the church had taken its first small step toward in-person services by allowing staff and elders to attend the live broadcast of the Sunday service.
During this time, Reed and the other leaders at Christ’s Church have been asking themselves, “What do the people really want from an online experience?” Assuming that non-Christians don’t want to watch a “regular” church service on the internet, the church’s online services have been more conversational than on typical Sunday mornings, with two pastors sharing a message instead of a traditional sermon.
Those leaders are also asking themselves, “What can we give our people that they can share with people in their lives?” In addition to the Sunday service, Christ’s Church has continued to focus on offering relevant ministry for children and youth. Reed described the church’s current children’s ministry as a “parents ministry,” with a focus on empowering parents to teach the lessons their kids would be learning on Sundays.
Once a month, the church also sends a package to every child in the congregation so they know someone cares and is praying for them. Reed believes these changes are important now and for the future, because he expects that Sunday services won’t include children’s programming when they first resume.
It’s not easy ministering to more than 1,000 regular attendees without seeing them face-to-face. Reed said, “We’re all tired of it and want to get back to normal, but that’s not going to happen.” He expects the church to “come back slowly, when we do,” but he doesn’t yet know when that will be. In the meantime, Christ’s Church is focusing on new and creative ways to fulfill its mission of “helping one another follow Jesus so that we can experience life as it was meant to be.”
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Keeping All Under a ‘Banner of Grace’
For larger churches in the United States and Canada, the desire to resume in-person weekend services has been tempered by many other factors—from concerns about spreading the coronavirus to large groups, to simply not wanting to open and then close again. (As Steve McMillan said, “We can’t go back.”)
Thankfully, those churches of 1,000 or more typically have the resources and technical ability to offer quality ministry online, both on Sundays and throughout the week. One thing they all have in common is what David Robinson called “a banner of grace”—acknowledging that while they’re doing what they believe is best for their congregations and their cities, not one of them is criticizing another church for opening sooner or more fully.
Justin Horey is a writer, musician, and the founder of Livingstone Marketing. He lives in Southern California.
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