Pandemic has changed church outreach ‘forever’

If pajamas have become the new workplace attire and the sofa has been transformed into the new desktop, where exactly does that leave a U.S. Catholic Church yearning to stay connected with its parishioners through Zoom liturgies and FacebookLive spiritual pep talks pumped into living rooms and kitchens by social media?
    

For Scot Landry, the Boston-based Catholic evangelist whose vocation as co-leader of Dynamic Catholic requires him to think in broad strokes, the church has a unique opportunity to step up to the challenges created by the coronavirus pandemic.
    

“I think the Catholic Church and every parish is going to be different because of the virus and how we’ve responded,” said Landry, qualifying his answer because of the unknowns about how long it will take to find a vaccine or a therapeutic medicine to combat the virus. “But some of the things we’ve learned is that the parishes that have invested in technology and robust communication with their parishioners have done much better throughout the last eight weeks.”
    

One of the major advances, Landry said, will be in the number of parishes who move forward with plans to offer online giving so that people can more easily “support the mission.”
    

“Some of the parishes who have immensely struggled over the last eight weeks are the ones that relied almost exclusively on the weekly, Sunday offertory,” Landry said. “Liturgically, it’s a very important part of our Mass to bring up the gifts, but it’s far from ‘best’ if our parishes are going to have consistent support from their parishioners.”
 

Livestreamed Masses are here “forever,” Landry said.
    

“Most growing parishes, down the road, will continue to broadcast a lot of their liturgies and a lot of their events,” he said. “It’s an open question on how much parishes invest in that. Does it become a central part of their outreach or does it become just a part of their outreach? But I don’t think we’re going back to the point where growing parishes will have zero live broadcasts going on.”
    

The massive changes in remote learning at the elementary and secondary school levels also have ushered in a technological movement that can’t be stopped, Landry said.
    

“This is going to accelerate the use of technology in schools,” Landry said. “It’s going to accelerate the idea of the ‘flipped classroom,’ where a lot of instruction happens on video. Then, when people gather with the teacher, it’s more to ask questions. The flipped classroom could be a great model for handing on our Catholic faith to people because many parishes have been challenged with (having enough) catechists to pass it on.”
    

Landry works with 61 parishes across 12 U.S. dioceses. One of the biggest questions he has had to grapple with is how fearful Catholics will be to return to Mass.
    

“Somewhere in the neighborhood of 50% of our regular Mass attendees on Sunday will be cautious in returning or scared to come back,” Landry said. “That involves seniors who are up there in age and who have been hearing the messages from government leaders to be particularly careful. It also involves families with younger children who would prefer that their younger children don’t catch the virus.
    

“While there is a strong desire for the Eucharist, how will every faithful Catholic look at the idea of a crowded, packed church ever again? We used to look at the Christmas and Easter crowds, if we were able to get a seat, and say, ‘Isn’t that wonderful how packed it is?’ I do think people are going to look at a packed church now and say, ‘Do I really want to be in a packed church?’”
    

With most dioceses across the U.S. “dispensing” Catholics from their obligation to attend Sunday Mass, Landry said parishioners may begin choosing to attend weekday Masses, when the churches will be less crowded.
    

“How many Catholics prefer to go to the daily Mass and watch the livestream on Sunday, with the bigger crowd, versus the opposite?” Landry said. “Maybe you want to be the first one to sign up for the Monday morning daily Mass. I don’t think we’re going to get back to any semblance of ‘normal’ in terms of packed churches in a long time. And it wouldn’t surprise me if we never shake hands or give people kisses on the cheek during the sign of peace.”
    

The most important thing a diocese – or a parish – can do right now for parishioners is to “over-communicate,” Landry said.
 

Helping seniors, homebound
    

“It’s to speak from the heart about the care for everybody individually and the care for the community when it regathers and that we want to be safe,” Landry said. “Then each parish needs to figure out how it can distribute Communion to the homebound or those who choose to stay home during this time in much larger numbers than most parishes have ever been asked to do. That would allow people to still participate in Mass and satisfy that hunger for the Eucharist.”
    

Communication is key, Landry said, because not all age or demographic groups are reached through the same methods of communication.
    

“Communication is so massively important,” he said. “A few parishes that I have worked with knew that, but many more know it now. To reach everybody in your parish, you need multiple communication platforms because different demographics access information about the parish in different ways.
    

“It would be great if everybody accessed it the same way, but that isn’t the reality today. Think in terms of the multiple platforms – who is the best target audience for that platform and how the message could be shaped slightly differently to reach the people that read that platform?
    

“I do a lot of communications seminars, and I get a lot of pastors say, ‘How many more years until the bulletin is dead?’ And we’ve been hearing people in the Catholic Church say, ‘How many years until Catholic newspapers are dead?’ And I’ve always said, ‘It’s at least 25 years on both because for some of the most generous people in the church today in terms of their giving, that’s how they access information about the church and the diocese.”
    

Landry is working with 10 parishes across the Archdiocese of New Orleans on a pilot program to raise the level of evangelization within their respective communities. He heaped praise on Mary Queen of Peace Parish in Mandeville for the way in which it has become a “dynamic” parish.
    

Mary Queen of Peace is doing as well as any parish in the country in terms of the way it’s moved from being a physical parish, where everybody comes to be, to being a dynamic, online parish,” Landry said. “The way that they’ve done their Masses and devotions is massively strong. For two years, they have done as well with email communication as any parish in the country.”
    

He also said St. Luke the Evangelist in Slidell has done wonderful online Masses, and St. Pius X in New Orleans came up with an idea to pair up two parishioners who are living alone to serve as telephone buddies to each other.
    

Several parishes have simply reached out to parishioners by telephone to let them know they are thinking about them and asking if they have specific needs or prayer requests.
    

“Parishes across the country love the idea of calling their parishioners,” Landry said. “We mentioned the idea, and probably half of our parishes started calling the next day. One parish in California called 5,000 families in one week.”
    

The biggest takeaway from the virus quarantine, Landry said, is the recognition of “how fragile life is.”
    

“Sometimes people, particularly young people, consider themselves invincible and that they might be the first people besides Jesus to not die,” Landry said. “Life is fragile. Loneliness is high. I think this is an awesome opportunity for the Catholic Church to stand ahead and provide the spiritual and corporal works of mercy. We’ve always been the largest caring organization on the planet. It would be awesome if because of the outreach of parishes today, that people saw us as the leader in caring and as the leader in prayer.”
    

Peter Finney Jr. can be reached at [email protected].