7 Essentials for Campus Experience during COVID19
When I first visited Saddleback Church while I was church planting my friend told me about the campus experience pastor. This position seemed unnecessary as he was explaining the ministry to me. I was so confused because I never heard of " campus experience" before. 1 year later I became the campus experience pastor. :)
If you are on staff with a church then I'm sure many of your church members are asking the same questions: When are we going to have church service again in the building?
Along with that question will be follow up questions about the church's prep on safety and adjustments to keep social distancing. Some churches have already started to gather together in their buildings for weekend services. Most of these churches are smaller to medium sized churches (100-300 people) which makes it easier for them to spread out chairs. Larger churches (500 or more people per service) are doing the registration model which means there are only a limited number of seats in the service and the only way you can attend is by pre registering.
No matter how you are setting up your church service, the campus experience is what everyone will be curious about (donuts, coffee, lobby talk, etc). Here are 7 Essential ideas to focus on for your campus experience as people re-enter the church building.
1. Designate 1 way entrance in and a separate 1 way exit out of your church
To ensure social distancing and keep people safe, you don't want people walking by each other, in and out of the building. Members who are walking into the church may not be comfortable with people walking by them as they exit. People are already nervous about coming back to church so we need to help them feel comfortable.
Imagine somebody walking into church and as they enter, someone is exiting and coughs or sneezes. That person's entire experience or ability to focus on the church service will be tainted with thoughts of the possibility being infected by COVID19. Or the person might leave right away and not return to church for months depending on their anxiety and thoughts on the pandemic.
Remember it's a large step for some to return to church whether they themselves or someone in their family has an autoimmune disease, have a newborn baby/young children or live with grandparents.
2. Should have masks available for people to wear before entering
This will be different for each church. Will your church require masks for people to attend service? Even if the answer is no then it will still be a nice touch for for you to have masks available for those who want to wear one but didn't bring one.
Offering masks especially if your church will require it is that extra bit of comfort that people will feel because you are going above and beyond to keep people safe.
3. Place multiple hand sanitizer stations all over your campus
I don't mean have a bunch of hand sanitizer bottles everywhere for open use. This will depend on your budget but investing into some automatic hand sanitizer dispensers will be nice. You know, the kind where you just have to put your hand near the sensor and it will pump out the hand sanitizer.
And if you have the budget, I would buy multiples so that you can spread these all over the campus. You don't want lines or crowds to form because you only bought 2 of them.
4. No more self serve coffee and donuts
As a former campus experience pastor, I know how important donuts and coffee are to church members. I have experienced their need for it on a ridiculous level. However, in the middle of a pandemic, self serve will be risky. Do you want people touching all the cups and stir sticks? How comfortable will people be when they see that happening?
Recruit some more volunteers for your hospitality team and create multiple places for people to serve visitors and members coffee and donuts. Give them the single use creamers/sugar. You want to limit people touching things and putting it back for others to use as much as you can.
Everything should be served to visitors/members now. Practice these lines: "What kind of donut would you like? Would you like some cream/sugar? Sorry we're all out of chocolate donuts." Uh oh...
5. Consistent restroom cleansing
This is another area where you might have to recruit and most likely will form this for the first time. With so many people going in and out of the bathroom, there should be a team of people that will wait outside who can go in every 5 minutes or maybe do a count of people like for every 4 people that walk out of the bathroom the person will go in and disinfect/sanitize.
This team will wipe down counters near sinks or other areas that are commonly touched with disinfectant cleaning spray. I guarantee you that anyone who sees this happening at their church will feel so much more safe and loved that the church cares about the people to the point of disinfecting bathrooms consistently.
6. Online offering/tithe
This goes back to the rule of trying to limit people from touching the same things (with check/cash in envelopes usually the ushers will have to open that and count it). I suggest going all digital for your offerings and tithes. Put the info on the screen and let people give back through their phones.
Keep this time in your service since it is an act of worship but instead of an offering plate being passed around, you put up information on the screen for how people can give their offering digitally.
7. All programs/bulletins/message/pens notes on chairs
If you use any of these weekly printed materials, then usually your ushers would pass them out as people walk into your worship center. Not anymore. People may not feel comfortable with taking a bulletin and pen from others. Even if you wear gloves, remember the person wearing gloves is still touching everything else, so it just spreads dirt/bacteria/viruses, but only keeps the person wearing the gloves somewhat safe.
If you're doing a pre-registered service then this will be easy. Keep the program/bulletin/message notes/pen on each chair for the person to pick up. Have people drop off the pens in a basket on their way out and ushers can go through the pens with a wipe to disinfect them for reuse.
Do not reuse bulletins/programs/message notes anymore. Trash whatever is unused unless it was sitting in an empty chair, so that it can still serve someone else for the next service if you are running multiple services.
In the 2nd half of 2020 we will see more and more church buildings open back up for weekend services. People are itching to get back into their normal church experience. I miss seeing people's faces and having those short conversations before and after service. Depending on which state you're in, think about how and when you will open your building. Some states like mine (CA) are seeing COVID19 cases rising back up with hospitals filling back up. The worst momentum killer would be to open up too soon, then having to tell everyone that you will go back to online services only. So be wise in your decision.
UPDATE—I wrote this blog post 1 week ago before CA governor Newsom ordered churches to no longer gather together indoors anymore because of our recent spike in COVID19 cases. So already churches experienced soft openings of smaller sized gatherings and now having to go back to fully online. I don’t see churches gathering together again anytime soon. Even by Fall of 2020. For those churches who have returned to fully online, be careful of gathering together too soon and risking going back to fully online again. Your church members may feel frustrated with the frequent changes of going back and forth.
