I recently did a quick google search for articles that would be an encouragement or source of insight for a church planter who is struggling to survive and rebuild in the midst of the (sort of) post-Covid world that we are living in. The encouragement for planters wasn't really there. There are many in the secular world who still view the church as something dangerous, a potential super spreader. In the world of larger existing churches, some churches are beginning to regain their footing and some are reevaluating what they are to be going forward.
For many church planters who I know, they are wrestling with hard questions like, "I already run on a lean income and have no other staff, so do I cut my own salary and maybe go co-vocational?" Others are simply thinking that the results of Covid means that perhaps they weren't really called to plant in the first place. Some are trying to figure out if they're still a plant or if they're now a revitalization project. Church planters are watching their partner funding wain because they're one of the "ministries" that larger churches need to cut in order to keep their own staff or keep their sanctuary lighting on.
Perhaps the greatest thing you accomplish during this season, church planter, is that you remain. I don't mean that in a super-spiritual, Matthew 5 kind of way like when Jesus said, "Remain in me and I in you." I simply mean that you are still there as a church when the fog begins to lift.
Bill Leonard wrote an interesting article, back in May, about the church post-Covid. You can read it here.
At the end of his article he encouraged pastors with the following: "Perhaps the post-COVID church is a bit like Paul, Silas and the convicts in that Philippian prison after an earthquake “opened the doors.” To save the fearful jailer, Paul cries out: “Do not harm yourself, for we are all still here” (Acts 16:28). Post-COVID 2021, let us cry out: “We are too, Paul, we are too.”
Allow your community to know that you are still here. Perhaps you have opportunity to do this in big ways, but it may also simply be your folks going one on one to their friends and neighbors talking about the fact that the church is still down the street. That their new church is still up and running. In turn, perhaps you give the lost in your community a place to find hope when their own fog begins to life.