Why are Christian congregations important today?

We believe congregations are important, both to those involved in them and to their neighbors, and we want people to know that about our work. It is part of the reason we changed the name of our ministry from Leadership Education to Forum for Congregational Life. 

With that new emphasis and in a season of rapid societal change, we are also considering the impact of AI, cultural polarization and numerous other factors on the work and meaning of congregations.

When Dave started in ministry more than four decades ago, many denominations acted as if one of the primary roles of a congregation was to be an outpost of denominationally developed programs. Today, the activities of a congregation are often determined by its people and shaped by the opportunities and challenges in its particular context.

Given all that is shifting, Alaina believed that our team needed to consider why congregations matter both historically and in our day. We needed to speak the questions on our minds as we launch the Forum.

Christian congregations are the primary social and institutional manifestation of Christian faith today. In Christian congregations, individuals and families gather to receive, affirm and celebrate the transformation they have experienced through faith in the Triune God. In congregations, persons of all ages are formed together in seeking God’s purpose for their shared lives across many years.

This communal expression and experience of faith grounds individuals in God’s redemptive story. The shared work of communal worship gives congregation members renewed imaginations to see God at work in their homes, neighborhoods, workplaces and beyond.

A thriving congregation is firmly grounded in the story of God, continually retold through communal, family and individual practices such as worship, study of Scripture, prayer and discernment. A thriving congregation has integrated its sense of mission and calling into all aspects of its organizational life, including its formational programming and decision-making processes. A thriving congregation is deeply rooted in its place — invested in the culture and history of its neighborhood, faithfully interpreting its theological tradition and commitments within the life of the community beyond the congregation.

Finally, a thriving congregation has a thoroughly Christ-shaped and Spirit-led life, sharing an inextricable connection to the Triune God while remaining fully present to the needs, joys, sorrows and opportunities of the community. Healthy congregational leadership is not limited to pastoral and professional leadership; it includes laity and clergy working collectively to live as Christ lives.

Over the years, we have witnessed many congregations develop a mission or vision statement. In the end, those statements are remarkably alike. Often, the gift of such a process is for the participants to go back to the fundamentals of the faith life and the role of the congregation in that life.

It can be difficult to hold onto these foundational ideals in this season of rapid social and cultural change. All of us are trying to adapt to this environment. Technological advances have made remote work, virtual health care and online education possible. Artificial intelligence is transforming almost every sector of life. Geopolitical and environmental instability raise anxieties and fears for many.

It is not surprising that people may feel overwhelmed. Some attempt to turn back the clock, while others choose to trust in the latest innovation. Some may be paralyzed by the situation. In the midst of these changes, trust in institutions of all types is eroding.

Congregations, naturally, need to adapt to the changing circumstances. In a 2024 survey for the Exploring the Pandemic Impact on Congregations (EPIC) project conducted by the Hartford Institute for Religion Research, 46% of respondents reported that they regularly participate — in-person or virtually — in congregations beyond their primary one, and 7% identified as having more than one “home church.” What does this information mean in terms of church membership? What should any of these respondents’ congregations expect in terms of participation?

Leaders of congregations are considering a host of distinct and interrelated questions: How do we lead others to live a life of faith that matters? What is the role of technology in facilitating worship? How do we support Christian discipleship for families who seldom attend services and frequently access content on their phones? How do we measure the impact of our engagement with the community?

These shifts raise basic organizational questions about what a church staff and building should do: How do we determine the adequate size of a church staff? What is the role of a church building? What does it mean if a church is in a neighborhood? Some leaders are not sure where to find information and ideas beyond their friends, colleagues, peers and perhaps their denomination.

One way to see the new situation for congregations is to remember the effectiveness of the mid-20th century’s most commonly used metric for church life: average weekly worship attendance. Lyle Schaller, a highly regarded church consultant of that era, considered a congregation’s size to be the most crucial variable in predicting its culture and work. This measure helped gauge adequate programs, staffing, location, buildings and land use. Attendance still matters today, but it does not predict revenue or requests for support in the way it once did.

We can see another shift in expressions of congregational life through programming. In Schaller’s time, congregations offered a host of programs, ranging from youth groups to Bible studies. Even worship services were often planned like program events. The program-planning model has been slowly shifting, but these changes became much more widespread during the stay-at-home phase of the pandemic. Programs were generally shut down for months or longer. Worship, prayer and fellowship, however, continued in new and old ways that are still evolving.

Another shift is away from the congregation as a “voluntary association.” Since the same period when programing became central, congregations have generally been organized like civic organizations, such as women’s clubs or Lions Clubs. But all of these associational forms are shifting as we approach the mid-21st century. At the moment, few groups of this kind are attracting younger adults, who often connect instead through social media and are more likely to affiliate with a movement than a formal association. Yet the bonds of a movement are often not as long-lasting or consistent as those created in many voluntary associations, particularly congregations.

These shifts and changes invite us to wonder: How should congregations evolve to offer their gifts in new ways? The mission of congregations is not changing, but the expressions of congregational life are evolving. This transition can be difficult to track and notice across various Christian traditions. There are places for a congregation to go for help — like a denomination, a school or a consulting firm — but those places may not have the time and energy to develop networks so congregations can learn from each other.

We want the Forum for Congregational Life to be a place that supports the exploration of today’s pressing questions and any new questions that may emerge for congregations. We believe that the variety of Christian traditions and their congregations will likely respond to the times in many different ways, and we aspire to facilitate ways to learn from each other.

Participation in congregational life has been significant to Christian persons and families throughout the church’s history. In different seasons, congregational life has evolved to include many expressions: house churches, small rural congregations, megachurches, cathedrals and more. Alongside all who care about congregations, we are excited to discover how these forms are evolving and the impact congregations are having in this age.

Invitation to a Changed Life

As the visioning of the congregation continued, [Arlington Presbyterian Church] members connected the crisis of their own congregational life to the life of the surrounding community. In 2012, APC realized they needed to set their priorities within their call from God to the neighborhood.

We really needed to stop asking ourselves questions and start knocking on our neighbors’ doors in a sincere, committed, and organized effort.

It wasn’t enough to do the intellectual discernment processes or for the congregation to assume they knew the needs of the neighborhood.

We were challenged to pay attention not to what we thought needed to happen, what we imagined the community needed, but to listen to what our neighbors had to say — to get to know and be in relationship with our neighbors and hear them.

Congregants rode buses up and down Columbia Pike [in Arlington, Virginia]. They talked with local business owners, teachers, domestic workers, any and all who make up the infrastructure of Arlington County. On Saturday mornings, church members set up tables in the church’s parking lot, located right next to a bus stop. They used the community-organizing strategies of listening sessions and one-on-one meetings to listen to the deep wisdom of the neighborhood.

One day in one of the villages there was a man covered with leprosy. When he saw Jesus, he fell down before him in prayer and said, “If you want to, you can cleanse me.” Jesus put out his hand, touched him, and said, “I want to. Be clean.” Then and there his skin was smooth, the leprosy gone. (Luke 5:12-13)

APC listened. They heard of people covered in debt and exorbitant rent. They heard of people longing to be healed from weary commutes, financial uncertainty, and living away from family and kinship. They listened as neighbors shared hopes, dreams, and ideas for their future, a future they wanted to be in Arlington County.

This relational work allowed a guiding question to emerge for APC: What is breaking our hearts in our neighborhood?

The stories of the neighbors broke the heart of APC, binding the well-being of APC up in the well-being of the neighborhood. Jesus pulled the congregation into the neighborhood streets, and they practically tripped over the need for affordable housing as they listened to story after story.

The stories signified the emerging incompatibility with the old and the new: as we began to think about jettisoning our 1950s building, we also started to rid ourselves of the 1950s version of Christianity that had captured our thinking. Our ministry shifted from “if we build it, they will come” to “we will go to the neighbors and build.”

It wasn’t about what we could do for our neighbors; it became about how we heard God’s invitation in their stories. How their stories became our stories together. …

For More of the Story, Go Around the Corner

There is a plaque on the outside of Gilliam Place [apartment building], created by an unknown entity, that says “Here stood the Arlington Presbyterian Church.” The plaque names how APC played a significant role in the life of the South Arlington community. The end of the plaque reads, “The Church property was sold in 2016, and the buildings were demolished in 2017.”

The end. It reads like a church obituary.

Not to be outdone by a building plaque, several APC folks want to put up a sign at the bottom of the plaque that reads, “for more of the story, go around the corner …”

Creating new wine for a new wineskin hasn’t been easy, and God isn’t finished with us. Right now, APC stands in the tension between our previous stories and the ones we hope will guide us forward. As we claim these new stories, we see ourselves sharing life and evolving with those in Gilliam Place.

I now realize how our new space has allowed us to begin living a new future together with our neighbors that would have been inconceivable in the old building.

We are still dynamically breaking open those old models of church. We stand in the community, asking questions about new ways and new directions.

We commissioned a new hymn to honor this new era of APC at Gilliam Place. We sing these words often in worship:

We have been called to listen and called to act, we have been called to tear down and called to build, and we’re still people on a journey, our work isn’t done. Keep us faithful in the way of love.

This hymn is a reminder that God is not done with APC even after this miraculous story. We’re still people on a journey, drinking new wine in a new wineskin. For all of this — for the old wine and old wineskin, for the new wine and new wineskin — we give God never-ending thanks.

Excerpted from “Gone for Good? Negotiating the Coming Wave of Church Property Transition,” edited by Mark Elsdon © 2024 (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.). Reprinted by permission of the publisher.

It dawned on the Rev. Sarah Taylor Peck in fall 2019 that she’d shared a pastoral moment with every household in her Disciples of Christ congregation. As the senior minister at North Canton Community Christian Church for nearly six years, she had officiated at their weddings, taught their children and helped bury their loved ones.

Nearly 200 worshippers showed up weekly for the Sunday morning service, and she had forged deep, meaningful relationships with each one of them. Taylor Peck felt genuinely honored to be part of the community they’d built together.

Then the pandemic struck, closing the Ohio church’s doors and forcing their fellowship into the ether. The congregation reopened for good during Lent 2021, but not everyone has returned for in-person worship. Coming to church each Sunday takes discipline, Taylor Peck said, and like a muscle that goes unused, it atrophies over time.

“I’m still in a season of lament about the way the pandemic contracted congregations and congregational ministry,” she said shortly before Christmas. “It really broke the tether we had to our members.”

All is not lost for North Canton Community CC. While Sunday in-person attendance is down about 30% since before the pandemic, nearly two dozen new people joined the church in September, the largest single class of new members since Taylor Peck arrived in January 2014, the pastor said. She is profoundly grateful for their enthusiasm and this opportunity to rebuild the church’s community “bit by bit, moment by moment, sacrament by sacrament.”

But she also misses the families who have yet to return and isn’t entirely sure what, if anything, she can do to convince them to come back. One day, Taylor Peck dropped by the home of a longtime church member who hadn’t returned to in-person worship. Bearing flowers from the altar, she told the 82-year-old that she missed him, that his church needed him and that she hoped he’d come back. His response: he simply wasn’t getting dressed in the mornings anymore.

There are plenty of others just like him, Taylor Peck said. They didn’t leave in a huff; they simply altered their routines during the pandemic, and in-person church attendance isn’t the priority it once was.

“They didn’t get mad at our policies and stomp away. They’re just not coming,” Taylor Peck said. “I almost prefer a fight. There’s emotion and commitment in a fight. But this is just apathy. It’s less vigor for church.

“We can’t tempt them or bait them or inspire them to come. We have to wait patiently. So we begin again.”

Nearly three years after COVID-19 upended life as we know it, faith leaders like Taylor Peck are pondering how best to mourn and honor what was lost while reengaging communities that have irrevocably changed. How do you recalibrate for absences associated with deaths that couldn’t be properly grieved? How do you account for those who vanished for political reasons? And how do you build meaningful connections with virtual worshippers who might never enter the building?

“The ministry of church isn’t just about Scripture and gospel. It’s reminding people how to do life together, how to show up together,” said Taylor Peck. “I would hate for that to be lost.”

Indeed, a recent study by the American Enterprise Institute and NORC at the University of Chicago found a drop-off in church attendance among younger churchgoers, as well as those already less connected with a faith community and those who identify as liberal.

Holy Trinity has persuaded some young people to return by giving them tasks that appeal to their skill sets, Gilbert said. Younger members helped the church choose an online giving platform, something the congregation hadn’t offered pre-pandemic. They’re running the church’s social media channels and handling the tech needed for livestreaming services. And a group of them created a praise team that sings every Sunday, partly because they’re not as anxious as some of the seniors about catching a respiratory illness, Gilbert said.

The church has also expanded its outreach, recently approaching a local homeless shelter about starting a church for its residents.

“We know folks are afraid to come out. They’re just not ready to come back to church,” he said. “So we’re trying to go to them and make Jesus as accessible to folks as possible.”

Gilbert said the empty pews weigh on him and he wonders what God is asking of him, whether there’s something else he should be doing to engage his community.

“If folks don’t come back, it’s hard for us not to see ourselves as a failure. That’s the stress of being relevant,” Gilbert said. “But God doesn’t call us to be relevant. He just asks us to be faithful.”

The Rev. Dr. Rolando Aguirre started as an associate pastor at Dallas’ Park Cities Baptist Church the first weekend in March 2020. His work, focused on teaching and Spanish language ministries, began just as the world was beginning to shut down. The ensuing months were marked by resetting, relaunching and, ultimately, reopening.

Aguirre said the majority of the people he expected to serve have not yet returned to church, and he suspects many have relocated. But new people are coming, and Park Cities is responding to possibilities that the pandemic surfaced. Lay leaders have engaged more actively in reaching out to members.

“The fellowship of deacons were more active in saying, ‘Let’s help call the people. Let’s encourage them to come back. Let’s visit them.’ So last year was a lot of the leadership base [responding] to engage with the congregants,” Aguirre said.

They are also addressing needs that emerged – offering monthly Spanish-language services at additional sites, and responding to a desire for more youth programming and a need for mental health support.

A congregational survey along with group and individuals interviews helped “to really recapture, recalibrate our vision,” he said.

Sampling online services

At Pelion United Methodist Church in South Carolina, Sunday attendance is down a bit from before the pandemic. The Rev. Ed Stallworth attributes some of the loss in his congregation to Christianity being politicized.

“That’s become a bigger disease than the pandemic,” said Stallworth, who became the pastor at Pelion UMC and nearby Sharon Crossroads United Methodist Church in July 2021. Prior to that, he’d served at a progressive church in Spartanburg, South Carolina, and his arrival in conservative Pelion, about 20 miles outside the state capital of Columbia, made more than a few worshippers nervous, he said.

One of the first questions he was asked was whether he’d “force” worshippers to wear masks. He responded that he couldn’t force anyone to do anything but that he and his family would mask up to keep everyone safe. And he’s openly encouraged members to get vaccinated.

Some ultimately left over political differences, Stallworth said. But he’s encouraged those who remain to embrace the church’s growing diversity and learn to worship alongside people who don’t necessarily share the same opinions.

“I said, ‘We may disagree, but just know that I’m going to love you through everything,’” Stallworth said. “And they took hold of that. I think that’s how we got through this pandemic and how we’re going to move forward together.”

Both churches developed a virtual worship option, said Stallworth. While serving his church in Spartanburg, Stallworth broadcast a 30-minute service on Facebook, using his cellphone and laptop, with accompaniment from the church’s organist. Some days, he misses the solitude of that effort, so he understands why some of Pelion’s members still prefer to worship from home.

Most of the worshippers now attending in person are new, having sampled the church’s services online before ever coming into the building, he said. And the majority of them were previously unchurched, he said. Many of the newer members are young people with children who were introduced to Pelion UMC through its outreach programs, like Trunk or Treat or its school backpack program.

“They just want to be part of a community that’s bigger than them. I think they just want a sense of, ‘We’re going to be OK,’” he said. “Contrary to what a lot of people are saying, I believe better days are ahead for the church. It might look different, … but particularly for progressive congregations, from these ashes something beautiful is going to emerge.”

The church has considered designating a staff member as a “digital usher” during the livestreamed service and establishing a small group that meets online. Coleman acknowledged that clergy are “chock-full of nostalgia and sentimentality,” which can make it challenging to embrace the kind of radical change churches are facing post-pandemic. But churches need to stay nimble, he said, noting that the Pentecost moment is about cultural adaptability.

“That’s God saying this gospel is going to move into the culture in many ways, and what’s implicit is this is going to look different as it moves into all those places,” he said. “I would love to have multiple services filled with people who want to be there in person. On the other hand, people are connecting with us in new ways. How can we capitalize on this and reach more people in more places with the gospel because of this opportunity with technology?”

Before the pandemic, Kinser worried that online worship would be too “performative,” but he’s since come to appreciate the accessibility livestreaming offers. He said worshippers have enjoyed being able to attend services even when they’re out of town, and one member was recently able to participate in a service while hospitalized.

Though in-person attendance is down, giving has increased, he said, and some donors have maintained their membership despite moving to other states. The primary concern he has for remote worshippers is his ability to provide pastoral care for them, something he said suffered during the pandemic.

“You realize how much pastoral care happens at the church door or in passing,” Kinser said. “When you’re not seeing anybody, then not seeing anybody doesn’t tell you anything.”

St. Paul’s has online worshippers from as far away as Florida and Michigan; if they needed a hospital visit or a funeral service conducted, he’d be hard-pressed to serve them. He said denominational networks may become essential for that moving forward, such as when an Episcopal priest in New York asked him recently to deliver communion to a parishioner who had gotten sick while traveling and ended up in a Winston-Salem hospital.

The Rev. Dr. Katie Hays, the lead evangelist at Galileo Church in Fort Worth, Texas, said she has some of those same concerns. Does the church’s budget need a line item so a pastor can fly out of town to conduct a funeral for a member who worshipped online? Should the church prepare ready-made care packages to send to faraway members who are sick or grieving? And what about baptisms?

Hays said she doesn’t yet have answers to those questions but firmly believes that remote worship is the church’s new frontier. She also admits that she was the last holdout at Galileo when it came to offering online worship. She’d seen so many churches do it badly and felt that people already had more than enough screen time, ultimately agreeing to the concept in 2019 largely because she wanted the far-flung LGBTQ community to have ready access to an affirming congregation.

What Galileo quickly discovered was that the platform also appealed to neurodiverse worshippers who might not feel comfortable in crowds, as well as to those with mobility impairments. During the pandemic, the church hired a second pastor devoted to helping virtual worshippers develop a robust online community. Hays refers to the church’s Inside Out online worship experience as the “back pew” of Galileo, the place where those hesitant to come inside can get a taste of the church’s ethos before ever crossing its threshold.

“I feel like I’m 500 years old, like I’m the priest who opposed the printing press. But this new technology came along, destabilizing power from the center,” Hays said.

And even those who are comfortable with in-person worship have appreciated having the option of participating online, she said. A mother with several children recently told Hays she used to have two choices on Sundays: get everyone fed, dressed and over to the church on time for the evening service, or don’t. She now has multiple options: they can come in person or watch together on the couch with a homemade altar for communion, or she can tune in on her own while preparing her family’s Sunday dinner.

As much as she resisted the change, Hays said, her church’s goal has always been to scoop up spiritual refugees who don’t necessarily do traditional church. The changes at Galileo, accelerated in part by the pandemic, have forced her to confront her technological limitations, along with her notions of what worship is supposed to look like. Now, after welcoming in-person worshippers, she looks directly at the camera and thanks her online congregation for inviting her into their homes, something she calls “a tremendous act of trust.”

“It works with your sense of who’s the host and who’s the guest,” she said. “I think so much about how we have to trust people to make their own decisions about how, when and where they’ll participate. It calls on us in the professional clergy to release control of that, and I pray each day to have the grace to trust people.”

She noted that they have a saying at Galileo: You are a grown-ass adult imbued with the spirit of the living Christ.

“Either we believe that or we don’t,” Hays said. “This is really calling our bluff.”

A pastor from a small Methodist congregation in Indiana has to borrow a smartphone from one of her elders. She watches a quick tutorial on Facebook livestreaming, then films a makeshift service from her living room.

And there’s the pastor of a rural Presbyterian church who discovered that the church did not own a tripod — moments before recording his first online service. He fastened his iPhone to a ladder with duct tape.

These are just some of the stories coming out of the Tech in Churches During COVID-19 research project, a two-year study on how churches and their leaders have adopted — and adapted to using — digital technology in ministry.

Funded by Lilly Endowment Inc. and working with the Center for Congregations, a team from Texas A&M University is investigating 2,700 congregations that received grants to purchase technology resources during the pandemic to enable them to move their services online.

Before 2020, many churches had never considered the importance of having Wi-Fi connections in their church buildings, let alone internet-enabled cameras or livestream setups. In fact, most American pastors likely never even considered holding worship services online.

Yet the COVID-19 pandemic, ensuing lockdowns and social-distancing regulations quickly showed congregations that having access to up-to-date digital media technology was not simply a novel ministry opportunity but a necessity.

The forced migration of worship services online in March 2020 brought with it many stories of churches being caught off guard by these new technological requirements.

Nearly two-thirds of pastors in this study felt that of all the new things they were asked to take on during the pandemic, it was technology work and decision making they felt the most unprepared for.

Through conversations with 500 church leaders, we heard responses like, “This wasn’t the job I signed up for as a pastor”; “I have no training in ‘putting on the tech hat’”; and, “I am a novice at tech — but the only one willing to try and get the church online.”

Leaders’ widespread lack of technology skills, knowledge and experience was further complicated by the digital divide, which many churches encountered for the first time. The digital divide describes the gap between individuals and groups that do and do not have access to technology, especially the internet.

The experience of the pandemic revealed for churches the challenge of what it means to be among the digital have-nots. Smaller and rural congregations in particular discovered that being in a community with limited internet access was not just a disadvantage but often a major barrier to acclimating to or addressing changes in gathering.

Yet the struggle was often more than churches simply not having key technologies on hand or the funds to purchase them. Many congregations battled self-imposed limitations on technology and roadblocks they created for themselves.

This we describe as digital reluctance, an unwillingness among leaders and/or members to embrace technology due to fear or lack of familiarity.

This was expressed by senior members of congregations as well as by church leaders, and this digital reluctance often prevented them from innovating worship and adapting to public gathering limitations.

For example, one leader, who described his congregation as “very anti-tech” and said that he personally “never had an interest in going online,” felt that these factors created significant obstacles for his church during the pandemic. In his view, the congregation’s initial reluctance to consider or even experiment with technology-driven service solutions created unnecessary tensions during already uncertain and tense times.

In other cases, congregational resistance toward technology often corresponded with a church’s general unwillingness to change its liturgical practice or re-envision the church. As one pastor said, “For some, getting on board with online worship was seen as giving up on the core of their faith.”

Digital reluctance also created friction in some churches between the generations. Younger and more digitally fluent members, excited about the possibility of re-imagining the church through digital platforms, often found themselves in conflict with older members or those less familiar with digital media.

Some leaders said the generational digital divide, and the tensions created around it, contributed to the slower return of some younger members once face-to-face services resumed.

“Some of those folks haven’t returned. … Our seniors were taught that you were here every Sunday, so they’re ready to be back. But that’s not the case with our younger people and those who were willing to try to go online from the start,” one pastor told researchers. “Time will tell what impact online tensions created.”

As a grand experiment and learning opportunity, the digital transition many churches underwent during the pandemic provides us with several valuable lessons.

First of all, our research found that pastors who had a positive and open mindset toward changing worship practices and/or engaging technology had a less stressful experience adapting to the challenges of the pandemic. This shows that attitude can greatly influence one’s outlook in times of forced change.

Second, congregations and their leaders who were willing to experiment with technology and learn from mistakes made in the process found that moving to online services opened up the possibility to reconsider the very nature of church.

Congregations are asking questions, for example, about whether church is primarily defined by its Sunday worship service, its community outreach, its technology use or something else. This is a challenging and tiring task, but pastors who felt empowered to be creative in their problem solving seemed to demonstrate greater resilience when handling pandemic stressors.

Third, pastors who used difficulties with technology to facilitate conversations about the nature of the Christian community helped create space for new perspectives to be shared.

This helped refocus the discourse from what was lacking in online worship to one centered on exploring new opportunities for community building, such as reinventing how small groups meet, how leaders perform pastoral care and how hybrid Sunday school can redefine religious education.

While the digital divide continues to be a challenging reality for many churches, the pandemic revealed important traits church leaders need to prepare for future cultural disruptions and technological shifts. Duct tape and an online tutorial won’t solve all church tech problems, but they do demonstrate creativity and a willingness to try — which can go a long way in moving churches forward.