In the year 2020, many governments around the world put out a mandate to churches and other religious groups to close their doors in response to a new virus circulating the globe.
Fast forward two or three years and most people have moved beyond being constantly worried about the negative consequences of getting together to sing, pray, and study.
However, the repercussions of those several months that people stopped gathering are still being felt today — mainly in declining church attendance and involvement.
But from my own perspective as well as the perspective of several pastors that I know, the church “shut down” did not necessarily cause people to leave the church or stop their spiritual disciplines. Instead, it gave many people on the fringes an excuse to leave or become uninvolved.
In turn, many churches greatly suffered from the attendance decline, and other churches fully closed. One study found that less than half of churches were back to their “pre-pandemic” attendance. But again, I would argue that the shutdown cannot be blamed for church closures. If anything, it just expedited or accelerated a process that was already in play.