Podcast Episode #642
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From making phone calls and writing letters to online giving and virtual discipleship, as we return to in-person services, there are many strategies your church should keep doing. Thom and Sam discuss many of these strategies and their benefits on today’s episode of Rainer on Leadership.
- Keep making phone calls and writing letters.
- Keep building your church email list.
- Keep moving people towards online giving.
- Keep an option for groups via video calls.
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The mission at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary is to glorify the Lord Jesus Christ by equipping students to serve the church and fulfill the Great Commission. The school offers more than 40 different degree programs, including the new Master of Arts in Church Revitalization in partnership with Church Answers and the Revitalization Network. This 37-hour degree is designed to help students move established churches from flatlining to flourishing.
Learn about this program and more by visiting sebts.edu. Where are you going? Southeastern will help you get there.
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If you have a question you would like answered on the show, fill out the form on the podcast page here at ThomRainer.com. If we use your question, you’ll receive a free copy of Scrappy Church.
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In addition to looking at steps churches need to take in preparation for reopening, I would recommend that you also look at steps churches may need to take to close quickly in the event they become an epicenter of a cluster of new COVID-19 cases and deaths. There have a number of churches that reopened only to close again because that is exactly what happened: they became an epicenter of such a cluster. Now these churches report that they were following social distancing guidelines and taking other precautions but since the reports do not go into detail as to what steps they took so it is difficult to assess whether the steps they took were adequate enough. Part of the problem is that federal, state, and local guidelines are based upon the state of our knowledge of how COVID-19 spreads at the time of their issuance. Since then, however, we have learned more about how the virus spreads and what we can to do mitigate its spread but this knowledge is not being passed onto churches in a systematic way so that they can benefit from the knowledge. Part of the problem is that the present administration is holding back information because its release does not serve its political and economic agenda. The White House dropped the CDC’s recommendations for churches from the CDC’s proposed guidelines for the reopening of the states and watered down other sections of the proposed guidelines. The recommendations for churches were dropped because they were ostensibly “too precise.” A team of three health experts who reviewed the modified guidelines concluded that they were “too ambiguous” and were practically worthless. See https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/trump-rejected-cdc-s-first-coronavirus-reopening-america-guide-second-ncna1209626. However, if churches are going to safeguard their congregations and their communities, they need precise guidelines, recommendations that are based upon the most recent knowledge of the transmission of COVID-19 and which are upgraded as our knowledge grows. If the CDC and other government infectious disease experts are blocked from furnishing these guidelines to churches, then networks of churches like ChurchAnswers need to step into the gap and provide guidelines based upon most up-to-date research. Otherwise, churches will be reopening based upon inadequate guidelines and we will be reading more reports of churches that became epicenters of COVID-19 case clusters upon reopening. A slew of these reports is bound to damage the witness of churches across the United States and we will lose any benefits that we might have gained from the renewed interest in spiritual matters Americans are exhibiting.