Innovative Churches, Exhausted Pastors, Anxious Churchgoers

The Barna Group Uncovers Current Sentiments and Provides Tools to Address Needs

This week, Barna Group hosted a resource-filled webcast for pastors and leaders on Caring for Souls in a New Reality. A part of their new State of the Church series, the group has conducted new research on church and public sentiment, physical and mental well-being in the wake of the pandemic crisis. Their hope is the content presented would encourage and equip pastors with the right information at the right time to serve their people well.

Dave Kinnamen, Barna’s president, told us they have “brand new data from interviews with people about how this disruption is affecting people's lives” and their hope is they can help prepare pastors to be as effective as possible in caring for souls in this new world.

There are a lot of virtual meetings and webinars as of late, but this webcast does not fall into the “just another meeting” category. It was incredibly well-done. They broke the webcast into several categories (Reset, Refocus, Restore) and within each category they provided relevant research answered by panel discussions, helpful resources, moments to pause through music and guided prayer. What could have felt very mundane instead was refreshing, life giving and hopeful in the midst of so much uncertainty. 

Following the webcast, they provided several breakout sessions for those wanting more guidance on reopening church, leading through a crisis, engaging the next generation and using Barna’s ChurchPulse assessment toolkit. All of this can be accessed at their website.

For anyone who is wondering if their pulse on their church and society at large is on the mark, this is a must-watch. Even if you don’t engage further with Barna’s tools, of which there is a lot of really great content at no charge, the information presented in the webcast was extremely helpful in gaining a snapshot of how the Church across the U.S. is fairing.

“We’ve been tracking rising anxiety already, especially among younger generations. The COVID crisis seems to be accelerating that disruption,” said Kinnamen. “When it comes to relational well-being, people are feeling lonely and isolated and COVID has only deepened that.” 

With each infographic that was shown, the heightened level of anxiety, loneliness, and longing for personal connection became more clear. It begs the question, “How should churches consider reshaping their focus to meet this expressed need?” 

Kinnamen spoke to the great courage and innovation among pastors he is seeing as their team conducts research during this crisis. But he also noted that as they have been checking in on pastors since mid-March, they are seeing “how much the crisis is taking a toll on pastors psychologically, emotionally, mentally.”

While their polling found that pastors held a mixed bag of gratefulness, frustration and determination, the most common response was exhaustion. 

“All of that is set against the backdrop of pastors feeling worn out and having to produce worship services, community and staff meetings, and all the things that pastors do, in the digital context,” said Kinnamen. “It is certainly taking a toll.”

But still, even among the exhaustion and disruption, Kinnamen showed data that suggests the Church is thriving in many respects. He acknowledged that while difficulties experienced from COVID-19 are different than those experienced by the early church, the encouragement from Paul still rings true.

“Dear brothers and sisters, we can’t help but thank God for you, because your faith is flourishing and your love for one another is growing. We proudly tell God’s other churches about your endurance and faithfulness in all the persecutions and hardships you are suffering.” - 2 Thessalonians 1:3-4