Hybrid church is here to stay. Is your congregation ready?

The views expressed in this opinion column are those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect the views of EPIC.

By Rev. Katy McCallum Sachse

“I watch you on TV every week!” 

This is not how I am accustomed to meeting a parishioner, but it’s become a far more frequent interaction since the end of the pandemic. For better and for worse, my congregation is not only the people I can see in worship each week (or, more accurately, once a month); it’s the people who can see me through their screens at home. Whether I know they are present or not, their sense of connection to the community is real and evident. But how do I pastor to people I can’t see? And how does the community fully incorporate their presence?

The rise of the hybrid congregation

“Back to Normal? The Mixed Messages of Congregational Recovery Coming Out of the Pandemic,” suggests that congregations with a continued hybrid life — offering both worship and community engagement online as well as in person — are best positioned to thrive in future years. Hybrid congregations have stronger giving and volunteer patterns, even as general growth and decline patterns among mainline churches remain consistent.

As the report states, “most churches think of hybridity in terms of streaming the worship service and replicating the mode of a face to face in-person worship in a virtual format…the exact benefits or costs of a hybrid congregational reality can be complicated to assess and these dynamics are still in flux.” 

It’s those, “exact benefits and costs” that bring with them a set of very difficult questions for a faith centered in the incarnation of God in a living, breathing human being. What does it look like to live within the messy, imperfect yet beloved community when a good portion of that community is on the other side of a screen? How do sacramental gifts of meal and water — the splash of the baptismal font and the bread of communion placed in a hand — live authentically outside the worshipping community? How am I a pastor to those who know me, and feel connected to me when they watch me preach — while I have no idea who they are, what they struggle with, or how they respond to the word I craft for the people in the room?

I’m not suggesting that the answer is to return to in-person life only. For one thing, that hardly seems possible at this point, and it would directly contradict my congregation’s deep commitment to radical hospitality and inclusion. But simply acknowledging that the great cloud of witnesses is now partly in the great cloud of the internet hardly seems sufficient either. I have noticed a significant generational divide about what constitutes “real” community — what feels truly authentic and meaningful — and the church has much to learn in this regard. At the same time, the church has much to offer about the value of in-person gathering, where you can’t avoid your neighbor’s off-tune singing, awkward handshake, noisy kids, and viewpoints that diverge from your own. 

This dilemma is one of the primary reasons I find myself highly skeptical of any claim that the church can go, “back to normal” following our pandemic experience. Congregational life has been permanently changed by the arrival of hybrid worship, education, and access. This gift comes with challenges, especially considering that many congregations, including my own, developed online access in the early frantic days of COVID closures, without time or bandwidth to consider its longstanding implications. 

Finding a way forward

Of all the lingering questions we face as a congregation in the post-pandemic era, this is the one most fraught and yet most potentially fruitful: how do the in-person and online communities not just co-exist, but grow and thrive together? What can each learn from the other, and how will both change as a result? 

I freely admit that my congregation does not have answers to these questions. I don’t think we are even asking them with the right amount of urgency. But the shape of our future will come not from asking how we get back to normal; rather, from wondering how we find a new life moving forward. The technology of the printing press made the Protestant Reformation possible. The reality of hybrid church community has the possibility to make a similar revolution possible now. Our challenge is to meet this moment with curiosity, creativity, and the hope that comes from old things made new.

Pastor Katy McCallum Sachse serves as Lead Pastor of Holy Spirit Lutheran Church in Kirkland, Washington, just a few blocks from where some of the earliest COVID cases in the U.S. were diagnosed in early 2020. She is a graduate of Pacific Lutheran University and Luther Seminary. She is a native of the Pacific Northwest, an avid reader and coffee drinker, and an eternally optimistic fan of the Seattle Mariners.