What Should Church Leaders Expect When Quarantine Is Over?

1. Expect that we’re going to have to ease back into in-person services.

As much as we would like them to, the floodgates aren’t going to simply open. We won’t all emerge from our homes on the same day to the restriction-free way of life we were used to before the onset of COVID-19. We’re going to need to ease back into things. Our people are going to need to ease back into “normal” life.

As our local, state, and federal government set the tone for our return to normal activities, churches of different sizes will need to develop different strategies for a return to weekly services.

For larger churches, your return to in-person will require several phases, as the government lifts restrictions on gatherings of smaller groups first and then slowly moves to larger gatherings. If this is the case for your church, you’ll need to begin thinking creatively about how to engage your people and empower your leaders at each stage of the process.

For example, your first stage of return to in-person gatherings may involve encouraging your church’s small groups to begin meeting in person on Sunday to watch your church’s live-stream service together. As the restrictions are lifted further, you may consider another intermediary phase between that and your regular gatherings in your church’s usual gathering space.

Of course, we don’t know exactly what the schedule of lifted restrictions will look like. And we might not have much advance notice when certain restrictions are loosened. But it would be wise for church leaders to begin drafting some options and contingency plans to choose from as we receive more information from our government leaders.

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2. Expect that in-person attendance will no longer be automatic for people.

Have you ever missed a couple weeks of going to the gym? And then those weeks turn into months? Getting to that first day back requires a considerable amount of willpower. Getting back into a regular rhythm where it feels automatic again is even harder. We all know the feeling.

I think we can expect a similar phenomenon with our Sunday morning attendance.

After months of not meeting together, your people have begun to form new habits. They have new Sunday routines. It would be unreasonable to expect that all your people would automatically return to weekly in-person attendance after not being able to do so for such an extended period of time.

Like it or not (I’m on the side of not), church attendance simply will not be automatic for anybody after this stay-at-home order lifts. Even our most committed attendees and volunteers will likely need to muster up some willpower to return with the level of commitment they had before—let alone casual attenders.

This means that you’ll need to be strategic about helping your people get back into the swing of things. So begin thinking now about providing in-person experiences that will encourage people to show up.

Provide something that can’t be watched on a livestream. 

Rather than feeling hurt or judgmental toward your people about decreased attendance, express strong leadership, and be encouraging about finding ways to invite your people back.

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3. Expect that all the online ministry you’re doing now will continue to be important moving forward.

For many churches, this crisis has been a baptism by fire with regard to learning how to do online ministry.

Churches that had no real plans to even video-record their services, all of a sudden, are streaming live Sunday experiences every weekend. Pastors and church leaders are finding new and innovative ways to connect with their churches during the week by leveraging digital mediums like email and social media. Churches have begun producing more content than ever before.

And the benefits have been clear. Most churches are reporting an increase in their weekend attendance, and many churches are enjoying an overall increase in engagement.

So it would be an incredible waste to let the good work you have done creating an online presence during this time to go by the wayside once we begin meeting in person again.

This crisis has been an eye-opener for many of us, showing us exactly how effective online ministry can be. And while an entirely online church may not be something you may be theologically comfortable with, being a church with a robust online presence is something that perhaps many of us didn’t fully realize we needed until now.

So lean into it. Use the momentum you’ve built and habits you’ve formed during this time to take your pastoral care and outreach efforts to the next level by keeping them online (in addition to your in-person efforts).

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4. Expect that flexibility is going to be key to your success.

My lead pastor often tells the staff, “Blessed are the flexible.” And it really is true. Great leadership is always a crazy mix of advanced strategic planning and learning to roll with the punches. To lead our churches through to the other side of COVID-19 isolation, we will need to remain nimble, acting decisively but also being ready to pivot.

And that’s because there are so many things that we just can’t predict.

We don’t know how long it will be before we are able to meet in person again.

We don’t know how our churches’ finances will fare as this crisis continues.

We don’t know how many of our people, our volunteers, our key leaders, will be returning to our churches.

We don’t know what life in general will look like after this crisis, let alone the life of our individual congregations. We can make some educated (and in some cases, uneducated) guesses. But by and large, we’ll just have to wait and see. 

 That might sound scary. But take heart in knowing that God is in control.

And as much as you care about the people that you lead, Jesus cares about them so much more than you ever could. Jesus is the head of the Church, and he is in control. Allow this transitory phase to grow your faith. It definitely won’t be comfortable, but growth never is.

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5. Expect a new normal.

The fact of the matter is that the normal we knew before COVID-19 no longer exists. Life never moves backward. As with any major world event, war, or crisis, we will emerge on the other side of this quarantine into a new version of normal. And that’s okay.

Some of the people who were on your volunteer teams before COVID-19 may not return. But you’ll likely be joined by others who weren’t. I am certain that church life will feel very fluid for the first few months—perhaps even as long as a year. You may end up needing to completely rethink the way you structure your weekend services, your weekly schedule of events, and even how your staff focuses their effort. But that doesn’t have to be a bad thing.

As leaders, we have a unique opportunity to begin this new season with something of a clean slate. We get to cast a vision for how we want our churches’ culture to look and feel. We have the opportunity to redefine who we are in light of what God is doing in the world. To reset. To become something better.

Now is the time not only to expect a new normal, but to create one.

We know that God can bring incredible revival even (and sometimes especially) out of the worst of circumstances. What the enemy meant for evil, God will use for good. And he’s going to use you to accomplish it.

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