The Post-Quarantine Church by Thom Rainer
“I responded softly that I didn’t think we would ever return to the pre-quarantine normal”
Has COVID forever changed the American church?
I remember the first Sunday morning in March when I sat down with my wife and three daughters and “went to church” in our living room. I remember thinking, “this is wrong.”
For the first time in the history of the United States of America, churches all closed their doors. Instead, congregations scrambled to utilize digital technology to conduct virtual worship services, that were foreign at first, and now the new normal. What will the post-quarantine or post-COVID American church look like?
It is week 33 of 52 in the Tim Challies 2020 reading challenge, and this week I chose Thom Rainer’s The Post-Quarantine Church: Six Urgent Challenges Plus Opportunities that will Determine the Future of your Congregation.
Thom Rainer is a Ph.D. graduate of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, an avid consultant of churches for over 30 years, author of over two dozen books, former CEO of Lifeway, and founder and current CEO of Church Answers.
In the past 6-months, Thom has been busy. He has blogged, podcasted, posted, and now written a book on the various challenges and opportunities that face the American church due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Post-Quarantine Church is based on one simple and utterly chilling argument.
The pre-quarantine church is forever gone.
“As our team began to walk with churches through the post-quarantine era, I remember my first conversation with a pastor who told me he couldn’t wait for things to get back to normal. I responded softly that I didn’t think we would ever return to the pre-quarantine normal” (p. 7).
Has the church truly forever changed?
What follows is my take on Thom’s observations. To put the bottom-line up front, I love reading Tom’s work. However, I am worried we (the American Church) may be embracing a new reality that is formed on the acceptableness of technology and the American capitalistic culture rather than God’s declared word.
What follows will be agreement, disagreement, and a plea for more dialog. I realize that with this discussion on church in the digital age there is significant grace required as church leaders are facing unprecedented times and forced to make timely decisions.
1. Simple Church
“The unintended consequences of a full church calendar were many. For example, some church members were so busy “going to church” that they failed to be on mission in their community. The most active members were often the least evangelistic members because they spent so much time inside the building instead of out in the community” (p. 14)
Thom Rainer and Eric Geiger wrote Simple Church in 2006. One of the arguments they made back then was that churches need to reevaluate the “busy equals success” mindset.
Dr. Thom Rainer
Since the start of the pandemic, church leaders have experienced something extremely rare in ministry, uninterrupted time.
With the calendar scratched and the doors closed, church leaders were forced to reevaluate their priority of effort.
Thom asks the following provocative question.
“What if we viewed our church facilities as a tool to reach our community? What if we thought of ways to bring the community in instead of keeping them out?” (p. 15).
He comes back to this idea again in his conclusion, stating unapologetically, “For years, many congregations have acted like religious country clubs. Members paid for services and got perks and benefits” (p. 104).
The pandemic provided churches with the opportunity to evaluate what their calendars and buildings were being filled with. Was the priority the Kingdom of God, the proclamation of the Gospel, and serving the hurting? Or the establishment of a well-organized, skillfully staffed, and beautifully renovated country club?
I wholeheartedly agree with Thom's assessment and desire to shift the mindset of an American church that has become internally self-focused. However, the direction that he recommends shifting to is not without serious concern.
2. Embrace the Digital World
“The biggest problem with the “back to normal” approach is that the world has changed significantly. The pre-quarantine world and post-quarantine world are not the same. Churches cannot minister effectively using methods for a world that no longer exists” (p. 37).
In his second challenge, Thom argues that churches must seize their opportunity to reach a digital world. Embracing this digital world looks like hosting podcasts, utilizing social media, streaming church services, and engaging with those who will only attend digital events.
Thom believes there are currently three digital groups that the church needs to consider when crafting ministry outreach. He calls them "digital only, digitally transitioning, and dual citizens” (p. 31).
To combat the idea that busyness equals effectiveness, Thom encourages churches to only engage in a few digital platforms but to execute their content with excellence and specific to their community.
It is at this point that my neck hairs start to raise. What does it mean to be “effective” in ministry?
Thom is certainly a biblically grounded theologian. Unfortunately, I believe he has allowed American capitalist culture to seep in, resulting in the confusion of effectiveness with entrepreneurial metrics and existential subjectivity. Churches must think before total embrace of this ever changing digital world.
I am not against technology. I am typing this on a Microsoft Surface Pro 6 while checking my Facebook on my iPhone 8. But if the church is going to fully embrace technology is should be motivated and supported with a robust ecclesiology (Study of or Theology of the Church) and not by what people feel connected to.
Thom mentions the story of a lady who explained that she prefers “attending church” in her living room rather than going to the building. It gives her more time, less stress, and she feels like she can listen better at home.
She is not alone in her feelings. More and more people, especially young people, are feelings justified to conduct “worship services” on their coach, with their phone, complete and totally alone.
By fully leaping into digital worship services the church may have unintentionally communicated an extremely detrimental lie.
Autonomous Christianity.
Being autonomous is antithetical to being a Christian. While many churches are reopening or attempting to reopen, the damage is done. Some people may already believe that they can live completely independent of any Christian relationship and still be a follower of Jesus Christ.
There is a host of problems with the idea of autonomous Christianity. One of these basic problems is the commands to love one another. “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:34-35).
To be a Christian is to be grafted into the Church by Union to Christ through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Before embracing this digital world, Christians must think critically about what they are implicitly and explicitly communicating in the name of God to those in the church and those desperately seeking for truth.
There are several other concerning challenges that Thom gives in his new book, but I do not have the time to get into them in this review. While I believe every pastor and church leader should read this book, I recommend doing so as a plea for honest assessment and dialog by the American church to consider the potential ramifications of our actions.
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