Here’s a statement that won’t shock you: The pandemic has sparked a seismic shift in how we live.
To be more specific, even years after the fact, the global crisis continues to have repercussions on local demographics and where people are living. You are more than likely familiar with the term “Boom Town”, where cities have popped up or grown quickly due to an acceleration of prosperity in industry. During Covid, we experienced a similar phenomenon called Zoom Towns. You read that right, Zoom Towns.
Let’s take a closer look at this fascinating 21st-century phenomenon and how it could impact the future of the church.
The Zoom Town concept is a fun take on the classic “boomtown,” but with the “boom” part swapped out for the remote work video platform Zoom.
The original term referred to a town that quickly grows due to an influx of people. Usually, this starts due to an economic shift, like striking oil or discovering gold. This typically leads to greater prosperity, but it can also create a general shift in resource distribution and how people live their lives.
Zoom Towns started due to a negative economic reaction, but the results were still similar. People moved, and demographics shifted. The result impacted two areas, in particular: the cities and the suburbs.
As the pandemic shut down inner-city offices, many individuals, freed from the shackles of a daily commute, opted to ditch high rent and taxes in cities and “move to the burbs.” This created a wealth transfer as well as a shift in population as more and more people spread out, away from the more densely populated cities to the suburbs that surrounded them.
Some people think Zoom Towns are overvalued in the post-pandemic era (and that may be true for some select locations). But the truth is, if you look at the data, the trend isn’t going away any time soon. Rocket Mortgage, for instance, posted as recently as March of 2024 that Zoom Towns are still on the rise.
The intense remote work restrictions of the pandemic may be in the rearview mirror, but remote and hybrid work are firmly entrenched as part of the new normal. Remote work, for instance, was at 8% in 2019. In 2020 it shot up to 70% before coming back down, but in the years since, it has stayed steadily around the 27% mark — more than triple the pre-pandemic total. Over 50% of additional workers are in hybrid scenarios, too, which means they can often opt for longer commutes less often.
The takeaway here? Zoom Towns are here to stay.
One area where the rise of Zoom Towns is likely to play a significant role in the coming years is with suburban churches. Let’s look at how this new way of remote life could impact the church moving forward.
As Christians move from the cities to the suburbs, they are still going to want to attend church. Initially, the ability to attend online likely made the decision to move easier. It was a “Hey, we’re already attending remotely, anyway. Let’s move further away and just stay plugged in from afar” line of reasoning.
Now that we’ve moved forward from those heady pandemic days, the shift to remote attendance is proving for some to be enough for the long-term. For others, though, the shared, in-person community aspects of church are hard to replace in a virtual context. And some might argue that in-person interaction is a craving many long for now more than ever. As they begin to re-evaluate how and where they will attend church, a longer, weekly, early Sunday morning commute to a distant city church in a different area of town can sound impractical and unappealing.
That’s where the suburban church comes into the picture. Suburban churches are in the perfect spot to grow as the growing populations around them begin to look for more local, accessible places of worship. They could start to see unprecedented rates of growth as people plug into local faith-based communities.
What does all of this mean for suburban churches? Overall, growth is good news. But it also means you need to be ready when it starts.
Community
We often ask churches the question, “What can you do in person that you cannot do online?”. This helps to identify why a person would get off of the couch, dress their kids, put their kids in the car, drive to the church, park, check their kids in, find a seat, and then reverse the process on the way out, all to hear a sermon that they could have listened to on their couch. The answer is that typically those people are spending 2-3 times the amount of effort because the answer isn’t the sermon.
The three main answers typically come back as community, kids, and care. People see the church as a means of connecting with people within their new community. They also want a vibrant family ministry area (kids bring parents to church), or they are looking for care for something they are experiencing in their lives.
So the question is, how are you leveraging the in-person experience to create connections amongst people who are new to your community?
Digital Front Doors
In the attractional church model, people would “church shop” by trying out a few churches before ultimately picking out a permanent church home. That is still happening, but it’s not necessarily happening in person. People are looking into local churches digitally, and by the time they make it to a seat within your building, they are already aware of who you are and why they connect with you.
The digital front door has to be more than the sermon you are preaching on Sunday. It is an opportunity to provide value and communicate identity, while also helping people find what they are looking for more than what you are preaching about on Sunday. Having a solid digital strategy, well beyond sermon broadcasting on YouTube, to engage those people is more important than ever before.
Is your church and its leadership and staff prepared to meet the needs of a new hybrid church congregation? Can you function both in person and in digital spaces with effectiveness? It’s important to invest in the structure and set-ups required to keep your ministry’s operations running smoothly, even during periods of potential growth.
City churches should also consider how they can respond. For example, they should consider how they can use their buildings for other ministry and community uses. They may also want to look for key areas in the suburbs where they could open suburban campuses.
If you operate a church in the suburbs, it’s important to take action now to ensure a smooth and effective response to your congregation’s needs moving forward. Our team at Ministry Solutions Group can help. Our veteran staff has seen it all. We can help with everything from digital engagement to organizational clarity and strategy.
We’re also here for you city church folks. As your in-person attendance shifts, we can help you use your buildings to fund your ministry and establish campuses in the suburbs.
Whatever your situation, it’s important to prayerfully prepare for what comes next. If the last few years have taught us anything, it is that normalcy is fragile, and we can’t predict the future.
Let’s connect, and, together, we can create a strategy that keeps your ministry healthy, resilient, and future-proofed against the endless cycle of change.