The findings of the Pew survey bear this out:
The Center’s survey finds that among all adults who say they typically attend services at least monthly, 36% have attended in person and watched services digitally in the last month…. One-in-five (21%) may still be substituting virtual attendance for in-person attendance….
While religious congregations as a whole may have experienced a large drop in physical attendance during the pandemic, there’s good reason to believe that virtual attendance is much higher today than it was before the coronavirus outbreak began in early 2020. One piece of evidence is that, in a July 2020 survey, 18% of U.S. adults said that since the pandemic began, they had watched religious services online or on TV for the first time. Combining both forms of attendance, nearly nine-in-ten people who say they are regular attenders (88%) report that they have participated one way or the other in religious services in the past month.
In addition, the share of all U.S. adults who say they have either attended religious services in person or watched online or on TV (or both) in the past month (43%) is substantially greater than the share who say they typically attend religious services at least once or twice a month (32% among all March 2022 survey respondents).
While this scenario could change with COVID’s continuing diminishment causing increased in-person attendance, or through a new outbreak resulting in decreased in-person attendance, this much we know: whatever you have in person is largely what you are going to have in person. And if you aren’t serving people in a hybrid model, in person is all you are ever going to have.
This article originally appeared here and is used by permission.
