Unbundling Church
Strategies for Hybrid Worship Services
<img alt="Image for post" class="s t u dc ai" src="https://miro.medium.com/max/10300/1*e8nZ4w4DdMLQb8FBkDXwKw.jpeg" width="5150" height="3441" srcSet="https://miro.medium.com/max/552/1*e8nZ4w4DdMLQb8FBkDXwKw.jpeg 276w, https://miro.medium.com/max/1104/1*e8nZ4w4DdMLQb8FBkDXwKw.jpeg 552w, https://miro.medium.com/max/1280/1*e8nZ4w4DdMLQb8FBkDXwKw.jpeg 640w, https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*e8nZ4w4DdMLQb8FBkDXwKw.jpeg 700w" sizes="700px"/>Are you awaiting the second coming of church? That day when COVID is over and all churches will once again be together in spirit and in person?
Churches around the world are in different phases of re-opening following the initial wave of COVID-19 and its aftershocks. With the likelihood that any vaccine is still a year off, it seems similarly likely that churches will find themselves in “hybrid mode” for at least that long too.
Many church leaders are more than ready to welcome people back into sanctuaries, to see faces, shake hands, offer hugs. For many, the people are a big reason they became pastors in the first place. And they are understandably focused on keeping everyone safe when they walk back in those doors. But that focus may risk distracting some leaders from considering what their hybrid churches will need over the coming year.
The Internet is the new church building.
It would be easy to keep live-streaming services and wait for that “someday” reunion. It would also be a mistake. Despite some who have dubbed the pandemic “The Great Pause,” the gospel calls us to be patient, but it doesn’t call us to be idle.
So what should we spend our time doing? Of course, we hope to re-gather as soon as possible, but churches would be wise to create some contingency plans if these hopes take longer than we expect. Every church that is seeking to care for and serve its people — in other words, every church — should be developing a digital strategy that complements its Sunday service — whether live-streamed or in-person.
Even as I stake that claim I acknowledge that live-streaming Sunday services fails to fully achieve all that the church is meant for. Pastors intuitively felt this over the past months as they recorded music and sermons in front of cameras and empty sanctuaries. Church members felt it laying in their pajamas watching the service go on with or without them. Without the in-person congregation participating, a live-streamed service slouches toward vacant ritual.
The good news is, it doesn’t have to. Churches do have options that can recover some of what is being lost.
<img alt="Image for post" class="s t u dc ai" src="https://miro.medium.com/max/3840/1*KrXRFlba0ZiE_-pSoqVVTQ.jpeg" width="1920" height="1770" srcSet="https://miro.medium.com/max/552/1*KrXRFlba0ZiE_-pSoqVVTQ.jpeg 276w, https://miro.medium.com/max/1104/1*KrXRFlba0ZiE_-pSoqVVTQ.jpeg 552w, https://miro.medium.com/max/1280/1*KrXRFlba0ZiE_-pSoqVVTQ.jpeg 640w, https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*KrXRFlba0ZiE_-pSoqVVTQ.jpeg 700w" sizes="700px"/>Realizing these shortcomings — and truly feeling them — that’s a good thing. Online church is teaching us something deeply meaningful and valuable. Congregations cannot be mere spectators. They need to be full participants. Yet live-streams, at least in their current forms, lean away from participation toward spectacle. So until we can meet in person safely, we need to supplement those live-streams with . . . something.
The question is, “with what?”
Hybrid Church Strategies
To answer it, we have to start thinking outside the sanctuary. We need to start seeing what’s available to us. Before COVID, churches provided a packaged deal. Now the cohesive Sunday service has been unbundled into component parts. And yes, the Sunday gathering is more than the sum of its parts, but until we can meet again, we must piecemeal it out. Who knows, maybe as we dissect our services we’ll learn some new things. If nothing else, it will make us savor in-person services all the more.
Until then, here are a couple of ideas.
Internal video venues. Some multisite churches are already equipped for off-site video venues with pre-recorded or live-streamed sermons piped in, but think about doing the same thing on-site as well. Maybe your church has multiple large spaces where video feeds could be simulcast. Set up chairs, a screen, and a projector in each of them. Project your existing live-stream feed that’s already streaming on YouTube or Facebook or Church Online. Wherever you host it, just log in like church members are doing at home and project from a laptop. Invite church members to spread out in this makeshift space. Being together in one place, even at a distance, is better than sitting at home alone each Sunday morning.
Create Alternating Sunday Schedules. My hope is that soon churches will be open to anyone who signs up for a slot to attend. To that end, consider creating a rotating set of Sundays for people with names A-L, M-Z or some other arrangement. Use a Google Sheet, if that’s easy. Be creative and fun with it. Whatever you come up with, make sure that all people who want to have the chance to attend (and keep alert for those who might not have reliable Internet access). People signing up will likely have to trade off — present it as an opportunity for members to serve one another by taking turns.
Hold More Services. The temptation of live-stream is to do a one-size-fits-all service. Instead, consider doing more services than usual, allowing people to spread out across multiple services. It’s social distancing across time in addition to space. Do the math — how many were attending before? How many services would it take to allow them all to socially distance comfortably? This method could be combined with the alternating scheduling above.
Acknowledge Online Viewers. Some pastors have already been doing this during live-streaming. Now as churches shift into hybrid modes, it’s even more important. With services that include both in-person participants and online ones, pastors must make extra effort to keep online viewers from feeling excluded. Pastors can’t prevent that feeling altogether, but things as simple as consistently making “eye contact” with the camera and verbally acknowledging online guests can go a long way.
Display Online Viewer Counts in the Sanctuary. Most live-streaming services include a number showing how many people are watching online. Make this visible to people in the sanctuary, to remind them of this. It’s awkward, sure, but calls attention to something important — the cloud of witnesses participating from afar.
And churches could go a step further. What would it take to make those online participants “more visible” in the service? What if it projected on-screen the comments people were making in the Facebook live feed throughout the service? How far can you go in making their presence felt?
Two-way live-streaming. To personalize it even further, what if the screen projected a Zoom call of all the people watching from home? How would that give those people online a meaningful participation in the service? Of course, be sure everyone knows what you’re doing, so online participants know they’re being seen. They’re just as visible as if they were in-person, but we need to normalize it. That starts by acknowledging it. What dignity you communicate to your congregation, what biblical convictions you demonstrate by going to great lengths to make their presence known! (Altar, a new platform I discovered while writing this, is aiming to do just that.) You show your members that their presence and participation are seen and valued, and that their absence is noticed! You may find they’re more likely to show up again next week!
Encourage Digital Interaction. One more idea, perhaps a bit simpler, is to use a service like slido.com to invite some live responses from the audience. This website is mobile friendly and super easy to use. You can send people pre-planned questions in real-time, and everyone can respond and see the collective responses live on-screen. This cool little interactive option is only limited by your creative ways to invite participation.
Thinking Outside the Sanctuary
Of course, we’d love for all these devices and strategies to be obsolete as soon as possible, to go “back to normal” and never use the phrase “social distancing” again. But the truth is, even if quarantine ended tomorrow, nearly every church has people who are unable to attend each Sunday, whether due to illness, health risks, social anxiety, disability, or geographic limits. Churches that don’t provide an online option are likely excluding members who would otherwise attend. Affording them the opportunity to participate in one of these ways could be a critical, ongoing means of pastoral care.
I would be remiss to ignore the real risk of continuing to offer a live-stream option even after COVID ends. Perhaps you’ve already considered it yourself. Some people who could come to church may decide that they can just watch online instead of attending in-person. But those people may have already stopped attending altogether, regardless of COVID. Or maybe they are already drifting away and an online connection will draw them back. Or maybe that tradeoff will be something your church wants to address directly in some other way. Without a doubt, your church wants to care not just for the able-bodied, but also for the least of these, the sick and the suffering. So if some able-bodied members take advantage of your care for the disabled, then your church will look a lot like its bridegroom, who suffered every insult, injustice, and inconvenience to care for the one sheep, willing that none should perish.
<img alt="Image for post" class="s t u dc ai" src="https://miro.medium.com/max/2560/1*dD7EKPkBEnZM935MrjTHSg.jpeg" width="1280" height="1028" srcSet="https://miro.medium.com/max/552/1*dD7EKPkBEnZM935MrjTHSg.jpeg 276w, https://miro.medium.com/max/1104/1*dD7EKPkBEnZM935MrjTHSg.jpeg 552w, https://miro.medium.com/max/1280/1*dD7EKPkBEnZM935MrjTHSg.jpeg 640w, https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*dD7EKPkBEnZM935MrjTHSg.jpeg 700w" sizes="700px"/>The church needs to be thinking outside the sanctuary, not only in the near term during COVID, but long after. COVID is creating a technology boom for churches. They’re adopting new technologies and trying new methods faster than ever before. This season is also showing churches how they can better serve people at the margins, not just those who show up in person every week.
COVID is creating a technology boom for churches.
Indeed, Jesus told the disciples that it was better for them that he was going away because he would send the Spirit to unite and unify them in the truth (John 16). How might this pandemic be inviting Christians to discover a deeper spiritual unity in the midst of social distance?
The ideas above present both new opportunities and new risks. But going “back to normal” has its own problems. Not just health-related ones, but relevance-related ones. The Internet was already the experience and context for most people. Churches need to speak that language as well. Just as pastors preach using stories and illustrations as devices to connect their sermon to their congregation, churches will need to think carefully about which devices are best suited to communicate the gospel in a new context. Not every illustration is created equal. Neither is every technology. Some will support the advancement of the Kingdom. Some will hinder it.
The church building has long enabled people to meet in-person. It has long been a primary social platform spreading the gospel. Now during COVID, the Internet is the new church building. And when, by God’s grace, COVID ends, churches will find themselves in a new hybrid space. Indeed, a new normal. Rather than waiting for the second coming of church, churches can embrace this present moment, they can faithfully experiment and innovate, and they can create a church that’s ready for whatever comes.
Adam Graber is a Director at FaithTech and co-host of the podcast Device & Virtue. You can find him on Twitter @AdamGraber.
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