COVID-19 — One Year Later: A new normal for churches on coronavirus' one-year anniversary

Mid-March 2020 brought every imaginable sector of the economy to a sudden stop as the pandemic began to take hold in the United States.

Religious communities were not immune to the virus’ effects.

Kevin Barron, pastor of Perryville and Crossroads United Methodist (UMC) churches, remembers the time frame precisely.

“On March 15, we were meeting for worship in-person and by the 22nd we were online,” Barron said.

“We started an online option just one week before the pandemic shut us down,” said Joe Rowley, pastor of Emanuel United Church of Christ (UCC) in Jackson since 2015.

Both congregations are once again meeting in their respective sanctuaries while continuing to offer virtual worship.

Two churches maintaining a total online presence until March 28, Palm Sunday, are First Presbyterian and Westminster churches (PCUSA), both in Cape Girardeau.

“We had reopened for a couple of weeks and then shut down again in November,” said the Rev. Ellen Gurnon, who first began her service in Cape Girardeau in 2017.

“We’re acutely aware that we have older congregations, with 70-80% of the folks at First Pres, for example, over the age of 70,” she added.

When sanctuary worship resumes, Gurnon said, COVID will continue to be taken with the utmost seriousness in her churches despite falling case numbers, the repeal of the county mask order and the increasing availability of vaccine doses.

“We will continue to mask, we’ll keep social distancing protocol and we won’t have any congregational singing,” she added, mindful of how easily the virus may be spread by breath.

Attendance

“We’re getting around 65% of our pre-pandemic numbers in the sanctuary,” said Emanuel UCC’s Rowley, explaining that adding in virtual worshipers “may put us a little ahead of where we were pre-pandemic.”

Perryville UMC’s Barron said the response is similar in his churches.

“I’d say about half to two-thirds of our pre-COVID attendance has come back inside the building,” said Barron, who has pastored the two congregations since 2017.

Barron noted as many as 10 of his parishioners also receive “old school” delivery of Sunday morning worship.

“We have a call-in option,” he said, “with people calling the church at worship time and literally listening in on their personal phones.”

Finances

All three pastors report their congregants have been faithful in their financial giving.

“It’s been steady, maybe even a little on the plus side (since pre-COVID),” Barron said.

“(Offerings) have not dropped by any significant amount, if at all,” Gurnon added.

“We are close to 100% of where we were before the pandemic,” Rowley noted.

Changes wrought

• Virtual here to stay

Barron, Gurnon and Rowley are unanimous in their belief remotely delivered worship via Facebook, YouTube and other platforms is permanent.

“It’s been a really positive experience (to go virtual),” Gurnon said, (and) we have a few people who can follow us online across the country. Before COVID, they didn’t have the option.”

Gurnon said her local judicatory, the Giddings-Lovejoy Presbytery, has offered technology grants enabling an improved and easier online experience.

“It’s been a blessing and it is concerning (to be virtual),” said Rowley, adding several families have told him they’re comfortable with online church while some others find remote worship unfulfilling.

“It is what it is,” added Barron, who echoed Rowley’s ambivalence.

“(Virtual) helps us keep in touch with our people and is a reminder there is more than one way to reach out to folks,” he said.

“But we lose a little bit of the Sunday morning, ‘How are you?’ social contact churchgoers have come to expect,” Barron explained.

• More careful

“We can’t do prayer concerns in sanctuary worship the way we used to because online the information goes everywhere,” Gurnon said.

“Unless it’s a public figure, I may use a person’s first name for a prayer request but not the last to keep anonymity,” added Barron, who said his parishioners are asked to send in concerns, praises and personal requests via private Facebook message or by email.