Up until this crisis began, life was good, our pace of life was fast and we never imagined that things could change. Then boom. The switch was turned. We stopped going to work, restaurants, sporting events and attending our churches in person.
Many churches and pastors, stung by the pandemic, have been just trying to get by and through this crisis. For many, giving is down and layoffs have occurred. Many are in denial. Most are stressed. But this crisis is an unprecedented opportunity for those churches who will lean in and ask the question “what can we learn from this?” Those that can pivot will emerge as leaders for future growth.
Anxiety to Revival. As we now know, many are feeling out of control and anxious about their future. Some feel small and are confronting their mortality. Everyone is seeking comfort and strength. Many that don’t have faith are searching the internet for information about Jesus and the bible. People are asking about God. I believe that a revival is underway.
A recent report by Gallup polling revealed in an article written by Frank Newport dated April 6, 2020, that “19% of Americans interviewed between March 28 and April 1 said their faith or spirituality has gotten better as a result of the crisis, while 3% say it has gotten worse, for a net of +16 percentage points. It’s my opinion that, as we come to realize and feel the difficult impact of this economic decline in the next few months, the percentage of people feeling anxious may increase. Our sense of well-being will further erode as we realized that group gatherings will be very, very slow to fully recover. We can’t just flip the switch back on. This crisis will have long lasting impacts on our economy. I believe longer than most today can imagine.
Church Attendance is Up! It’s no secret that interest in church is up because people are anxious, open, curious, have more time. We hear that online attendance is skyrocketing as people find it easy to connect to a church service online. It’s not as intimidating as walking into a church building. It’s relaxed and time efficient.
Greg Laurie, Senior Pastor for Harvest Christian Fellowship in Riverside, California states in his blog written on April 6th that “…the doors of the church building are closed for the foreseeable future, the door of opportunity for the church has been flung wide open.” Harvest reported that before the pandemic, it had around 8,000 people watching a service online. After the stay at home orders were put in place, the first Sunday the church reported that 250,000 viewed a service and recently over 1 million people viewed a service online. That is remarkable.
Streaming Readiness Advantage. Those churches like Harvest that were already successfully executing online services before the pandemic arrived are seeing the biggest boost in online attendance. Yes, the big are getting bigger. Their advanced platforms were in place and available to attract new viewers.
Streaming Content Is Impressive. For Good Friday, my wife Susan and I watched three world class events online. At 3pm we watched World Vision’s GoodFriday.com featuring music by Michael W. Smith, Lauren Daigle, Kari Jobe and inspiring words from Nick Hall, Francis Chan, Max Lucado and Tony Dungy. At 5pm, we watched the Parkside Church Good Friday Meditation with Alistair Begg. At 6pm we tuned in to TBN.com for the Good Friday Nashville concert with Chris Tomlin, Matt Maher, Pat Barrett and We The Kingdom.
With such good content online, why wouldn’t people routinely choose one of the giants of our faith over attending our local church? One can choose from Greg Laurie, Andy Stanley, Craig Groeschel, Tony Evans, Tim Keller, Rick Warren and others. The most popular preachers today are seeing online attendance skyrocket. This is a good thing!
Streaming Utilization. A study done by Nashville based Lifeway Research in the fall of 2019 revealed that only about half of all churches record and post their services to their website and less than one-quarter livestream their entire service. For protestant church attenders, Lifeway states that about half have viewed a live streaming service online in the past year. This is changing in a big way.
Streaming Infrastructure Boom. Those churches that were not live streaming their services prior to the pandemic are now scrambling to catch up. Conducting a Zoom meeting may work for the smallest churches, but the more ambitious, forward-thinking churches will want a well performing online platform to sustain future growth. This will be critically necessary to retain current attenders and to add new believers. This will require new capital investment in video production and people who can run it. This will be a hard pill to swallow with so much uncertainty about giving (revenues).
Besides just surviving, if churches have any desire to increase their reach in the future, which is the goal for most churches, then they’ll need to learn about this technology now. Starting out small with scalable infrastructure is always the best way.
Three years ago, Craig Smith, Lead Pastor at Mission Hills Church in Littleton, Colorado, helped his leaders decide that they should immediately invest in an online platform, create a dedicated production room, purchase state-of-the-art equipment and hire qualified support personnel. Today, the church is well positioned to provide excellent and attractive live streaming content that will assure its future growth.
In 2016, Jeff Schwartzentraub, Lead Pastor with Brave Church in Denver, Colorado, had a vision to create a base camp at a recently purchased building so that he could support launching Brave affiliated churches across the world. In 2017, we led the design, engineering and construction renovation for the lobby and the 1500 seat auditorium. We also renovated the existing video production space to allow his weekly message to be live streamed to all his campuses.
These are just two examples of churches that were prepared before the pandemic who are thriving during this tumultuous time.
Streaming to Dominate Future Growth. Online viewing will comprise most new church growth for the foreseeable future. And it won’t just be from what I call YoungGens who grew up with social media. It will also include seniors, what I call OldGens or people over the age of 65. It’s our seniors that generally attend church more regularly anyway and will want to continue doing so. But capturing YoungGens won’t be automatic. Even before the crisis, YoungGens revealed a desire to be a part of some thing relevant—to be a part of a church that has tangible impacts to people in need. Churches will need to continue meaningful community outreach to capture YoungGens. The future of the church depends on YoungGens!
Streaming For Children. If we are going to do virtual church online, we must devise platforms for children to participate online as well. While parents are worshiping and listening to the sermon, children should get their own activities and online learning experiences.