If you were a regular church-goer before the pandemic, how do you feel about returning to church?

[Anonymous]

I feel ambivalent. Realistically, my husband is an atheist, my older kid refused to sit through church pre-pandemic, and my younger one is now a toddler who can't, so it would just be me anyway
...but not feeling safe bringing my kids even if I wanted to feels weird. I don't know. We also moved during the pandemic and so I probably need to find a new church community, virtual services have kept me tangentially connected to my old one, so that's another bittersweet change.

[Anonymous]

Today the church was packed. Very few masks. Our check went from 0 to 100 in a few short weeks. It is great to be back to normal.

[Anonymous]

Some stuff happened to me at my church in Feb 2020, and I was contemplating leaving when the pandemic hit the US. Then, during the pandemic, my church merged with another one, which was somewhat controversial, and sparked an exodus of sorts, so my former church doesn’t even exist to go back to, even if I wanted to.

So now I am church shopping. I’ve been looking forward to it for awhile now, so I feel excited about finding a new church, and a little anxious about the process.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So now I am church shopping. I’ve been looking forward to it for awhile now, so I feel excited about finding a new church, and a little anxious about the process.

It's good to have that sense of excitement, PP. I wonder how many people will go back to church but take this as a chance to change churches and get a fresh start. I'm tempted.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So now I am church shopping. I’ve been looking forward to it for awhile now, so I feel excited about finding a new church, and a little anxious about the process.

It's good to have that sense of excitement, PP. I wonder how many people will go back to church but take this as a chance to change churches and get a fresh start. I'm tempted.

I'm the PP who moved. I'm looking forward to this a little, but feeling like part of a community takes work and time, and every time you have to start that over it's exhausting and a little sad compared to building deeper roots. (I liked my old church a lot.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m dreading it a bit (headed out in a couple hours) but I figure once I get started again I’ll remember what I valued about it.

I remember one of the best sermons I ever heard, and it was probably 25 years ago, about how some parishioners would come to the pastor and complain they weren’t getting as much out of sermons and church attendance as they wanted, and the pastor’s answer to that was basically, so put more in, because you’re only going to get out what you put in.

I posted this before church. Sooo glad I powered through. It was a great sermon, great to see fellow members, and great to see my kids engage with the community.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We got turned off by the politics from the pulpit and repulsed by how meanspirited many churchgoers (I won't call them Christians) have become. The pandemic was a good out for us. We aren't going back to chuech and neither is our money.

By your phrasing, I don't believe you are a regular church goer. You know every church is not like this. Why not go to a different one? It sounds like you just don't want to go in the first place and are making excuses.

I'm not a regular church goer anymore. The pandemic break and events of the past year have given me a new perspective on religion in general.

So you attended church regularly through 2015-2019 but in 2020-2021 decided actually it was too political? Sounds very real and true

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here -- Thanks for your willingness to engage in this discussion. My reluctance to return to church services isn't COVID-related, either in the sense of fears of a renewed pandemic or anxiety about interacting with large groups of people indoors. In the past couple of months I've traveled by plane, attended two large events with indoor components, participated in smaller meetings indoors, etc. (I've been vaccinated as have been all my family members.) So, I don't anticipate any discomfort about attending church; I just don't feel that large services with their rituals and sermons will hold the same meaning for me as they once did. When the pandemic began, I thought I'd miss those long-comforting rituals, but that hasn't been so. Instead, I've found that prayer, stillness, and meditation have fed my soul. As an earlier poster mentioned, a smaller contemplative service might be what I'm looking for now, but, the performance aspects of church (processional, music, sermon) are not compelling to me at this time. For a couple of months now I've been doing an outdoors house church service with friends, which has been lovely and centering. I'm hoping to continue with that.

You sound somewhat "Spiritual but not religious" which was brought out by the pandemic.

As an atheist, the performance aspects of church are all that I like, so I missed Christmas and Easter and look forward to them next year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Some stuff happened to me at my church in Feb 2020, and I was contemplating leaving when the pandemic hit the US. Then, during the pandemic, my church merged with another one, which was somewhat controversial, and sparked an exodus of sorts, so my former church doesn’t even exist to go back to, even if I wanted to.

So now I am church shopping. I’ve been looking forward to it for awhile now, so I feel excited about finding a new church, and a little anxious about the process.

The whole idea of "Church shopping" is foreign to me, as a former Catholic, whose family was assigned a church by the dioceses based on where we lived.

[Anonymous]

I’ve been back at my church for a while and did return with a new devotion in my own spiritual life and a renewed appreciation for the Mass. I’m happy to see my community returning in bigger numbers because while my faith is individual, my Church is bigger and I draw on that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here -- Thanks for your willingness to engage in this discussion. My reluctance to return to church services isn't COVID-related, either in the sense of fears of a renewed pandemic or anxiety about interacting with large groups of people indoors. In the past couple of months I've traveled by plane, attended two large events with indoor components, participated in smaller meetings indoors, etc. (I've been vaccinated as have been all my family members.) So, I don't anticipate any discomfort about attending church; I just don't feel that large services with their rituals and sermons will hold the same meaning for me as they once did. When the pandemic began, I thought I'd miss those long-comforting rituals, but that hasn't been so. Instead, I've found that prayer, stillness, and meditation have fed my soul. As an earlier poster mentioned, a smaller contemplative service might be what I'm looking for now, but, the performance aspects of church (processional, music, sermon) are not compelling to me at this time. For a couple of months now I've been doing an outdoors house church service with friends, which has been lovely and centering. I'm hoping to continue with that.

You sound somewhat "Spiritual but not religious" which was brought out by the pandemic.

As an atheist, the performance aspects of church are all that I like, so I missed Christmas and Easter and look forward to them next year.

That's hilarious. Actually, when I started going to church regularly as an adult -- and parent -- about 20 years ago, I adored that stuff -- really just ate it up. It's like I went from being a "none" (not a nun ) to being "religious" in the most traditional sense to being "spiritual" with a strong affinity for service to others. I don't think that's where our old church is really focused at this time, so I'm probably looking for a new church, possibly even Unitarian.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’ve been back at my church for a while and did return with a new devotion in my own spiritual life and a renewed appreciation for the Mass. I’m happy to see my community returning in bigger numbers because while my faith is individual, my Church is bigger and I draw on that.

Same here.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here -- Thanks for your willingness to engage in this discussion. My reluctance to return to church services isn't COVID-related, either in the sense of fears of a renewed pandemic or anxiety about interacting with large groups of people indoors. In the past couple of months I've traveled by plane, attended two large events with indoor components, participated in smaller meetings indoors, etc. (I've been vaccinated as have been all my family members.) So, I don't anticipate any discomfort about attending church; I just don't feel that large services with their rituals and sermons will hold the same meaning for me as they once did. When the pandemic began, I thought I'd miss those long-comforting rituals, but that hasn't been so. Instead, I've found that prayer, stillness, and meditation have fed my soul. As an earlier poster mentioned, a smaller contemplative service might be what I'm looking for now, but, the performance aspects of church (processional, music, sermon) are not compelling to me at this time. For a couple of months now I've been doing an outdoors house church service with friends, which has been lovely and centering. I'm hoping to continue with that.

You sound somewhat "Spiritual but not religious" which was brought out by the pandemic.

As an atheist, the performance aspects of church are all that I like, so I missed Christmas and Easter and look forward to them next year.

That's hilarious. Actually, when I started going to church regularly as an adult -- and parent -- about 20 years ago, I adored that stuff -- really just ate it up. It's like I went from being a "none" (not a nun ) to being "religious" in the most traditional sense to being "spiritual" with a strong affinity for service to others. I don't think that's where our old church is really focused at this time, so I'm probably looking for a new church, possibly even Unitarian.

Unitarians welcome all kinds of people, and don't ask you to believe in God or to follow religious dogma. but you're looking for a group of people who think or believe just like you do, Unitarian probably won't work.

[Anonymous]

I don't trust, and in fact know, that unvaccinated people won't wear masks. So I only go to the gym and always wear a mask.

[Anonymous]

Our (very tiny) church has been back in person a few months now. A lot of people haven’t returned to in person at all. It’s a weird space to be between restrictions and normalcy. Our habits of social distancing are hard to break, but there’s also this excitement of normalcy. We are looking forward to our small groups resuming in person and social events. A lot of new people have been coming but mostly people who moved to the area during covid. We just dropped the mask requirement (the building we rent required us to stay masked). I think there’s a sense of joy to be back and be with people rather than a feeling of obligation. People come back to church now because they missed it, not so much because of guilt. I think you’ll see a bigger influx back in the fall.