On Post-Covid Church Free Agency

The pandemic of 2020-2021 provoked anxious disorientation in a remarkable number of directions, and we will be compelled to wrestle with its effects for some time. Some of the threads are going to be tough to identify and understand because of how entangled they are with multiple factors of causality.

In my world, one of the disorienting effects of the pandemic is what I’m calling “post-covid church free-agency”.

In our church, when we returned to in-person gatherings, we found that more people than normal were choosing both to join and leave our congregation. Of course, every individual has their own reasons that are pushing or pulling them to/away us. There are a handful of common factors, but everyone experiences the cocktail of experiences just a bit differently.

But, that individuality doesn’t erase that there is something broadly at work, something taking place across the greater systems. What is it?

It strikes me that the pandemic has, perhaps temporarily, lowered the threshold of dissatisfaction required for people to leave communities they previously affiliated with. It created a period of “free agency” in which people felt free to rethink their commitments in ways they normally would not have. (An effect that doesn’t seem to be limited to churches, but is also felt by employers, neighborhoods, etc.)

Now that might taken negatively, as a failure of commitment, or an epidemic of disloyalty. Maybe. But we might more helpfully think of it as a period in which disruption has created a crisis requiring increased intentionality. People have been shaken loose to rethink what it is they want to be investing in.

That means this is a time for choices. Which also means that this is a time for clarity, for being crystal clear about what we are asking people to be a part of. Offering clarity with candor means humbly recognizing that our community (or yours) might not be for everybody—and it probably never was. Now, we can take stock and see who it is that actually intentionally buys in, who actively recognizes that community as something that they need and want to be a part of.