On a recent Sunday, I attended in-person church for the first time in two years. It felt good to get out of the house, and to be ‘in the room’ with other worshippers. I realized how much I missed the warmth of fellowship. 

The truth is, apart from a short stint of a few months, that I haven’t attended in-person church for about four years now. I’ve been reflecting on that, and felt inspired to write a blog post (or two) on what I’ve been thinking. 

The Great Disruptor

My process of becoming detached from in-person attendance started with Covid, of course, that great disruptor that is destined to become a watershed moment in the history of church decline. For me personally, and I would guess for a lot of other people, the enforced interruption of Covid gave time and opportunity to re-evaluate our attachment to pre-pandemic forms of congregational participation. 

Covid lockdowns and restrictions made it necessary for all of us to begin curate our own personal blends of worship practices and manage our own spiritual diets, drawing from a vast array of online or print resources.

In response to the crisis, congregations large and small, urban and rural, tech-savvy or old-school, had begun to offer forms of worship and community gathering via Zoom, YouTube, and other virtual technologies. 

(As an aside, I think that one of the most truly remarkable things about the sudden arrival of Covid and the unprecedented level of disruption it brought was the extent to which it revealed the adaptability and creativity of the church. I hadn’t expected that.)

Suddenly worshippers could choose where to worship, and when to worship, and how to worship. We were free to participate in the offerings of our local congregation, or those from any worshipping community the world over. We were set free to access the resources of other denominations, or even other religious traditions. 

There and Back Again

For me personally, the Covid pandemic coincided with an internal sense of disruption in my relationship with congregational and denominational life. After stepping away from full-time congregational leadership a little more than five years ago, my faith and vocational wrestling led me to change denominations, and eventually to return to my original denominational home. 

I now see that process, that journey, as part of my search for an external expression of faith that reflected and supported and nourished my inner faith life. My journey there-and-back-again convinced me that what I was looking for wasn’t really there, either in the offerings of my denomination or in those of other denominations I had encountered. 

I began to suspect that my participation in congregational worship wasn’t helping, supporting, or sustaining my faith journey and my discipleship, but was perhaps hindering it. So little of what I needed for nourishment was being offered; at the same time, I found myself feeling frustrated, angry, and offended by the content that was being presented as Christian faith. 

Needless to say, such emotions are not conducive to a right spirit for Christian worship!

Worship Outside the Congregation 

After much discernment, I sensed that God was calling me to just step away. That seemed inexplicable to me as someone who still senses a genuine call to ministry and who feels a passionate commitment to the ministry of the church. But the message seemed clear, and I resolved to follow it even without fully understanding it. 

And so I have continued to curate my own church, faith, and worship life. 

While I may have become ‘unchurched’ (or perhaps de-churched), I haven’t lost my faith—in God, in the church generally, or in the importance of worship. 

I participate daily in virtual Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer services, and am a faithful virtual attendee of a weekly live-streamed service from a congregation some distance from where I live. 

So I do have a regular, strong, faith practice. 

In fact my faith life—my time spent with God—has grown in the time that I have ceased attending in-person worship. I experience my faith as an active part of my life, something that daily influences my behaviour and choices. 

I have grown spiritually and deepened my discipleship—all while being in virtual exile from the experience of congregational participation. 

So this is where I am now—deeply faithful, deeply religious, committed to worship, to meeting God, and being changed by the encounter—all outside of the regular, in-person worshipping life of a congregation.  

In my next post, I’d like to continue to reflect on what I have been experiencing and what it might say about congregational life. 

Rev. Dr. Jeff Seaton is a United Church of Canada minister, church leadership consultant, and author of Who’s Minding the Story? (Wipf & Stock, 2018).