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The church that you are pastoring this side of the 2020 COVID19 pandemic may not be the same as the one that went into the pandemic. 

I argued during lockdown that many churches would in effect need to adopt a church plant mindset coming out of lockdown.

What we’ve seen is that the pandemic caused quite a shake up in church life.  That’s why at the moment it is difficult to say whether we are seeing growth or not.  I know quite a few churches that have seen significant increases in those attending and belonging to them.  However, those same churches also lost people during the pandemic.  Meanwhile, there are other churches where attendance remains well down on 2019 and still haven’t really got going again.

Even churches that have held their own in terms of numbers and even grown are finding that they are stretched.  First, there has been a reluctance for people to serve on rotas at the same rate making it difficult for ministries to get going again.  This may not be a bad thing.  Perhaps we should be looking less at how we fill the rotas to do the things we always did and more at the gifts and calling of our church family together.

Secondly, I understand that a number of churches are finding that giving is down.  There are perhaps two reasons for this. First, people have been hard pressed financially due to the cost of living crisis that followed and remain uncertain about the future.  Second, one of the known phenomenon is that people join at the fringe of a church and take their time to become fully involved and fully committed.  However, the leave from the core.  Your church may have lost people who gave significantly and it may be some time before new people feel able to commit to you. 

This article isn’t intended to offer big answers to those issues.  Rather, I simply wanted to highlight that if we are still trying to pastor in the same way we did in 2019, then we may be missing something and will probably struggle.