Three years later, the COVID Pandemic has significantly altered church life in America. In 2020, nearly 90% of Americans reported their church closed to combat the spread of the disease. Here at the Oceanside Sanctuary, we shut down in-person worship services and streamed exclusively online for fifteen months. Six months later, we shut the doors again when the Delta variant spiked.
Those were the right decisions. And unlike many other churches, OSC has thrived over the past three years. But the long disruption of COVID and the explosion of video conferencing has disrupted America’s sense of community. Polls last year by Pew Research and The Barna Group showed just how significant this impact has been:
“According to data collected in April/May 2020 by Barna Group, one-in-three practicing Christians dropped out of church completely during COVID-19. Last June, the AP broke a story about many houses of worship in the U.S. that were shuttered forever due to the pandemic . What’s worse, church membership in the U.S. dropped below 50% for the first time in 2020, according to Gallup data dating back to 1940.”
Why does this matter? Why do we gather on Sunday mornings? Why do we sing the songs, pray the prayers, light the candles, preach the sermons? What’s the point of all this? Is church just another enterprise that demands our time, attention, and money?
What if our gatherings aren’t really about “church”, religion, or the preservation of any institution? What if there is a bigger purpose to all this — a purpose that genuinely matters to our physical, emotional, and spiritual well being?
Join us starting January 15th as we embark on a new teaching series called “Building A Community of Love.” Between now and Lent we will explore what Jesus, his predecessors, and his followers taught about the kind of community we are called to build together.