Virtual Church Community Offers Deeper Connection During & After Pandemic

By Colleen Hill I Hartford Institute for Religion Research

When COVID-19 hit, churches nationwide pivoted to virtual worship. For Brian Clark and his family, this digital transformation revealed unexpected spiritual opportunities.

With the pandemic, the Clarks found themselves drawn to Woodland Hills Church, a theologically moderate and evangelical megachurch in Maplewood, Minnesota, focused on peace, justice, and environmentalism. Before COVID-19, the Clarks had already begun to connect with the church by tuning into its podcast. Woodland Hills had been ahead of the curve in digital engagement, referring to it’s online community as “pod parisioners”, this congregation had an already vibrant online community. While the church had been recording sermons and podcasts long before the pandemic, the global shutdown prompted them to expand their online programming.  

This digital transformation provided Clark and his wife Amy with a structured and supportive virtual religious community that ultimately resonated more deeply with them than their previous in-person church experiences, he said. Through Woodland Hills, the two have been integrated into small groups that meet virtually each Tuesday to discuss the weekly sermon.

“I think the pandemic was very significant in that it created the impetus for the church to create those structures and those points of emphasis that make it possible for us to do those Tuesday night groups,” Brian Clark said. “Our groups are really different from each other, but they are both groups that have a support function and a discussion (of the) sermon.”

Virtual Changes

Rob Kistler, the care and spiritual formation pastor for Woodland Hills, works closely with adult education classes, or Cultivate Classes as well as online gathering groups like Brian’s Tuesday night Zoom calls. According to Rob, the already existing “pod-paritioners” online community through Woodland Hills is one of the ways in which the church was on the right foot when it came to adapting to the changes of COVID-19.

“When COVID hit, well, now we are live streaming, and everybody’s in it together. So that really rocketed that up as far as the ability of non-local people to, in real time, feel like they were a part of this church. Now we’re at a point where we’ve orchestrated things that a non-local person could actually be a full member of this church,” Kistler said.

From 2015 to 2019, the Clarks were members of a small church community in eastern Hartford, Connecticut, with about 30 to 40 congregants. While they valued their time there, they began to feel a desire for a different spiritual experience. When COVID-19 restrictions affected their worship gatherings, they decided to explore other options for their faith journey.

“One of the things the pandemic did was it took us out of the position of feeling obligated to be physically present (at church). The freedom to just do what we needed to do on weekends and be able to check in with church and make it work in our lives (was very important)”, he said.  

Shawna Boren, the engagement pastor for Woodland Hills, says that in many ways, the pandemic created a permanent shift in the way we understand worship.

“We talk a lot about just the overall trauma that our world has felt as a result of the pandemic, and how relationally, people have been disrupted in their ability to interact and engage in person with folks, and we kind of feel like we gotta combat that at the same time respecting that we do have a large audience that tunes in online, and that’s important to us”, Shawna said.

Their large audience is not just folks like Brian who tune in from Connecticut. Woodland Hills has expanded its ministry worldwide, with some participants tuning in from Canada, New Zealand, and England.

Although still currently living in Connecticut, the Clark family are fully participating in the worship service and style of the Minnesotian megachurch online, and they aren’t alone. Each Sunday service at Woodland Hills has around 500 in-person attendees, with roughly 400 participants watching online, with these numbers fluctuating throughout the week as more tune in when they can.

“If we didn’t have those (Tuesday night) groups, and you’d ask me, do you go to church? I would say no. I listen to a podcast sometimes, but I don’t go to church”, he said.

These online gatherings create a space for meaningful interactions, where members can share their thoughts, pray together, and engage in discussions about faith- which is the key component that allowed Brian Clark and his family to be certain that they found what they were looking for.