In 2021, our churches continued to face the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic that, as we all know, has disrupted our view of normalcy in all aspects of our lives including church.
After living in a year in 2020 that forced churches to either build their digital presence or improve their digital presence. Online ministry became essential in 2020 and aspects of it carried on into 2021.
While the COVID-19 pandemic persisted in 2021 and our community faced new COVID challenges, our CBA churches were able to return to in-person ministry as well as finding a balance of the continued inclusion of their online ministry.
Since the start of the pandemic, churches have all had their own unique struggles such as returning attendance to pre-pandemic numbers.
As we live in early 2022, we look back on 2021 across our CBA churches to celebrate all that God did in and throughout our churches!
Here’s just a quick glance at a few celebrations:
- Attendance
- In 2019 (pre-pandemic), the average attendance for all of our CBA churches was 16,000 people per Sunday.
- In 2021, the average attendance for all of our CBA churches was 13,000 people per Sunday.
- That number means that our church attendance across our CBA churches was close to 80% back from pre-pandemic attendance levels.
- That means that over 13,000 people heard the gospel each Sunday across our community not including those that joined us online.
- What can you pray for?
- Pray that church attendance both in-person and online continues to increase for each of our churches in 2022.
- Pray for our churches to continue to be strengthen as a few of our CBA churches are significantly more at risk vs. where they were pre-Covid.
- Baptisms
- In pre-pandemic years, there were about 1,000 baptisms per year collectively in our CBA churches.
- In 2021, there were 980 baptisms in our CBA churches.
- New churches alone baptized 342 of those 980 in 2021. (*new churches = churches that didn’t exist before 2006).
- What can you pray for?
- Pray for our churches to continue to reach people in our community and for salvations.
- Pray for our churches that did not experience any baptisms in 2021. There were more churches in the CBA with zero baptisms in 2021 than normal. Pray for them to not be discouraged and for them to be able to reach and see people come to know Christ in 2022.
We’re grateful for all what God has done in and through our CBA churches in 2021 and expectant for what He has in store for our churches and our association in 2022!