Easter Requires Presence

Easter arrives in 10 days. If the past is any indication, that Sunday will bring our church’s largest attendance of the year. We may have to set out extra chairs to make sure all the visitors get a seat.

Yet for the first time in five years, no one will be able to sit at home and watch the service online. We stopped livestreaming after Mar. 30.

The pastor’s sermon will still be recorded and available online, but not until later. A primary reason: we don’t want to give anyone a reason to stay home and sip coffee instead of coming in person.

In announcing the change recently, our pastor said, “If there’s one thing that Covid taught the church, it’s how badly we need each other.”

Reconsidering Livestreaming

When the lockdown era arrived in 2020, livestreaming—whether on Facebook Live, a YouTube channel, or some other form of communication—turned into an essential element of church life.

This recent article that questioned whether livestreaming is still worth it noted that LifeWay Research found that 97% of churches were livestreaming within the first few months of 2020. That compared to 22% a year earlier.

When it comes to stopping livestreaming, we may be a bit late to the trend, as evidenced by this church that halted the practice at the end of 2023. Others are contemplating it.

Those who support livestreaming cite factors for continuing. Examples: those who are ill, quarantined because of Covid exposure, shut-in, disabled, or are interested in visiting.

No matter what the reason, I think being able to watch our pastor’s sermon at another time will provide that opportunity.

Getting Together

When 2020 brought everything to a screeching halt, livestreams were literally better than nothing. But as the weeks dragged on and our big outing for the week was a trip to Walmart, I longed for more human contact. Especially interaction with other members of the body of Christ.

As Paul wrote: “And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another…” (Hebrews 10:24-25 MEV).

This “getting together” is so important that the board of directors of a seminary in Japan has eschewed offering online classes. This despite declining enrollment in a nation where only 1% of the population professes Christianity.

An article in the latest issue of Christianity Today says the directors voted against the common growth strategy “because they value in-person fellowship among the students and professors.”

Pressing the Flesh

Reflecting on 2020, it’s interesting how our small men’s group had to stop meeting in person because of lockdowns. A month or so into the halt, one member emailed the group to say we could meet on Zoom.

What’s Zoom? I thought. Yet within two weeks I had downloaded Zoom and read up on it. I had to prepare to interview an Atlanta-area pastor who had capitalized on electronic services to keep his megachurch humming.

Before long, it seemed I was using Zoom for all kinds of work, including interviewing pastors from Australia and South Africa to help them write their books.

Today, not so much; last month I did an interview on Teams. But the bloom is off the rose. It’s why I generally shun meetings that skip in-person meetings for online set-ups.

Whether a professional association, social organization, or church service, I want to press the flesh. As the hip might say: “Keeping it real.”