We’re at a bit of a crossroads.
There’s a lot of talk that rather than being a physical thing with digital extras the church will become a digital thing with physical extras.
In America, when churches reopened only 35% of people came back… Here in Scotland, numbers will be limited to 50 with no singing and 2 meters distance between households.
At the same time we have seen a huge increase in engagement with church services online. It’s notoriously hard to measure ‘watches’ but even a very conservative estimate puts us at somewhere around 400 people each week. We can’t just stop that and pick up where we left off, can we?
Our church has connected with people who have never been before, or who usually go somewhere else, or who visit us as one of a number of stops on their weekly church tour.
We have services on YouTube and Facebook. We’ve zoomed communion, cafe church and morning prayers. More people have come to meetings that do when we meet physically.
Some will understandably hope for normal service to resume as soon as possible. We miss each other. Meeting with others to talk, share and console is both good and necessary. But there will be lots of distance between us and no singing.
Whatever happens, church isn’t going to look or feel like it did before. Like all changes, that presents us with some opportunities and challenges…
So, how do you feel about that? What do you think is next?
(Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash)