The Post-Quarantine Church: Six Urgent Challenges & Opportunities That Will Determine the Future of Your Congregation by Thom S. Rainer ($11.06 for the Kindle edition on Amazon) is a brief book (111 pages) on one of the most relevant topics facing today’s church of any size. Rainer offers the sobering opinion that things will never return to the “pre-quarantine normal.” Therefore, Rainer goes on to offer six brief chapters devoted to the implications of each challenge as well as the inherent opportunities found in each one.
Urgent Challenge #1: Gather Differently And Better
First of all, Rainer sees the unexpected quarantine and closure of public church services as a great time to reflect and re-think how we do church. Rainer suggests we view the coming new year as a “blank slate” and as an opportunity to implement needed changes. Key questions include:
- Is the way we have always done church the best way?
- Can we offer additional worship services at new and innovative times?
- Are there new and creative ways we can use our facilities?
- Are we doing things not part of our core mission that should be eliminated?
- How can we partner with and better connect to our community?
Urgent Challenge #2: Seize Your Opportunity To Reach The Digital World
Rather than simply looking at the internet as a digital “tool,” Rainer suggests we see the internet as a “mission field.” Rainer writes, “The world is both digital and physical. For that reason alone we must respond to both.” Rainer insists, “It is imperative that we do something and do it well. Waiting is not an option.” Rainer goes on to explain there are three groups of people that need ministry in this new post-quarantine world:
- Digital Only: This group includes those who are physically unable to attend in person, those in the armed forces stationed overseas, etc. However, the group also includes those who feel in-person services are still too risky.
- Digitally Transitioning: These are people who are mostly digital. However, they are also somewhat open to connecting in person and feel the need for personal relationships.
- Dual Citizens: This group is the one where people are connected to your congregation both digitally and in person.
Urgent Challenge #3: Reconnect With The Community Near Your Church
One somewhat surprising result of the pandemic is that many churches have focused once again on their immediate community and are starting to see themselves as a “neighborhood church.” Rainer suggests, “Most churches’ physical location should also be the hub of their ministry.” However, he goes on to point out four key lessons learned about community during the quarantine:
- Keep church life simple, not so busy with activities that members can’t do the most important ministries that they should be doing.
- Make certain your congregation’s prayer ministry becomes a hub of prayer for the homes in your area.
- Be intentional about sharing the gospel. Rainer says, “That you do it is far more important than how you do it.”
- Keep the emphasis on having members connect with people in the community.
Urgent Challenge #4: Take Prayer To A New And Powerful Level
Rainer takes us back to the book of Acts for a lesson on how the early church handled times of crisis. He points out that in the early church in Jerusalem, all members met consistently for prayer. The early believers devoted themselves to prayer. Therefore, Rainer offers this hope-filled conclusion, “If we are obedient and continue to be houses of prayer – if a perpetual posture of prayer truly takes root in our churches – we might say the pandemic was used by God in a powerful way like few events we have known.”
Urgent Challenge #5: Rethink Your Facilities For Emerging Opportunities
Rainer believes the time has come for “outside-the-box” thinking when it comes to the weekday and weekend use of church facilities. He observes, “Too many churches are poor stewards of their buildings. Their occupancy rate is as bad as a college football stadium.” Therefore, he urges us to see the church building from the perspective of our community. He concludes, “When the church opens its doors to the community by making its buildings available for other uses, the community ‘comes to church.’ Such partnerships have gospel opportunities written all over them.”
Urgent Challenge #6: Make Lasting Changes That Will Make A Difference
In this final challenge, Rainer offers a brief synopsis of how the principles and timelines for leading change have significantly changed during these uncertain times. However, for the purposes of this review, I will focus only on Rainer’s nine key changes for the post-quarantine church:
- Simplicity will be vitally important. “Healthy churches in the post-quarantine era will be focused churches . . . that do a few things well, both digitally and in person.”
- Only outwardly focused churches will survive. “If churches are not making focused, intentional, and regular efforts to reach their communities, they will die.”
- Worship service gatherings will be smaller. “The trend toward building larger worship centers to accommodate big congregations was primarily for one generation, the Boomers. What we are seeing now is a trend toward smaller gatherings.”
- “Multi” will multiply. Rainer sees an acceleration of multi-service and multi-site congregations along with a growing trend of the “adoption” of weak churches by stronger ones.
- Staff and leadership realignment will focus more on digital proficiency. Churches will allocate greater resources to digital technology and outreach.
- “Stragglers” will become a subject of outreach and focus. “Stragglers” is Rainer’s term for marginal attendees who have dropped out of church entirely during the quarantine. This group is roughly 20% of those who attended church prior to the pandemic.
- Digital worship services will be newly purposed. Rainer predicts that some churches will develop specialized digital services to minister to specific audiences such as retirement homes, as well as for member training and development.
- Ministry training will change dramatically. Here Rainer refers not merely to more online education, but also to a change in content including how to reach people with digital ministry and do ministry in the digital world.
- Pastors will leave their lead positions for second-chair roles. Rainer believes many current pastors are not equipped to lead the significant change needed in the post-quarantine era. Therefore, he sees retiring ministers moving to fill the growing need for assistant pastors and campus pastors at multi-site churches.
The Blank Slate Church
Rainer concludes by offering the following synopsis. “The post-quarantine era may prove to be one of the most challenging seasons for churches and their leaders. The opportunity to lead change is likely greater than at any other point in our lifetimes . . . the world has changed . . . Western culture has shifted . . . largely against churches . . . still it is a season of opportunity. In some ways it is like a blank slate.”
A Thoughtful And Highly Recommended Read
There is much to think about, pray about, and act upon in this small but thoughtful book. Therefore, I highly recommend The Post-Quarantine Church: Six Urgent Challenges & Opportunities That Will Determine the Future of Your Congregation by Thom S. Rainer.