According to a multitude of studies, churches in the United States will lose at least 25% of regular attenders due to COVID-19 who will never return to the church. At Renovation Church, close to 40% of regular attenders have not returned to any of our services since March. It’s likely that many of these people will not re-join our church – this is true of churches all around our country.
The reality is that COVID-19 did not CAUSE this to happen. Instead, it simply accelerated trends that were already evident in the church. As our nation becomes post-Christian and church attendance is no longer an expected norm, churches are going to increasingly become smaller.
How do we navigate these changes? One of the best things we can do is to learn how the early church spread the Gospel in a pre-Christian society. In many ways, the post-Christian world will look a lot like the pre-Christian world of the first few centuries of the church. This Sunday, we will be continuing our series in the Book of Acts by studying Acts 13:1-12 to discern what we can learn from the most influential church of the New Testament – the church in the ancient city of Antioch.
(All are invited to join us. We meet on Sundays outside at Split Rock Park in Garretson, South Dakota.)
Tyler Ramsbey 