By Doris Jacobs // Church // EEW Magazine Online

According to new Pew research, the post-COVID return to in-person church services has hit a wall, and among African Americans, virtual attendance is yielding higher results than in-person.

“Protestant churchgoers in the historically Black tradition stand out for being the Christian group most likely to have only watched religious services online or on TV in the last month, with about a third (35%) describing their behavior this way,” shows nationwide data trends.

After most houses of worship shut down in-person gatherings in mid-March 2020 due to the threat of the deadly coronavirus, many pastors hoped attendance would rebound due to the widespread availability of vaccines. However, that isn’t happening—particularly among predominantly Black congregants.

This is not surprising, since communities of color in the U.S. have been hit hardest by the pandemic which continues to claim lives. According to Scientific American, the U.S. will record one million confirmed deaths from COVID in the next several weeks—though the number of fatalities is likely higher.

“We will see the rippling effects of the pandemic on our society and the way it impacts individuals for generations,” says Nyesha Black, director of demographic research at the University of Alabama. “This is definitely a huge marker in the way we will think about society moving forward—it will be that anchor event.”

COVID, which has become the third leading cause of death in the U.S., after heart disease and cancer, is also snuffing out the lives of formerly vibrant and growing ministries like the Denver location of the Potter’s House led by Pastor Touré Roberts, son-in-law of Bishop T.D. Jakes.

According to a Christian Post report, the church was “ravaged by the COVID-19 pandemic and declining donations,” leading to its decision to sell its $12.2 million, 137,000-square-foot megachurch in Arapahoe County, Colorado and go completely virtual.

While Pew research revealed that only 5% of U.S. congregations remain closed or online-only due to the pandemic, since overall church attendance has not returned to pre-pandemic levels, that number may increase over time.

“Attendance at in-person services — which grew steadily from July 2020 through September 2021 — has plateaued, as has the share of adults watching religious services online or on TV,” the report said.

Before the pandemic, data drawn from July 2019 by Pew showed that about 45% of Americans said they attended religious services once a month or more. By July 2020, however, the number of Americans who reported attending worship services in-person during the prior month had plummeted by 13%.

By March 2021, in-person attendance started growing again, first to 17%, then to 26% in September 2021, and now to 27%.

Online worship participation among the general population of churchgoers has also hit a plateau.

Many churches are now combining the number of in-person and online worship attendees to calculate total attendance. But, measuring in this way is fairly new and difficult because most polling organizations did not measure online church attendance before the pandemic.

To string all the results together and give a clear picture of what is happening with overall church attendance, Pew reports: “About a third of U.S. adults (32%) in the new March survey say they typically go to religious services at least once or twice a month. Of these self-described regular attenders, two-thirds (67%) report that they actually have attended physically (in person) in the last month, while 57% say they have watched services online or on TV during that period.”