Impacted by The Pandemic
As with individuals, educational and commercial institutions, as well as churches throughout the world, this research project has been greatly impacted by the pandemic. According to our original project calendar, by now we would have been well into our second year and involved in administering surveys and conducting field research within our chosen churches. We have not been idle, however! Our research leaders have been meeting virtually and constructing survey instruments, writing articles based on megachurch website research, and giving papers at virtual academic conferences. Nevertheless, the project has been stalled. Alas, we cannot travel to research sites to collect data and even if we could, megachurches in our chosen countries are either closed or attendance has been severely limited.
We are also painfully aware that megachurches themselves are suffering in various ways. Pastors and congregants have been infected and some have died from Covid. Churches have been financially strained and because of this, paralyzed in conducting their ministries. Because of church lockdowns, megachurch congregants have suffered from the absence of the physical presence of the church community, and from the absence of pastoral care.
Simply put, when we do get back into our churches, (which we assume will be this coming September or October, we will not find the vibrant, full, and intensely energetic church life we had intended to study. We will find churches in various stages of grief over what has been lost, relief at the end of a horrific year or more of suffering, hopes for a return to the way things were coupled with disappointment about how things are, and new visions for “church” in a post-pandemic world.
Such conditions have led us to add a new focus to our project, assessing the impact upon and response to the pandemic on the part of our chosen megachurches. We anticipate that our surveys and interviews within our churches will reveal a great deal about our congregations as they rebuild and reimagine church life in a post-Pandemic world.