By unSeminary: Welcome to the unSeminary podcast! Today we have lead pastor Kyle Mercer with us from Two Cities Church in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Two Cities was originally planted out of The Summit Church with J.D. Greear in 2016 and grew to about 1300 people before covid, becoming one of the fastest growing churches in the country.

When churches were forced to move to all online services in the spring of 2020, at first it was a novelty. After a while though Two Cities Church felt that something was really missing. So around mid-May the staff began to intentionally and aggressively pursue how to get people back in person. Listen in as Kyle shares their transition back and their approach to everything from navigating the differing opinions about mask-wearing to starting up kids’ ministry again.

Online vs in-person. // Two Cities Church called an emergency meeting with the staff to talk about the governor’s order of shutdown back in the spring. After fifteen weeks of online services, they concluded that online is a great supplement, but it’s not a substitute for in-person gatherings. So at this point the church leaned heavily into the importance of getting people back to meeting in-person.Returning to in-person. // The decision to focus on in-person gatherings came from several principles they felt were important in the church, and they called a member gathering to explain this. Firstly, according to scripture, there is a theological conviction for the church to gather in person. Depression, anxiety and addictive behavior were also on the rise. It was clear that people weren’t doing well, finding it difficult to be isolated from the community during the pandemic, or being overwhelmed with changes in their everyday life. Additionally, online-only services cause us to miss out on the hundreds or thousands of conversations that happen on any given Sunday.Weighing the decision. // The leadership of the church weighed the pros and cons seriously. They thought about covid, the science around it, and how dangerous it could be, but they also focused on the truth of scripture. They knew all of this wasn’t going away soon, yet it was clear that their people were ready to come back to meeting in-person.Beginning the transition. // People at Two Cities Church were willing to come to a service without childcare in the middle of the week even after a day at work during this pandemic. During the summer they launched a Thursday night service at 6:30pm and after six weeks it felt like they were really thriving again. People expressed an interest in moving back to Sunday services with kids ministry at this point, so after eleven weeks of Thursday night gatherings, Two Cities transitioned back to three indoor services on Sundays beginning in the fall.The mask issue. // People feel differently about masks and the church approached this hot topic humbly and graciously, trying to listen and learn from what people had to say. Some people associate masks with pollution or totalitarianism. Others associate it with being loved and loving others. Some congregants wanted to wear a mask because the governor had a mask mandate, while others thought it hindered their worship and ability to minister to others. Two Cities wanted to be good citizens and they know masks do something, even if they don’t know how much. And they care about both freedom and the safety of others. All of this led to the church having their 9 and 11am services as “mask-expected” (particularly during singing), but the 5pm service was “mask-required” and the church underscored that they would enforce this at the evening service. After three weeks of Sunday services, attendance was between 900-1000 people, almost back to pre-covid numbers.Relaunching kids’ ministry. // Not having kids ministry operating during the Thursday night service was a big hindrance to families returning to church, so Two Cities felt that kids programming needed to start again on Sundays. In the kids ministry area masks are required for all adults, whether they are volunteers are parents. Kids can wear masks if their parents want them too, but it’s not required. There are, however, temperature checks for the kids when they come in on a Sunday for children’s church. The biggest challenge in this area was rebuilding the culture of service. Volunteers would be needed to serve every week, and then attend another service, because there was a shortage of people. The good news is this volunteer area is slowly being built up again as well.

You can learn more about Two Cities Church at their website www.twocitieschurch.net.

Thank You for Tuning In!

There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please share it by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremely helpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!

Lastly, don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, to get automatic updates every time a new episode goes live!

Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Portable Church Industries

Doing Church in a Rented Facility can be a Challenge.

Questions about Multisiting or Portability?Click here to connect with our Multisite Specialist for a free evaluation.

Source: Lessons In Getting People Back to In-Person Services with Kyle Mercer

The post Lessons In Getting People Back to In-Person Services with Kyle Mercer appeared first on Passion for Planting.

By Carey Nieuwhof: You’ve probably noticed. Leading a church is more confusing, frustrating and complex than ever.

In this post, I’ll share some surprising data that shows why it feels that much harder, and some observations and suggestions that I hope can help point you in a more promising direction.

Please hear the tone of this post. I’m a huge believer in the mission of the local church.

I continue to be part of the local church and am doing all I can to support our church and churches around the globe.

So as hard as the news is in this post (and the self-reflection it provokes), I’m believing in a strong, fresh future for the church, its leaders and people.

That said,  the trends developing over the last year are more than a little alarming (I covered 3 other shocking statistics here).

Even if things swing back more positively in the post-pandemic church, these numbers are significant enough to make even the most optimistic leader pay attention and change course (I’m also an optimist).

While we won’t know the full impact of the disruption for a few more years, the steady decline of  church attendance over the decades may be on the verge of becoming a new exodus.

Some recent Barna data that tracks the church attendance patterns of Christians and the general population during 2020 against a pre-pandemic benchmark.

In this post, I’ll share the results of that survey first, and then offer four reflections and reasons why we may seeing such a sudden exodus away from church. The first two are more about our strategy. The next two are more about our tone and the state of our hearts as leaders.

First, though, the numbers.

22% of Churched Adults Have Stopped Going to In-Person or Digital Church

The Barna Group polled the general population, practicing Christians and “churched” adults about their attendance patterns.

The main distinction between practicing Christians and churched adults was whether they considered themselves regular church attenders.

As you can see from the chart above, in 2019, only 14% of all US adults say they never went to church.

In 2020, that number jumped to 53%. That’s an almost 40 point jump in less than twelve months.

In 2019, only 14% of all use adults say the never went to church. In 2020, that number jumped to 53%. That’s an almost 40 point jump in less than twelve months.

Click to Tweet

END .ss-ctt-wrapper

Even starker, though, is how practicing Christians and churched adults answered the question.

In 2019, 100% of practicing Christians and churched adults had gone to church within the past 6 months. Six months into the pandemic, 19% and 22% hadn’t gone to church at all —digital, physical or reopened.

Please let that sink in. That is a massive shift.

In 2019, 100% of practicing Christians and churched adults had gone to church within the past 6 months. Six months into the pandemic, 19% and 22% hadn’t gone to church at all —digital, physical or reopened. @BarnaGroup

Click to Tweet

END .ss-ctt-wrapper

These numbers are also consistent with trends seen early in the pandemic when as many as 50% of Millennials said they’d stopped attending church of any kind.

So there’s no easy way to explain these numbers away.

Almost everywhere you click, the news is challenging.

‘Is This Real?’ Matters More Than ‘Is this Right?’

My guess is as you read through the data you’re alarmed, depressed and a bit angry.

One of the top responses I’ve seen here in the comments and on my social is leaders who are angry about trends like this, or who lament about how bad this is.

As a leader, you can ask the question “Is this right?” from several perspectives.

First, you can argue with the numbers…making up your own facts or looking at your own church as an exception to the rule.

If your church is growing, that’s amazing. But exceptions to the rule don’t change rules.

If your church is growing, that’s amazing. But exceptions to the rule don’t change rules.

Click to Tweet

END .ss-ctt-wrapper

Second, you can argue that people are wrong in leaving the church.

That may be true…but just because it isn’t right doesn’t mean it isn’t real.

Both of these reactions are just that: reactions, not responses. Wise leaders spend their energy responding instead of reacting.

Wise leaders spend their energy responding instead of reacting.

Click to Tweet

END .ss-ctt-wrapper

Yes, there are great arguments from digital and physical church participation. As you can see from other Barna research, anxiety and worry seem to be higher among people who don’t attend church or stopped attending church.

Still, that hasn’t stopped people from attending church.

Here are four reasons I see people are disengaging from the church in record numbers right now.

Just because it isn’t right doesn’t mean it isn’t real.

Click to Tweet

END .ss-ctt-wrapper

1. Overfocusing on Content At the Expense of Connection

Let’s start here.

In the early days of the pandemic, as almost every church pivoted to online, there was a lot of experimentation with different forms of ministry and connection.

Then a lot of churches abandoned experimentation in favour of adaptation.

Soon, most churches gave up doing almost anything other than streaming Sunday services or offering them on demand.

Yes, groups ran in the background and a few other endeavours were tried, but for most churches, the innovation stopped.

It’s like the old paradigm of attendance became a new paradigm of consuming.

The challenge of that is many fold. First, people can get great content anywhere. So they do.

Second, the thing your church has to offer than others don’t is connection.

Content alone won’t build the future, connection will.

Content alone won’t build the future, connection will.

Click to Tweet

END .ss-ctt-wrapper

Moving forward, rethink what you’re doing online to make it more about connection than consumption.

Connection leads to community and relationship—with God and each other.

Moving forward, make the goal of digital content connection, not consumption.

I’ll have a lot more to say about this in future posts, but let’s leave it there for now.

The goal of digital content is connection, not consumption.

Click to Tweet

END .ss-ctt-wrapper

2. An Over-Focus on Attracting, Not Equipping

It’s great to get a lot of views, but the deeper question is what do those views produce?

In the same way a lot of us (myself included) love to see a full room, watching your view count can be a great dopamine hit (for more on what triggers you and why you love full rooms/large views/record stats, read this).

It’s just so easy to focus on attracting, not equipping.

To some extent, the pandemic era church revealed what we had produced: lots of attenders who, once the pattern was interrupted, stopped attending.

It was easy to assume we had cultivated devotion, but instead what we’d really done is created attendance habits that once the pattern was interrupted, quickly dissolved.

To reference the over-used proverb, perhaps we took too many people fishing, but never taught them how to fish.

For years here we’ve talked about the need to focus on engagement, not attendance.

In the digital disruption that’s changed so much, the focus has to shift further from engagement to equipping.

With more people moving than ever before (just wait for 2021), the rise of location-independent churches, and the fragmentation that digital options create, it’s almost like you have to view the people you reach like a teenager who needs to learn to cook, clean and budget before heading off to college. Disciples who know how to follow Jesus endure much better than disciples who have church leaders (priestly, pastoral, or celebrity) who do it for them.

And, of course, that makes engagement even more important. Engagement that leads to connection, that leads to community, that leads to equipping.

That was kind of the mission all along, but the recent crisis has brought it into even sharper focus.

Disciples who know how to follow Jesus endure much better than church leaders (priestly, pastoral, or celebrity) who do it for them.

Click to Tweet

END .ss-ctt-wrapper

3. Christian Meanness on Social Media

This may be the year where almost everyone considered deleting their social media accounts. I know I did.

I searched for the right adjective to describe the tone of Christian posts I’ve seen this year, and the best one I could come up with was ‘mean’.

What many church leaders forget is that whenever you post, the world is watching.

That jab you took at someone you don’t like. That right hook you threw at someone who’s different than you. The cynical/angry/sarcastic rant you posted thinking you told everyone what they need to know.

You know those posts?

Why are Christians so mean?

The unchurched are watching. And listening. And for the most part, you don’t even realize they are. But your profile is public. And they know…they’re connecting the dots.

And maybe, just maybe, while they’re watching and listening, they’re walking away.

2020 was not the Christian world’s finest hour on social media.

Time and time again, when the world needed love, Christians gave it judgment.

It’s not our job to judge the world. It’s our job to love it.

Ultimately (and this is my challenge to myself), any tone issue isn’t really a tone issue: it’s a heart issue.

Because out of the overflow of your heart, your mouth (and fingers) speak.

When our hearts heal, the church will heal.

2020 was not the Christian world’s finest hour on social media. Time and time again, when the world needed love, Christians gave it judgment.

Click to Tweet

END .ss-ctt-wrapper

4. Making Politics and Ideology More Important Than Theology

I wonder if years from now we’ll talk to people who bailed on the church and realize the exodus during the pandemic wasn’t medically induced, but politically induced.

More than any other year I can remember, the evangelical church became inflamed politically and ideologically. Regardless of which direction you lean, it wasn’t pretty.

Having lived and led in a post-Christian culture for decades now (Canada), my experience is that people who show up at a church in a post-Christian culture (which America is quickly becoming) aren’t looking for my political views or ideological bent—they’re looking for God.

My hope is that Christians look, live and sound much more like Jesus than the political candidate of their choice.

My hope is that Christians look, live and sound much more like Jesus than the political candidate of their choice.

Click to Tweet

END .ss-ctt-wrapper

The last vestiges of Christendom may be slipping away in America. And that’s not fatal to the church. Not in the least.

The church was the church long before Constantine and has often been at its best when the culture is indifferent or hostile to it.

It allows love, compassion, generosity, mercy, self-discipline, and self-sacrifice that characterize authentic Christianity to shine.

And, contrary to what many believe, that is in abundant supply in many—if not most—churches.

The collapse of Christian culture should bring out the best in us, not the worst.

What many church leaders are about to face is this truth: Unchurched people aren’t looking for Christendom. They’re looking for Christ.

I pray they find him in our churches.

Unchurched people aren’t looking for Christendom. They’re looking for Christ.

Click to Tweet

END .ss-ctt-wrapper

What pivots do you need to make to flourish in 2021? Some Help.

As hard as it might be, what if 2021 could be a year of real growth for you and your church?

You know that in 2020, some organizations grew while others struggled. I’d love to help your church thrive in 2021.

I know, that sounds crazy (especially after a post like this), but like most things, it’s crazy until it’s not.

I believe 2021 can be a great year for you and your team, and I’d love to help you make it happen.

That’s why I created the 2021 Church Leader Toolkit.

Inside, I cover:

How To Produce Content That Actually Gets Read & Watched
5 Keys To Better Digital Preaching
7 Strategies To Deepen Digital Engagement
How To Keep You And Your Team Out Of Burnout
3 Key Pivots For Every Organization In 2021

The toolkit is free.

You can get access and share the kit with your team here!

What Do You See?

This is a highly complicated subject that 1700 words can’t do justice to.

But clearly something is shifting.

What do you see shifting, and how are you responding? Scroll down and leave a comment!

The post New Exodus? 4 Reasons So Many People (Including Christians) Have Suddenly Left the Church appeared first on CareyNieuwhof.com.

Source: New Exodus? 4 Reasons So Many People (Including Christians) Have Suddenly Left the Church

The post New Exodus? 4 Reasons So Many People (Including Christians) Have Suddenly Left the Church appeared first on Passion for Planting.