While there are certainly ambitions I have for the next year, our church, as much of the Conference, has suffered drastic losses. And now omicron is rearing its ugly head. I hope 2022 can be a deep breath in and out, a break from the stress. We want to attend to self-care for the church, and ask, how are our people? We have to determine if it’s safe to reconnect. We’re really trying to stay attuned to the people who are here. We just want to take care of each other right now. We have online worship already, but we want to spend a good deal of our funding in the future on our online church. That has become even more important. We’re trying to find ways to reach out to people. We’ve got to literally bring the church to them.

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In the past, I would often think about how I can personally change or what I could do differently to improve church attendance. Now we have to think more about insights on Facebook and views on YouTube. Growth for Pollard MUMC is really about our online presence. We’re going to add a staff person, a director of online ministries. I hope this will develop into a pastoral role over time. The fact is that there will be a congregation that doesn’t come to the sanctuary on Sundays. They’ll be online, and we have to find ways to reach those members. We’re also adding a director of IT. We’re growing our staff so we can grow our outreach in ways we never even imagined before. We have to do things in a different way, but we have to maintain the same quality of our in-person gatherings. We’re still offering this to God – and we have to keep that in mind with everything we do.

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The pandemic has changed our staffing and our budget. We’re becoming much more intentional about how we are reaching out, whether it’s in-person or online. It’s changed how we invest in our places. We have to rethink the assets we have. For example, we’re increasing our budget for youth ministry and for contemporary worship. All of our infrastructure has to be in place, and it has to be solid so we can move forward. I’ve been at Pollard now for six months. I’m still very much in a listening phase, but the pandemic has caused me to ask probing questions. The pandemic has forced us all right now into a place where we are not as comfortable as we once were. The key is to ask the questions and then have a “what’s next.” I think that’s really critical. When you remove something, I think it’s got to be replaced with new energy, new programs and new outreach.

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I like asking questions, brainstorming and thinking outside the box. I love all of that stuff. I think with the required emphasis on technology, social media and the Internet to reach out to folks, our flock may not have grown, but our ways to connect with them have multiplied exponentially. For almost every door that closed, a new one popped open. I do find the future hope-filled. I think about 100 years ago, during the Great Influenza, the church was still present. The Gospel was still spreading. They didn’t have the technology we have today. The Gospel is not in danger, and I take great courage in that. In the midst of the pandemic, Pollard has actually been able to increase our budget by 6 or 7 percent. We ended 2020 and 2021 with a surplus. I applaud Pollard for that, and that’s also another thing that gives me hope. This church isn’t giving in. We have an important story to tell in Tyler – and we’re going to make sure we’re around to tell it.

Honestly, I’m kind of tired of innovation right now. We’ve been doing innovation nonstop for two years. I want to enjoy some of the things we used to do — like sitting at a table together or singing songs on Sunday morning. We’ve started doing normal things again, but everyone is still walking on eggshells. I want to do normal things again without fear and without having to navigate the cultural divides. Now that I read what I wrote, it sounds whiny or impossibly quixotic. But that’s just where I am right now. In truth, we will likely end up doing something innovative. We always do. I just don’t know what it is yet.

Growth is rebuilding . . . getting to whatever the “new normal” is going to look like. Our communities changed irreversibly over the shutdown, and that’s likely not entirely bad. But we need to start getting through the transition and living into whatever the future looks like. Honestly, for Westminster, there are some pretty awesome opportunities in our future that could never have happened without the shutdown. But taking advantage of those opportunities is going to require a lot of work.

Oof. The pandemic changed everything. For both Gastrochurch and Westminster, the pandemic basically burned everything down. That’s not entirely bad . . . we get to start anew. But it means we are emerging from the shutdown as different entities.

I find hope in the people that show up. The past two years have been a masterclass in discouragement. We worked harder than ever and experienced less fruit than ever. People felt disconnected no matter how many hours we put into trying to reconnect with them. Dealing with people’s frustrations after putting into fruitless hours was terrible. But now… now the people who are showing up are pure gold. They love the church, they love Jesus and they are ready to change the world. The energy in worship is actually higher, even with fewer people present. The things we are talking about doing missionally are far beyond what we could have considered pre-shutdown. The numbers are definitely down, but the excitement is not. That is what kindles my faith that God is up to something good.

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Churches may not see the same numbers come back after the pandemic. Instead, we have to think about how engagement is happening. That’s the key. Instead of just counting people in pews on Sundays, I count messages I received, interactions on social media and interactions on Zoom. We used to think only about worship service and youth group on Wednesday. That doesn’t count all of the interactions in between. We’ve got to look at the ways we engage our members when they’re not even on campus. We also have to think about growth with the people who are streaming our services but do not live nearby. Do we have a discipleship path for those who might not come back fully in person? How are we doing ministry for them? Digital is here to stay. We’re not going to stop broadcasting services. But we need to think beyond that? How are we creating a culture online that is an extension of our physical campus? We might find that churches can cooperate to offer pastoral care. We’re a connectional system. There are all kinds of questions that arise with digital presence. Online is the new parking lot. People might watch for six months before they decide to show up. If you give up on that, you’re taking away your front porch.

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I actually started last December. This is my first year in my first church. Before that, I was in youth ministry for 30 years, where we are always trying to do new things. There may be an advantage in that. I didn’t have any expectation for things to be done the way they always were before. I didn’t have a previous way of doing things. I think we do a lot of things, because we think we should. But activity does not equal productivity or depth. We need to be intentional. Right now, we are focusing on small groups. We are starting a Bible study. We may have a group that meets for hikes or a group of moms who like to craft. I like the example set by Gastrochurch and others who are creating non-traditional forms of building faith communities.

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I’m always interested in ways that we can be different, ways that we can create community and build our family. A lot of people have been hurt by the church in the past and might not want to come into the building. They still need to be loved. Just because they might not step on campus doesn’t mean that they don’t need to know about Jesus. I think we need to change our definition of success. We can look and say, “We’re shut down by a pandemic and can’t do anything.” Or we can say, this is a new opportunity to do something we’ve never done before and reach new people. What are the opportunities that have been made clear? For instance, recently we had a Zoom game night with our college students. About halfway through the night, I thought, we could have been doing this for five years. We had the technology, and we could have been checking in with college students. The pandemic has taught us to take advantage of the tools that we have. We’ve also been building community events and using those as opportunities to welcome our neighbors to our church. My goal is to make as many connections as possible. We’re casting the net wide – and I’m seeing God moving in so many ways.