Ministry Today: How Covid-19 May Affect Communication in Your Church

Its most probable that there’s not a single ministry in your church right now that is not experiencing the effects of COVID-19.

Perhaps, it’s your media ministry learning how to livestream or your small group leaders learning how to supervise on Zoom; everyone is learning to do ministry uniquely.

One important aspect that could be  most impacted is the church’s communications system. It may be your social media, your website or your weekly email to your members. There is a significant amount of pressure to communicate more efficiently than ever before.

Here we want to look at four instant effects of COVID-19 on your church’s communication and how you can equip your communications to adapt to the situation.

Fractured attention

One of the advantages of Sunday morning worship is having the audience’s full attention. Of course, people still check their phones or daydream during worship, but for the most part you gain their attention.

Nevertheless, when you remove that weekly ritual of gathering at a physical location and instead replace it with a screen (as when livestreaming of worship), your audience’s attention will unavoidably be fractured.

Therefore, you’re now in a situation where you may get a few minutes here or there, but not a complete hour like you would on Sunday morning.

Micro-moments

A fractured attention span will necessitate you to think in “micro-moments.” By “Micro-moments”, we refer to thinking of small moments through which you can connect to hold on to the audience’s attention.

Rather than think of our sermon as one 30-minute monologue, think of how you can break it up into ten 3-minute sections. Even though it will still be one cohesive sermon, but contemplate how you can keep the audience’s attention for each segment since their attention is fractured.

Equal footing with every church

Your church is now on equal footing with every church on the globe. In a pre-COVID world, people typically appraise churches on how massive their buildings were or how large their attendance was. If your church had excellent facilities and a growing audience, then you could, in turn, captivate more people.

Nevertheless, when we proceed to everything being in a purely digital space, every church becomes equal. Truly some churches have more resources, but they all possess the same platforms at their disposal.

Websites, emails and social media platforms are available to most churches. This availability means that many churches have an equal opportunity to reach people in their community.

Communicating through worship service

The worship service is no longer your primary approach to communication. Worship service was the one communal event that a congregation shared. The other benefit was that the worship service was a fundamental place to communicate your top priorities to your congregation.

However, since the congregation’s attention is already fractured, you’re only getting a small aspect of their attention. This implies that you’re going to need to look for new ways to communicate your key messages to your audience.

One call to action

You can only offer your audience one call to action. We’ve all seen those church bulletins that are occupied with multiple events, Bible studies and mission trip possibilities. But we’re now in a place where either worship service is online, and you can’t physically hand someone a bulletin or you’re presently meeting in person, and you give someone a flyer for fear of spreading COVID-19.

Trim your messages

The deficiency of a physical handout is going to require you to trim down your messages to a single call to action. What is the one thing you will desire your congregation to do?

When they depart from the worship service either in your building or online, would they know what the next action is? These questions will need to be a primary consideration  when you’re planning your worship services.

On a final note

While we’re all expecting that we can return to some sort of normalcy in the next few months, there’s a high likelihood that some of these effects will be permanent. The challenge will be for your church to be active enough to adapt to these changes and launch the church into the future.

Credit: Darrel Girardier