Black pastors seek to rebuild in-person worship with Easter

WASHINGTON (AP) — At the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, when many churches moved their services online, the Rev. William H. Lamar IV initially balked on the considered having to transform right into a “video personality” to stay engaged with his parishioners.

“I resisted kicking and screaming because I’m a child of the 70s.” said Lamar, senior pastor of the historic Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church in Washington. “I’m not a digital native.”

Four years later, Lamar, a gifted preacher, began offering each virtual and in-person services. After a noticeable decline in attendance, increasingly more congregants in metropolitan areas are selecting in-person services over virtual ones, at the same time as they mourn members who’ve died from Covid-19.

This Easter, Lamar is grateful to be reunited with his flock, believing it’s a fitting way to have a good time the vacation’s message of hope and resurrection.

This Easter can also be a possibility for Black churches to welcome more visitors to their pews and take a look at to reverse attendance trends. More than a dozen Black clergy said their churches proceed to feel the impact of the pandemic on already declining attendance, at the same time as they’ve implemented robust online options to reach latest people.

Monthly black Protestant church attendance dropped 15% between 2019 and 2023, a greater decline than for every other major religious group, according to the study. 2023 Pew Research. They are also more likely than other groups to attend religious services online or on television, with greater than half (54%) saying they attend religious services virtually.

This dynamic could be felt at Calvary Baptist Church in Queens, New York. Its senior pastor, the Rev. Victor T. Hall Sr., hopes that this Easter, if just for one Sunday, he’ll get a glimpse of what it was like back then, when his church was “full and full of excitement.”

Before the pandemic, Calvary’s attendance was already declining as many members moved to cheaper locations in states corresponding to Maryland, North Carolina and Georgia, forcing the Hall to offer one service on Sunday morning as a substitute of two.

“Churches were already in decline, but the pandemic was a coup,” Hall said. “And don’t let anyone deceive you. It’s hard to see empty benches.”

Easter is generally a homecoming of sorts for black Protestants, who traditionally wear latest outfits decorated with pastels and elaborate hats – a sartorial expression of Christian celebration and an ode to spring renewal.

But among the vibrance and pageantry of Black church culture has been overshadowed by the shortcoming to gather, said KB Dennis Meade, an assistant professor of spiritual studies at Northwestern University who curates a digital archive showing how Black religious traditions have adapted throughout the pandemic. She said Easter and other major holidays provide a possibility to further evaluate the problem, including comparing this 12 months’s turnout with pre-pandemic Easter Sunday numbers.

“If you are a cultural Christian, but perhaps not a practicing Christian, you will definitely want to go to church on Easter,” she said.

Reverend Kia Conerway founded The Church on the Well in Memphis, Tennessee in 2018. The congregation had just moved right into a latest constructing when the Covid-19 epidemic broke out.

Thanks to revolutionary marketing and online worship, the church has steadily grown from 160 members in 2019 to well over 400 today, according to Conerway. Currently, every other Sunday is a very virtual service, with over a 3rd of worshipers joining from outside the local area.

“Easter is the Super Bowl of Christianity,” she said. “When we realized that 37% of our employees did not live in Memphis, we had a challenge: figuring out how to serve them now that we were back in the building.”

To higher serve virtual believers, the Church has redoubled efforts to attract them to small groups and initiated monthly telephone calls.

Before Easter, church members got here together and sent care packages to those that attend virtually. These included gift cards to give to strangers, safety glasses for the upcoming solar eclipse, and handwritten notes thanking them for being a part of the church family and searching forward to seeing one another again soon.

For those that have a good time Easter in person, snow cones can be served on the church and youngsters will take part in an Easter egg hunt. “We want kids to feel at home and feel connected,” Conerway said.

During the pandemic at Saints Memorial Community Church in Willingboro, New Jersey, the Rev. Cassius L. Rudolph has made every effort to provide opportunities for his senior members to meet. On the primary Sunday that the church doors closed, Rudolph, who began as interim pastor in 2019, led the service by phone.

The cacophony of voices on the conference call “was just unbearable, but they wanted to be able to interact with each other,” he said.

This Easter, Saints Memorial members look forward to gathering within the renovated church sanctuary with a brand new roof.

“They want to go home for Easter,” Rudolph said.

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At Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, the Rev. Otis Moss III said there’s a collective gratitude that the church can safely gather in person this Easter Sunday. But we’re also saddened by the lives Trinity has lost to Covid-19 and the human suffering in places like Haiti, Darfur, Congo and Gaza.

This turn of events inspired his Easter message, “It’s Still Dark,” which explores the space between Christ’s crucifixion on Friday and his resurrection on Sunday.

“As a nation and a community, we are caught between these two moments,” Moss said.

“We can never remove our spiritual pursuits from our existential dilemmas, nor what is happening in the world from our spiritual and theological framework,” Moss said. “Those two things go hand in hand. Right now, marginalized people are suffering. There should be a voice of the community of faith that will speak to those who cry.”

On Palm Sunday at Metropolitan AME, every week before Easter, Lamar asked his flock to reflect on Jesus’ mindset as he marched to Jerusalem to be crucified.

“Was Jesus joyful? Was he lost in thought? Was he afraid?” he asked.

Beyond the lectern surrounded by kente cloth, Lamar saw a promising sign: people filled greater than two-thirds of the cavernous sanctuary.

His parishioners hummed, shouted, stood and clapped as his preaching reached a crescendo.

During this sacred season, it was a welcome reminder of the facility of Black preaching, especially when experienced live and in person.

At the tip of the service, he left the pulpit to give a blessing, an unusual move for a pastor. But it gave him the chance to say a more personal farewell to the influx of Palm Sunday worshipers – each old and latest.