The UK government has set up an inquiry to learn lessons from the COVID pandemic. Much of the focus in the media seems to be on whether or not we’ll get to read Boris Johnson’s WhatsApp messages but the true purpose of such an inquiry is not to focus on people and personalities, not to allocate blame but to help us be better prepared for future crises, whether specific pandemics of the same kind or other national emergencies.
I can’t help thinking that the church would do well to hold a similar kind of inquiry. We have much to learn from how we responded in the crisis too. There are plenty of positives to pick up on as well as things we might do differently in the future. Perhaps someone like the Evangelical Alliance will do this. In the meantime, I’m going to run a few articles reflecting on the pandemic from a couple of years afterwards.
First, I want to talk about the kinds of questions we might want to be asking. I’m going to share the results of a little Twitter survey here. Remember that such a survey doesn’t claim to be a proportional representation of the whole Church’s experience because people opt in to it. However, it does give a feel for the responses of people within my circle who tend to be primarily but not exclusively from conservative and charismatic evangelical contexts. As with past surveys I’m less concerned about trying to figure out what the percentages tell me as to pick up on whether or not friends did experience specific things
So, here goes.
COVID is something that has introduced all of us to sickness. Even if our symptoms were mild, many of us experienced an illness that we knew could be life threatening. What has this taught us about mortality?
The majority of my participants didn’t know anyone who died of COVID but a significant proportion did and I suspect that this means that those who don’t know of someone personally, will at least know of someone. Personally, I knew just one person who lost their life early on.
However, in terms of deaths, with 0.3% of the population dying (228000), this still means that for many people, the encounter with the reality of death was distant. Proportionately, this would mean that you had to be in a church of over 300 before a church member was likely to die. However, I suspect that bereavement fell disproportionately on smaller congregations with greater numbers of older people.
However, serious illness and death may not only have resulted directly from COVID. I am personally aware of a number of people who found themselves unable to see GPs face to face or experienced delays in receiving treatment. It is difficult for us as non experts to make definitive conclusions but I suspect that those delays were significant to a number of outcomes.
As well as an impact on physical health, we need to consider how COVID affected us in other ways. Many people have reported that it was the cause of greater anxiety and depression. One thing we will want to watch for over the next few years is whether or not COVID has caused a knock on mental health pandemic and whether or not such a pandemic is short term or has had a long term affect on our overall mental well-being.
I was surprised to see that some households are better off as a result of the pandemic it would be interesting to get an understanding of why. However, that some are worse off will have an impact on church and mission finances.
Furthermore, I suspect that many of us up until around about 2008, based on our experiences expected that the majority of people were and would be continue to be experiencing permanent improvements to their economic wellbeing. That picture is changing.
What has been encouraging is to hear a number of people talking about how the pandemic had a positive impact on their spiritual life.
Perhaps the reason why people had a positive spiritual experience was because for many it was an opportunity for personal reflection. It seems to have been a time when people re-evaluated their life priorities leading to changes in vocation/work, home, calling, church, giving etc as well as some choosing to look at things like fostering and adoption.
Among those engaging with my survey, there doesn’t seem to have been a drop off in church attendance but that may be down to the kind of cross section of people participating. It will be interesting to see national data as it emerges. A lot of people did change church too and this fits with what I’ve observed on the ground where there seemed to be a lot of moving about and reconfiguration post COVID. Consistently, the reports I’ve heard and what I’ve personally seen is that most growth in individual churches has been due to transfer over the past few years, not new growth.
A lot of churches are reporting growth at the moment and so we will want to understand better where that growth is coming from. We also cannot ignore that there has been decline in other places and not just among liberal or traditional congregations.
In fact, sadly, quite a few of us are aware of churches that closed during or shortly after the pandemic. I know of 4 and of another 3 that are at immediate risk.
Again that there are significant numbers of Christians who haven’t been touched by decline and closure affects our experience together. If you haven’t personally seen a church close, this may affect your views of what causes this to happen.
I was encouraged to see that, yes there were stories of people joining churches and becoming Christians as a result of online contact. However, we haven’t seen the great revival that some seemed to be promising. It will be good to understand more of the story behind those conversions.
I’ve been interested and concerned to see how COVID affected church unity. Did the crisis encourage us to come together more or did it highlight our differences. For many it was the cause of greater unity but for others it caused sharp and painful divisions over things that surely most of us would consider secondary issues.
As well as people leaving churches over COVID positions, there were conversely those who joined them. Fascinatingly from my survey, it seemed that people perceived those who were joining as more likely to have properly understood their position on the pandemic than those who left. This raises the possibility that people fell out and left churches over misunderstandings about secondary issues.
There is much for us to chew over and hopefully some big lessons to learn together. I’ll be contributing some further articles, as my evidence to the hypothetical inquiry.
I’m also opening comments. What would you like to see the church considering?
Faithroots 