Is your congregation's future hybrid (part 1)? Questions to help you discern.
Two years ago many churches moved the whole of church life online because of the pandemic. Pastors and congregations felt the frustrations associated with physical distancing and tech trial and error. They also, though, found freedom from “the way we’ve always done it,” new outlets for creativity, and broader reach.
At this point in Covid (which I recently heard one colleague aptly refer to as “pre-post-Covid”), a lot of churches are continuing some aspects of online worship and community. For some this is just for now, since not all constituents are yet comfortable returning to the church campus. For others this is an experiment with what will become a permanent supplement to in-person congregational life. And for a few this is a precursor to full-blown hybrid church, a unified online and offline community that offers belonging, space to ask big questions, and opportunities to create and lead to everyone who is involved.
Constructing this hybrid congregation will take a lot of reflection on and intentionality about everything from the core of congregational identity all the way to the nuts and bolts of day-to-day operations. This week and next I will offer some coaching questions to help your church discern whether hybrid is right for you and how to move into this new way of being a faith community.
Congregational identity
What are our congregation’s core values, the commitments that define who we are and what we do?
What has this congregation been put on earth to do? To what future is God inviting us?
For whom are this purpose and future story good news? Among these populations, who is currently not connected to our congregation?
Pandemic gleanings
What technology attempts during the pandemic have worked well? What did we learn?
What technology attempts didn’t work as well? What did we learn?
What surprised us about what did and didn’t work?
Who engaged with our church online? In what ways, and how frequently? What has their engagement added to our faith community, and how has our faith community enriched their lives?
What lasting shifts have we made in our understanding as church as a physical place during the pandemic?
What new gifts among church members were uncovered during the pandemic?
What extra responsibilities did our pastor take on during the pandemic? What role renegotiation is now needed?
Preparatory self-reflection
What does belonging look like for us? What will we need to attend to in order to extend that same sense of belonging to those who primarily engage with us online?
What assumptions do we continue to make about people who connect to church online (indeed, who conduct much of their lives online)? Offline? How do we dispel the myths?
How will we respond if someone who has been an in-person participant pre-pandemic decides to engage primarily in the online aspects of church?
How do we want to respond if people who have engaged primarily online decide to become in-person participants, acknowledging that that person might know more about the church than the church knows about them?
How can we encourage those who have returned/intend to return to in-person participation to engage with online constituents to the benefit of all?
What excites us most about the possibilities of hybrid church? What questions or hesitations do we have?
What are we willing to give up (e.g., power, particular ways of doing church) in order to give hybrid church room to work?
What are touchstones for our congregation, in addition to values and purpose, that it would be important to educate about and build welcome around for those who never set foot on the church campus? Examples might include rituals or narratives about the church’s history.
How could a truly hybrid church help us live more fully into our values and purpose? What might be possible that otherwise wouldn’t?
Stay tuned next week for questions about the practical side of planning for hybrid church.
Photo by Vadim Bogulov on Unsplash.