Bringing in the sheaves – Part 1

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected the world in ways that people living for the past 100 years have never seen and experienced. Because of it, policies and protocols that restricted mass movements and gatherings were implemented, changing lives financially and socially, not to mention the emotional, mental and psychological impacts of such restrictions.

The Church, one of the biggest institutions of religious and social gatherings, was not spared. Right here in Jamaica, which has one of the world’s highest numbers of church buildings per mile, the times for and sizes of worship and social gatherings and funerals were restricted by the Government, much to the ire of many.

Earlier this year, after about two years of the strict applications of the COVID-19 regulations, the Government abrogated such, with a few exceptions, effectively saying that things were back to normal. Yet in many cases, they were not. Thousands of children did not return to school, some people did not resume their jobs, others continue to work from home, etc.

And the Church, again, did not escape the impact. Some leaders have noticed that their post-COVID-19 flocks, especially the younger members, are smaller than they were pre-COVID. One such observer of this is Ja’Vaughn Taylor, a young pastor at Central Gospel Chapel in Aleppo, St Mary. Though his congregation was not very large, it was made up of people who attended regularly.

“They come to church of their free will because of the programme that the church has initiated since I became pastor there. We don’t want church to be an annual thing. We want church to be because we were born hearing we should go to church. There must be a significant reason for going, so we try to put that out there within the community,” he told Family and Religion.

Taylor believes that the Church, being part of the community, is there to serve the community. Yet people in the communities are not returning to churches as fast as he think they should.

Now that the restrictions have been lifted, the youth are taking advantage of it and are turning to non-religious avenues to enjoy themselves.

He explained: “During the restrictions, people told themselves, ‘When mi go out back, mi a just be me; mi a go enjoy miself because we don’t know what can happen again. Mi a go mek the best of my life’, not knowingyhat they are alive because they were spared one more time.”

Taylor lamented that young people are running back to the world, now that it is open, and not to the Church, perhaps to their own detriment. “What is happening now, the world is throwing things that are drawing them ... that are pulling them. They are not excited about praise and worship anymore. They are not excited about fellowship in the Church anymore. What they are focusing on is building themselves and building themselves to destruction,” he said.

It is about reaching out to people in the communities and not waiting for them to go to church. So during the pandemic when the numbers were low, Taylor came up with an idea for how to continue to spread the Gospel while observing government protocols and restrictions.

“The community in which my church is, is a rural community, so we have to flip the script. Church could not be church as usual. In Easter, at the peak of COVID, I had to go out there in the community, section by section, and had three services each Sunday, and in that Easter I went out, people gathered in their yards with their Bibles, and that was how we had church, community churching,” Taylor explained.

So in order to go back to the pre-COVID numbers, he said the Church is in “rejuvenation” mode. “We are restructuring seeing that COVID has shown up much about the church, that the Church needs to go back to the drawing board and strategise and see other ways in which we can serve communities better, other ways to reach out to people better.” This is critical, he said, as should a similar pandemic occur, the Church would know how to deal with it and not lose members.

Next week we will discuss the impact of social media on young people and what Pastor Taylor is doing to get young people back into the Church.