May 1, 2021
SPOTLIGHT: Westside Christian Church (Bradenton, FL)
Thanks to COVID-19, Church Culture Changes For years, lead pastor Tim Boyd and the leaders at Westside Christian Church in Bradenton, Florida, felt called to increasingly engage with the surrounding community. The people of Westside periodically participated in small service projects and the church had a relationship with a local nonprofit called Downtown Ministries, but community involvement had never been a defining characteristic of the congregation. Until 2020. In the early days and weeks of the pandemic, Boyd remembered being surprised at how quickly things shut down. Westside suspended its in-person worship, prerecorded its Sunday services for streaming online, and
