Even before the coronavirus pandemic swept into town early in 2020, the Christian Church in the USA and other western nations were facing a precipitous decline.
Research from the Barna institute shows that church attendance in the USA has effectively halved since 1993.
This graph was produced in March 2020 — before coronavirus completely put a stop to church gatherings across the nation. The question was always going to be: “Will churches bounce back once they are allowed to re-open?”
The answer is not good news for the faithful.
In a recent interview with NPR, David Kinnaman, president of the prominent Christian research organization Barna Group, revealed that as many as one in five churches could permanently close as a result of the shutdowns associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, within the next 18 months.
Kinnaman said that while many churches had handled the challenges of COVID-19 “pretty swimmingly” at first, circumstances had changed for some. Now that many states have allowed churches and recommence meeting in person, their services simply have “a lot less people coming.”
Churches have overestimated the level of emotional attachment and personal connection that many people have with the church. “They’re recognizing that the relationships that they thought were much deeper with people were actually not as deep as they expected,” Kinnaman told NPR. Consequently, when the doors re-opened, the people did not come flocking back to church as they had expected.
Meanwhile, online church attendance is at an all-time high — even after churches reopened. “I think this digital church is here to stay,” Kinnamen continued. However, one is able to observe a church service online with a very low level of commitment and, rightly or wrongly, without feeling the obligation to contribute financially to that ministry. Greater online attendance simply does not meet the financial obligations of the church.
This, in turn, is creating a significant economic challenge for many churches as financial giving dries up. Less people attending simply means less money in the offering plate. The drop off in church donations is further exacerbated by soaring unemployment, which reached an all-time high earlier this year, effectively limiting the amount of money that many people have to give away. Many churches are now ‘feeling the pinch.’
The United Methodist Church, for example, reported a 26% drop in collections for the denomination in the month of April, compared to the same time last year. “This indicates the impact that the coronavirus has had so far on general church collections,” said Rick King, CFO for the UMC’s General Council on Finance and Administration, back in May. Similarly, a “State of the Plate” poll taken by the National Association of Evangelicals — the findings of which were released in late April — found that nearly two-thirds of churches have seen a drop in giving since mid-March. The NAE survey of about 1,000 churches found that 34% of churches reported a decline in giving by 10–20% or more; 22% reported a decline of 30–50% or more; and 9% reported a drop of 75% or more.
According to a recent survey of over 1200 U.S. churches, which documented how congregations receive and manage their financial resources, the average U.S. church spends the largest portion of its money on personnel. Wages accounted for around 49% of the collective U.S. church’s spending in 2018. The second greatest expense that church’s face is building and maintaining buildings — 23% of the budget. When a church’s finances head south, pastors are at risk of losing their jobs, or having their hours significantly reduced and some congregations will simply be unable to service their buildings. This may explain how there had been a drop in belief among pastors that their churches will survive the pandemic — going from 70% responding that they were “very confident” early in 2020, to around 58% responding the same more recently, said Kinnaman.
Overall, the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic will prove insurmountable for many churches. As for whether the sheer scale of church closures indicated in Kinnaman’s grim prediction will come to pass, only time will tell.
One thing is for certain, post-COVID-19, the church is unlikely to ever be the same again. COVID-19 has revealed that the level of commitment that regular church attendees have to the institutionalized church was not as firm as once believed. It has clearly caused many to reconsidered the level of value that church attendance adds to their lives. It highlighted the complete lack of flexibility in the current model of “doing church.” Above all, it has exposed the church’s over-reliance on financial donations given by its member in good faith.
Therefore, the church of the future will be different because of COVID-19.
It must be different.
As for my own church, we have thrived during COVID-19, in spite of restrictions on meetings and social distancing. That is because the church that I attend meets in the humble homes of our members. When the number of people who were allowed to meet together was reduced, we simply met in smaller groups — and our church was never closed!
We gathered each week around a table and share a simple meal together where we intentionally remember Jesus. We catch up. We share our joys and struggles. We encourage each other and keep each other accountable. We pray and give. We do all of this without paying a person to lead it, or financing buildings and programs. It looks more the photo above!
This model of church is reproducible, flexible, relocatable, virtually free to run and, to be honest, much more enjoyable and life-giving than anything I’ve ever experienced in the institutionalized church. The COVID-19 pandemic has only confirmed something that I’ve long suspected about the church: Maybe its future exists in people’s backyards and lounge rooms, rather than in cathedrals and mega-sized auditoriums.
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This post was previously published on Medium.com.
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