Preparing for 2023

Sunday will be the first day of a new year. Are you ready to lead your church in 2023? If you are one of the pastors who are still waiting for things to return to normal after Covid you are not ready to lead your church into the new year.  That normal no longer exists nor will it return. Much of what you learned in seminary for how to lead a church is now outdated and will do you little good. Leaders have to find a new normal because pre-covid days will not return to the church.

Thom Rainer wrote a very helpful little book in 2020 called The Post-Quarantine Church that should be required reading for all church leaders. At 111 pages it easily readable in a day or two, but I encourage you to spend more time than that with this book. As I read it I felt like the author clearly understood the changes Covid has brought to the church. In this post let me address just one chapter in the book, the one on doing ministry in a digital world.

Most smaller churches never considered putting their services online prior to the Covid quarantine. Suddenly, many of those churches began exploring how to stream their services on social media or on hastily developed web pages. Overnight many pastors became tele-evangelists! Rainer's organization estimates that more than 100,000 churches that never had an internet presence developed one during the pandemic. The church I now serve as Transitional Pastor would be included in that number. Churches had to learn a lot to begin streaming their services, and many of continue to learn how to improve that internet presence. 

Many churches probably assumed that once the quarantine was behind us we could forget streaming our services. Surprise! Many in our congregation never returned to live worship services but continue to faithfully watch our online services. While we may have once considered our digital ministry to be an emergency stopgap it is now being seen as an important part of our ministry. In fact, it is more than that. Rainer writes in this book, "As we move into the post-quarantine church era, the challenge is how best to reach people and serve them on the digital mission field." Beside that statement I wrote in the margin, "The digital world is a new mission field for the church."

The author suggests that churches realize that we are now dealing with three different groups. One is digital only, one is digitally transitioning, and the third is dual citizens. In addition, we continue to have those members who physically attend the worship services of our churches. If you are only focusing on those physically present each Sunday you are missing out on ministering to an important group of people.

As you prepare to lead your church into 2023 make sure you are considering all the groups Rainer has identified in this book. If you ignore the digital opportunities you now have you will miss an important group of individuals God has given you.

If you have not yet read this book you need to do so. You can order it through Amazon by clicking on the title above. Yes, I will receive a small payment if you do that, but if that bothers you let me know and I'll send you a check for those pennies I'll receive from Amazon. Have a great New Year!