I met Dr. Scott Thumma years ago, at a Future of the Church gathering when I served on the executive leadership team at Group Publishing. He was then, and still is today, professor of sociology of religion at Connecticut’s Hartford International University, and co-director of the Hartford Institute for Religion Research.
Early in the pandemic the Lilly Endowment partnered with Thumma in a multi-million research project to track the impact of Covid on church culture and mission in the U.S. We invited Thumma’s research colleague, Dr. Allison Norton, to share Hartford’s ongoing research work for a Vibrant Faith Webinar in May of 2023.
In Thumma’s latest report, his team of researchers spotlight three significant (and maybe permanent) changes brought on by the pandemic…
- Churches have adopted a more flexible, change-friendly ministry mindset.
Of course, the whole world was forced into disorientation in March of 2020, and necessary pandemic restrictions hammered the church particularly hard. Ministry leaders scrambled to learn new technologies, new communication paths, new ways to serve, and new ways to engage their people in faith formation. Like all of us, “congregations don’t like to change,” says Thumma. “But what happened during the pandemic was this realization that, in fact, they were going to die if they didn’t change.”
One of the markers Thumma’s team has continued to track is a congregation’s willingness to change in the face of a rapidly shifting ministry environment. Thumma says the percentage of churches open to change shot up (of course) as the pandemic set in, and stayed at that level through the end of the Covid restrictions. In the last survey, that number is creeping back down. “I think the collective trauma of the pandemic and all that change has really turned many congregations inward and like, ‘OK, we changed, but we’re not doing anything more,’” says Thumma. However, “the pandemic made them break out of their old molds, try new things, and embrace this openness or this willingness to change.”
- Churches are maintaining an openness to alternative ways to worship.
With churches working hard to abide by social-distancing restrictions while still connecting with their congregations for weekly worship and faith-formation offerings, online solutions exploded in popularity. Churches that had no online presence suddenly had to dive into the deep end. And churches that already had some kind of online presence had to learn how to ramp up, quickly. Thumma found plenty of evidence that these new forms of worship and connecting have continued, with both an upside and downside to that.
“Nearly three-quarters of congregations [are] doing livestreaming or some other… form of virtual worship,” he says. “There were some congregations that prior to the pandemic did have online service livestreaming or, more likely, recorded their service and then put it on their YouTube page or on their website or something. But nothing like postpandemic. That is a significantly positive thing in many ways. Folks who happen to be traveling over the weekend, they get to stay in touch with their church. Or if they’re homebound, they can feel like they participate. Or if they’re neurodivergent, they can come into the space and not be threatened by it or overwhelmed by the smells or sounds.”
Most churches, says Thumma, plan to continue their online presence. But his research shows that people who primarily participate in a church’s online offerings give less, volunteer less, and commit less.
- Ministry leaders have learned how to cope with their mental-health pressures.
A culture that was already moving toward perceived isolation and loneliness was plunged deeper into this malaise during the pandemic. Ministry leaders saw a huge uptick in the mental-health needs of their congregations, and felt the same pressures themselves. But Thumma’s research discovered that older ministry leaders weathered this mental-health storm better than their younger colleagues. Still, overall, clergy managed to maintain a healthy outlook through the storms of change—Thumma points to signs of strength and health among clergy in a report titled “Challenges Are Great Opportunities.”
A new pandemic-magnified pressure facing ministry leaders is the steep decline of young people coming to church. They feel caught in the tension between needed changes that would invite young people back into their congregation, and the desire of older congregants who are tired of change. “Their people are saying, ‘No, no, we’re not going to do that anymore,’” says Thumma. “‘We did it a little bit there. That was out of necessity. We’re not going to do it anymore.’ If the clergy can’t make them change, then the congregations get smaller and they can only afford part-time [clergy], and then the clergy vocation doesn’t look as appealing.”
Pain, we know, is both inevitable and a powerful lever in our life. We operate best in a dependent posture, and nothing catalyzes our dependence like pain does. Paul well understood this dynamic in his own life. He learned to see the pain he experienced as a portal into joy—when we grow under the duress of pain, we experience a settled sense of abiding that, more and more, nourishes our life from the well of living water that is Jesus: “We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they help us develop endurance. And endurance develops strength of character, and character strengthens our confident hope of salvation. And this hope will not lead to disappointment. For we know how dearly God loves us, because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love” (Romans 5:3-5).
Help Is Here!
As we venture deeper into our liturgical year, with new ministry possibilities, check out our innovative, practical resources for help infusing your ministry environment with “rich soil” for transformation. Check out our simple, relational, resource Lenten TalkCards. And our newest resource is The Sacred Stories Project. This multi-media resource offers your people a simple, safe, and “normal” way to share aspects of their story in natural, genuine ways. And you get a more connected, honest, and “known” congregation. It’s four guided sessions with accompanying video segments from Adam Young, trauma counselor and host of the podcast The Place We Find Ourselves.
And check out our new resource Listening to Jesus Together. It’s a set of six carefully crafted “listening encounters” designed for three people to experience together—online or in-person. The goal is to give people in your congregation a weekly “reminder habit” to help them listen to Jesus in the context of a short-term small-community experience.
Next, Following Jesus is a curriculum resource you can use with both adults and teenagers in your church this fall—help them explore what an ABIDING/REMAINING relationship with Jesus is like. It’s an experiential, highly interactive, co-discovery way to invite people into deeper intimacy with Jesus.
And The Life of Jesus TalkCards is a simple, devotional way to invite small groups into the heart of Jesus.
Rick Lawrence is Executive Director of Vibrant Faith—he created the new curriculum Following Jesus. He’s editor of the Jesus-Centered Bible and author of 40 books, including his new release Editing Jesus: Confronting the Distorted Faith of the American Church, The Suicide Solution, The Jesus-Centered Life and Jesus-Centered Daily. He hosts the podcast Paying Ridiculous Attention to Jesus.
