What Easter during a pandemic taught faith leaders about church and its digital future

Sunrise Easter service for Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church Woodbury would not be canceled this year. Its pastor, the Rev. Charles Boyer, sees ministry in keeping his congregation’s traditions alive. The South Jersey church, like many of its peers, is relying on livestreaming to connect the congregation during the coronavirus pandemic.

So early Sunday morning, Boyer videoconferenced that service on Microsoft Teams from his home in Allentown. He knew that the 6 a.m. start time would be too early for the praise team, so he looked for an alternative. He cued up an older video, when the choir had sung Fred Hammond’s “You Are Living Word."

“I went back to Resurrection Sunday 2019,” Boyer said in the Microsoft feed that was concurrently streaming on Facebook. “I wept. I wept this morning uncontrollably — as I had not fully realized how much I missed everybody. I saw us all together.”

The impacts of the pandemic had stripped down much of the most sacred day of the Christian calendar. Church leaders across denominations said that experiencing the holiday this way raised questions about what the story of Easter — the story of a messiah rising from the dead — really means.

There may not be grand parades, or a congregation in prayer with interlocked hands, or harmonies that can blend and resonate, or the same stream of hollers for the preacher to keep going. In isolation, there may only be one’s thoughts, one’s faith, and a livestream.

“It is different because we don’t have any of the other trappings of this week to assist us in our faith journey,” explained the Rev. Alyn E. Waller, senior pastor of Enon Tabernacle Baptist Church in Mount Airy. “You know I’m not one for the Easter Bunny and the Easter eggs and all of that, but all of those were cultural images that pointed us [to the season]. Holy Week is a big week for us at our church. We’re usually out four nights of the week, and doing different things. We have none of those things to help us. And we are hearing the language of death.”

Enon has a congregation that numbers 12,000. Before quarantine, it had an estimated 10,000 to 15,000 views on its livestream. On Easter, the livestream had roughly 45,000 views on Facebook alone by the evening.

“Now, if we will all be honest, before this [COVID-19] hit, church attendance for lots of us had been waning,” Waller said in an interview, adding that people in the area were tuning in, rather than showing up. “One of my jokes is my online service is for people in Germany, not Germantown. … Lots of us realize that people weren’t going to church like they used to. I think this is going to produce in all of us the desire to get back in the building, because we miss it.”

Waller kept his plans of a dressed-down Easter, and limited in-person participation to himself and a small praise team. Citing John 20:1-8, he delivered a message on the following: “The church is empty, but so was the tomb.”

Archbishop Mary Floyd Palmer, presiding prelate of the Philadelphia Council of Clergy, said that many smaller churches in the area have struggled with converting to digital, and have stopped having services in any form. At her church, the nondenominational West Philadelphia congregation Heavenly Hall, they’re currently having church through conference calls, which welcome roughly 60 callers. They’re working on video options for the future.

Many ministers say there’s a positive side to social distancing, calling now a time for reflection. They’ve also called the coronavirus a test. While many Christians are taught to nurture a faith that can outlast the darkest hours, faith leaders concur that church streamings just aren’t the same. To borrow a phrase from the church, there’s still a longing to be able to touch and agree.

“At the end we are social beings,” said Archbishop Nelson J. Pérez, who leads more than one million Catholics in the region and who closed Masses to the public nearly a month ago. The archdiocese, he explained, is playing its role in slowing the spread of the virus. Still, “we are meant to live in family, and in relationship with others. ... We do miss being able to gather with each other, and touch each other, and hold hands, and hug, and have that physicality, because that’s the way we’re actually nailed together. That’s the way that God made us.”

Pastor Joe Kwalk, who leads English language service at Emmanuel Church, a bilingual Presbyterian congregation in West Philadelphia that also holds worship in Korean, has also been preaching to a practically empty sanctuary. On Easter, scriptures were projected on a wall behind Kwalk. He played guitar and sang musical selections solo. He’s another who cherishes sharing faith in groups.

“Not only for the sense of relieving loneliness, but also for the sake of growth,” Kwalk said. “It’s only in the blessing, but even the friction of relationships, where we can ultimately grow to our greatest potential.”

For many ministers, the pandemic is already personal. Kwalk’s grandmother has COVID-19. Floyd Palmer has lost friends to the disease. Pastor Jame John of the Pentecostal Church of Philadelphia wrote that the Oxford Circle church has been praying steadily, as 60 of its members are deemed “essential” workers, many in health care.

There are reportedly still churches in Philadelphia holding in-person services. Greater Exodus Baptist Church in North Philadelphia was famously among them. But late on Holy Saturday, after discussions with city officials and an Inquirer reporter, Greater Exodus Pastor Herb Lusk had a change of heart.

By 5 a.m. Easter morning, he had decided to restrict services to 10 people and offer streaming to everyone else.

In early April, the Sacramento Bee reported that out of all of Sacramento County’s COVID-19 cases, one third were linked to churches. Earlier this month, NBC News reported that more than 6,000 of South Korea’s COVID-19 cases trace back to a single church, more than half of the nation’s cases overall. Philadelphia has no such analysis.

“Given the high number of cases, we are no longer able to trace contacts or vectors of spread,” a Philadelphia Health Department representative said in a statement.

Floyd Palmer, of the Philadelphia Council of Clergy, won’t tell pastors what’s right and what’s wrong. The choices they’re making now, she said, are ones they’ll have to explain to God. Her decision to forgo in-person services is one that she’s comfortable with. She invoked a lesson often shared among Christians: Church was never the architecture but rather the people assembled in faith.

“I think this is a time when we people of faith have to reactivate the church within us,” she said. “We got very attached to the pews, and the walls, and the music, and the ambience, and the gathering of folks. We got very used to it. ‘Oh, when [we] get to church, let’s have a good time.’ And you still have to be able to have that same spirit now, even though we have to do it differently … It’s just for a season.

“We may not have our edifice, but we still have our church."