2 things in-person services do better than online

The pandemic forced us all to ask the question “Is there a better way?” The internet has changed everything. We all know that we can listen to the greatest preachers on earth on-demand 24/7 at our convivence. So, that leads us to the question: what does the internet not do well. What elements of a church service are better done in-person, than online? The question we should be asking is “What are in-person services designed to do best?” and has the answer to that question changed because of internet? One thing is for certain, the church needs a better solution to our services. Gen Z’s who are graduating from high school and college and are not coming back to the church like they used to. The number of times people are coming to an in-person service per month is dropping and if we continue to do the same things, we were going to continue to get the same results. Something must change.

When I ask people why they come to church, one of the main reasons that always comes up is that they want to make friends or build a community. Covid over the past year and a half has starved us for community. It’s more important now than ever for people to find community. If that’s one of the main reasons why people come to church. Why don’t we create more opportunities in our services for people to connect with each other? Connection is the first thing our in-person services do better than online services.

I’ve been doing church the same way for the past 20 to 30 years. A welcome, worship time, preaching and maybe a closing song at the end. In a typical service that I’ve been doing for 30 years, there is no time built into the service for people to connect. People need to either come early or stay late to meet other people or fellowship. So, what we have been trying at my church is that we have been reducing our preaching time, again because they can get that on-demand 24/7 and we have been repurposing that time by breaking up into groups where people can talk through discussion questions after the sermon is finished. We are hoping two things happen by breaking up into groups. People will be able to internalize what they had just been taught and that they might through the discussion realize they have a lot in common with someone from their group. They might think to themselves that they could be good friends outside of church as well. People making friends in your church is vital to growing your church, because we’ve all stayed in a church we really didn’t like that much because of the friends we had there. It’s an extremely powerful tool we as churches should take advantage of.

Another thing we’ve been trying to create more opportunities for people to connect in our services is by breaking up into groups of 6 to 8 and having people share prayer requests and then get prayed for on the spot. People being vulnerable and sharing a prayer requests creates authenticity. Authenticity is what the world is craving at the moment. People are becoming more and more aware that social media can feel fake and people are desiring real experiences.

God feeling moments is the second thing in-person services do better than online. The church that I have been a part of for the past 20 years has been a come and see type of church. The church of the future will be a come and experience type of church. We are surrounded and overwhelmed with content, what in-person services do better than online is an experience.

One thing I think we all learned from the pandemic is that worship is better done in person than online, it’s just not the same. There’s a feeling we get when we are all in the same room worshipping together. There’s a feeling you get when you are together with the church and you are praying together, taking communion together, hearing a testimony of an answered prayer. We need to create more opportunities for these feeling moments in our church services.

We need to create more opportunities in our services for God to show up in ways that let people experience Him. This is an area where the charismatic church will be able to excel in. For those of us that are more conservative this would look like reducing the sermon time to allow for a time of testimony sharing, for taking prayer requests as a church, maybe an extended time of worship. Some weeks at my church we take the band off the stage, place them in the middle of the room and we all sing together, have a time of communion and prayer. It’s something that they are not going to experience online. Later that day I will send them a sermon that I’ve done online to make sure they are still getting some teaching time.

I would love to hear from you. What are some ways a church can create more feeling moments in its in-person services? What are some ways that would allow people to connect in your services?