What You Need to Know About Hybrid Church - Part 3

Overcoming Obstacles with Perspective Hacks, Pt. 3 of 3

This is Part 3 of a 3-part series. Part 1 | Part 2

We’ve already covered some pretty complex topics: leadership, staffing, mission, and the whys and hows of community. Let’s wrap up on some big ideas around purpose.

Misconception 3:

“Hybrid encourages people to be passive consumers in church, rather than active contributors.”

Most church leaders rely on attendance to assess the health of the church, tracking changes week-to-week as a measure of success. Up is always good; down might signal trouble ahead. While this number is important, it doesn’t tell the whole story. God didn’t call us to gather a crowd—He called us to go into all the world and make disciples.

If making disciples is our goal, we should care more about engagement than we do about attendance.

Why do we focus so much of our attention on attendance? Probably because (a) we always have, and (b) it’s so much easier to measure than engagement. But the time has come for us to shift this mindset, and to creatively address that limitation in our ministries.

“The sense of deep-rooted connectedness that most Americans have to a local church is becoming more and more transactional, less and less frequent.”

“Church leaders are going to revert to doing things the ways they’ve always known them, whereas the population in general and millennials are going to find that this disruption (the pandemic) altered their habits and perspectives on the role and relevance of the church. The gap between the church and society is only going to be larger as we rebuild the church in a postpandemic world.”

David Kinnaman, president of the Barna Group, as quoted in “Why Church Can’t Be the Same After the Pandemic,” an article by Kate Shellnutt in Christianity Today.

Hybrid Church can help close that gap.

Let’s be clear. We need to continue gathering people together. We can do that in in-person church services, as well as online. And people need both of these expressions because both address people’s felt needs, realistically within the context of where they’re engaging.

But we shouldn’t stop there.

Bring your team together to collaborate on how your church can equip your people, not just on Sundays, but throughout the week. Start putting systems in place that will allow you to provide more opportunities for people to engage with your church, wherever they are, whatever they’re doing.

This is Part 3 of a 3-part series. Part 1 | Part 2

YouVersion for Churches is developing tools and resources to help you lead and minister in an increasingly Hybrid world.