It has been amazing to see so many churches pull together quality online church services since this pandemic began. There are early reports of higher church attendance post Covid-19 than previous. That is exciting, I have been saying since the beginning that there is potential for significant growth for churches in discipleship and outreach as we navigate this new world. However, I don’t believe I will face much pushback when I say that the church will likely not see sustained growth if all we do is present an online service.
Loneliness is a crippling reality of our social situation. People not only are cut off from the availability of in person meetings with friends and family, but at the same time are facing a feeling of loss of purpose. As people lose their jobs and go on government support there has never been a time where alleviating loneliness in our world is more important. So how can your church respond? Here are 3 ways your church can help to support your community in feeling connection.
Promote Phoning Un-churched Friends
If you think you are going to have an in person zoom meeting or phone call with every person in your church every week I would suggest you are either fooling yourself or going to run yourself into an unhealthy and unmanageable situation. This is a chance for you to get your people mobilized as the hands and feet of Christ. This is where a phone tree again is a very valuable tool. But beyond just connecting with your congregation it is important to make sure that we are pushing our people to make calls with unchurched people in their lives. If we just let our people be comfortable and sit in isolation until 10:30am on Sunday morning, then we have failed as leaders. Its as simple as pushing it in your Sunday communication, or in your one on one mentoring calls as well as on social media. Rally your people to a cause. Make sure that reaching out becomes a part of your church’s culture as you develop your post Covid-19 identity.
Create Online Community Outside of Your Service
A danger in creating a new normal is that we would lose our different arms of outreach that may have existed before. It is important that at the minimum your connections opportunities mirror what was happening before the pandemic. If you had a women’s connection group meeting Wednesday mornings in the fireside room then make sure that continues online. Set up the same group on Zoom or Google Hangouts and make sure it continues. If your men’s group met at 7:00PM on Tuesday nights keep it going. You don’t have to continue the same time or date, there is flexibility now, maybe you need to do multiple groups at different times. Again this shouldn’t just be a Pastor leading this, empower your leaders to be active in serving even without a physical location.
Share Opportunity With Your Community
These connection opportunities need to be side doors into your church community. Lets go back to the women’s connection group. If you put a invitation on your community Facebook group to join even if you have no prior connection to the church, I believe you will see people engage. A society starving for community will be way more willing to engage than ever before. Having multiple connection points online for your community to feel like they are actually engaged in community will drive purpose and I know will funnel new people towards your Sunday worship experience online. Another option is to pay for boosted (advertised) posts on Facebook or Instagram promoting your connection opportunity to people in your area that have no connection to your church. This can be a very low cost tool that will get your information into the hands of people who would never have heard of it otherwise.
At the end of the day we need to always remain relentlessly outward bound. The mission doesn’t stop. Lets continue to work together to find creative ways to fulfill the great commission. If you have any great outreach ideas that you would like to share please email me at Jeff@abnwt.com .
Jeff Kiers