So, was 2020 a wasted and lost year for your ministry – one where you worked to get by until the pandemic ends, hopefully sometime in the next year as the vaccine takes effect?

Or was 2020 a watershed year – one where you were forced to dig deep and make significant changes that will impact the future of ministry in your setting for a long time to come?

The answer is still unknown for most of us. We will decide that in the next six months. Wasted or watershed is yet to be determined in most settings. It is not what we have done to adjust to pandemic realities that determines the answer to this – not yet. It is the way we decide to come out of the pandemic that will be the key.

As a leader, now is your moment to really lean into the future and help the other leaders in your setting lean forward too. Remember, when you return to full on-site programming, that will be your new future. You and the folks you lead with there get to decide: Do we put it back pretty much like it was? Or do we carefully rethink each aspect of our ministry and put together a new ministry that reflects the new realities, the things we have learned, and the things we have decided to jettison in the process?

In some ways, every congregation in the western world will need to answer a key question. The question is not, “Should we become a hybrid church?” There is only one answer to that (YES!). The question is “HOW should we become a hybrid congregation?” And the answer to that question will look different in each setting.

For example some important questions include:

• Should we have online worship once we are back in the building? If so, what should it look like?
• How should we encourage and support stewardship now that online is so much bigger?
• What does community building and congregational care look like in the new world?
• How can we expand small groups and how does access to online change that?
• Who in our community should we talk to in order to find out how life around us has changed for our neighbors and surrounding community?

The list should include some form of question(s) for every aspect of congregational life – internal and external. Being a hybrid church does not mean you have online worship. In fact, some hybrid congregations will choose to maximize use of the online world and not have online worship. But being a hybrid congregation means rethinking every aspect of church life and putting it forward (not back) in a new place that very intentionally asks what we can do to make post-pandemic church life fresh and effective in the post-pandemic word.

How you work through these questions will determine the answer to the question in the title of this post. Was 2020 a wasted year or a watershed year? The good news: you still get to decide!

Interested in having meaningful conversations with your leaders and the people you serve about the future of hybrid ministry in your setting? The new book, Becoming a Hybrid Church, is ideal for covering a wide range of ministry issues and offers discussion questions and biblical texts for book studies and small groups. Check it out here.

Dave Daubert is available to work with you and your leaders in developing a strategy for the new, post-pandemic environment for mission. To discuss consultation and coaching, click here.