Virtual Worship, One Year Later

Post Author: Sara Nave Fisher

My daughter preparing communion at home, while we watched together on the TV.

March 1, 2020 was the last time my family attended worship in person.

The congregation I pastor held in-person worship on March 8, but since I was keynoting a camp retreat that weekend, we weren’t there; March 15 was our first virtual service.

Because of the specificities of our area, the congregation, and our building, we haven’t returned for in-person worship, and, well, we won’t before I move to another state this summer because of my spouse’s job.

There are both gifts and limitations of virtual worship, as we all are well aware by now. Much metaphorical ink has been spilled to discuss the ins and outs of how and why and whether and when and where to do virtual worship, so I’ll leave that alone for now, other than to say that, while I believe meeting virtually-only is the best and most faithful decision for my congregation, I am experiencing worship fatigue.

And… I’m the pastor. 

My spouse and I are actually both clergy (he is an Army chaplain) and both of our dads are pastors, so we are, ahem, a heavily “churched” family. Some of my earliest memories were from the church aisles, and I’m one of those people who found a church to attend every single week while I was in college. I’ve never not had a church home, and I even went into labor once at a Bible study… and didn’t leave for the hospital until the last “amen” was spoken.

And you know what I’ve discovered in the past year, for the very first time in my whole entire life?

It is LOVELY sleeping in on Sunday mornings.  

Like, absolutely lovely.

Okay, I’ll go a step further and fully admit it, my secret confession: There’s a part of me that is dreading going back to weekly in-person worship.

I mean, I haven’t set my alarm clock on a Sunday in nearly a year; our worship is pre-recorded, which means I spend many extra hours recording and editing and uploading, but by Sunday morning, that work is done. As long as I’m up to monitor our Facebook Live feed and host our Zoom post-worship Fellowship Hour, I’m good.

Don’t get me wrong… I really miss the face-to-face nature of worship. I miss seeing people and filling the room with harmony and physically breaking bread together around the communion table. I miss the embodied nature of Christian community. But I don’t miss the busyness that so often envelops what “church” means, and I don’t miss the inherently performative nature of in-person Sunday worship.

For us, participating in worship virtually means that we get ready for church every single Sunday. No worship in our pajamas. It means we prepare communion, and the kids rotate whose turn it is to serve (in our theology, the Table is open to everyone and lay folks can prepare and administer). It means we sing out loud in our living room along with the worship, and we have continued our family tradition of discussing the service over Sunday lunch.

But. Even still.

Whew. I’m getting tired of it.

I’ll admit that it’s becoming harder and harder to actually change into church clothes, to make the kids sit up and participate instead of laying down under a blanket.

It’s getting harder to participate in worship — not just “watch” it.

It’s getting harder to set Sunday morning apart as sacred time and to create a sacred space on our coffee table.

Since I put worship together, by the time Sunday rolls around I’ve already experienced it more than once. I’ve spoken the words to the liturgy, I’ve added lyrics to the songs. Once we get into it, there is still something spiritually meaningful about participating, with my family and with my church, even though we’re separated by walls and streets and screens. But the getting up and getting ready and logging in and doing of it is getting harder, when many Sundays it would be easier to turn on a movie and zone out for a while.

And I know that if it’s getting harder for me, a self-identified “church nerd” since childhood, to do this, I cannot imagine what it’s like for other families. The more experienced and practiced clergy have gotten at putting together virtual worship, the more our numbers have fallen across the board. As COVID-fatigue and screen fatigue have set in, that novelty and unexpected grace  of virtual worship last spring has become tiresome, a year later.

I know that some might now be thinking, “THIS is why I can’t wait to be in-person again” or “THIS is why I attend in-person worship now! I just can’t do without it!” But even those who are meeting in-person, outside or masked or distanced or some combination, don’t seem to be having the same level of attendance as pre-pandemic.

As we look forward, what I’m suggesting goes deeper than the fantasy of things going back to how they were in 2019. I don’t want to go back to the way it was before. I’m not sure what exactly it is that I do want, but not that. I believe that God is working in new ways, and that calls for new imagination to bring this Love into our communities.

As parents, my spouse and I have had several conversations about what church means in the last several months: What does it mean not just to us, but to — and for —  our kids? Is making them get up and ready worth it? Is making them sit in pews worth it, when we’re back in person? For all my dreariness right now, my answer is still a resounding yes. I am passionate about integrating kids in worship, not relegating them to another room where they are neither seen nor heard. I am becoming more and more convinced that the Church moving forward needs to be more age-inclusive, and less age-and-stage programmatic.

We’ve all gained some clarity, I think, on the things that are worth it and that aren’t, on the sacrifices we’re willing to make for the good of the whole — and that will require church leaders to reassess, and to adapt. Post-COVID, we’ll need to rethink the reasons and ways we gather, because what we used to take for granted no longer can be. I am certainly not ready to give up on the Church, or on corporate worship. I’m not ready to give up on the people who bring casseroles after illness and injury or on the sacred ritual of the funeral service after death. I’m not ready to forego gathering around a communion table, reminding ourselves over and over of the power of God’s love. I’m not ready to throw in the towel on congregational polity and the good and faithful work and ministry that is done at that level.

I don’t know what the church of 2040 will be, but I know it won’t be the church of 2019. It simply can’t be, and if 2019 is our goal, I’m afraid we’ll set ourselves up for failure.

But today, in the church of 2021, I’ll look for that unexpected grace when I can find it. We’ll still prepare our family’s roll and juice for communion, and we’ll keep singing.

And, I’ll still enjoy not setting my alarm.