How Churches Are Winning and Losing During the COVID-19 Crisis

Churches have had to pivot hard and shift in a direction they weren’t going.

We are now a number of weeks into the COVID-19 crisis here in the United States. For the most part, many churches and believers have entered into a new normal, at least for the time being, as we ride the turbulent wave of the virus and the damage it inflicts personally, socially, culturally, and spiritually.

Here at the Billy Graham Center we work hard to be a hub for convening, training, and resourcing churches for greater gospel impact. Since the beginning of this crisis, we have sought to be a leading voice for how the church can embrace this crisis as a missional moment.

What I want to do in this post is to list what I see as good news and bad news of how churches and believers are doing during the crisis. In gospel like fashion, let’s start with the bad news and then conclude with the good news.

Bad News

There’s no question that a crisis elicits decisions. As such, pastors, church boards, and church leaders have had to pause and pivot, and thus plan and prepare for how they will minister and serve their church as well as their community through this crisis.

Just think about it: in literally a period of a week—possibly two—churches had to decide how they were going to conduct ministry and mission. And giving what the federal government (and state governments) was saying—in connection to what the experts were recommending—most churches moved to some form of online ministry.

According to LifeWay Research, only 7% of churches held an in-person worship service by March 29th, and many of them (43%) don’t typically stream their services.

In short, churches have had to pivot hard and shift in a direction they weren’t going.

In the midst of this pivot, two actions have come across either ...