Well, we tried to warn you. When churches admitted to their congregations that what they did each Sunday was not “essential,” their church members listened. Many churches will never regain their congregations after addicting them to online church services, and the unhealthiest churches won’t survive. Unfortunately, many of the most unhealthy churches are minority congregations, and their pastors are now signaling the alarm that church members aren’t returning.
Barna Research has been conducting polls of church members and pastors, asking how they feel about the longterm impacts of coronavirus on coronavirus shutdowns on their congregations. Tragically, minority churches have – by far – the least optimistic view that churches will survive the shutdowns intact.
As Charisma reports, “the majority of black churchgoers are not confident about the future of their church. We find that about one in three black churchgoers (35%) strongly agrees that they are concerned about COVID-19’s long-term effect on their church’s health. Another one-third (37%) somewhat agrees with this statement, while 28% disagree.”
In other words, 72% of minority churchgoers are concerned things will not get back to normal.
Pastors are reporting that it has been difficult to get church members to come back. These same pastors are 100% responsible for shutting their church doors in compliance with unconstitutional directives. They are also 100% responsible for every church member they trained to stay home and watch on the Internet instead.
Minority congregations are, on average, smaller than non-minority congregations and, therefore, are less likely to survive the church shutdowns during the Great Coronavirus Panic of 2020.
They were told that it was in the best interest of the congregations to close down. Demonstrably, it was not.
