Dazed and confused? It’s more than that …

Early into the global pandemic that we’re slowly crawling out of, many pastors had one persistent thought: “I can’t wait until things get back to normal.”

As the pandemic deepened and then lingered, it slowly dawned on some church leaders “things” weren’t going to go back to “normal.”

Today, there are still many church leaders wrestling with the question of why more of their members haven’t returned to “church.”

Are they still dazed and confused from two years of life in a pandemic?

It’s more than that.

It’s important for church leaders to understand the depth of what some of their church members, and people in their communities, have experienced, which include the following:

Real trauma. I preface “trauma” with “real” because we’re labeling just about everything these days as “traumatic,” even though most of the things assigned that label are not genuinely traumatic experiences. But the pandemic was genuinely traumatic, especially if you lost a loved one because of the coronavirus. Millions of people (at least) experienced real trauma from the pandemic, and that will require “real” healing, which will take time and real care. (AN IMPORTANT NOTE: This very real trauma served as a trigger to worsen pre-existing mental illness some had already been diagnosed with, and record numbers of people reported mental health issues and mental illness as a result of the trauma incurred from the pandemic — that requires treatment, care, and healing.).

One of the hardest punches packed by the pandemic was that it destabilized the lives of people. The impact of the pandemic was more than the affect of the usual ebb and flow in life from “good times” to “hard times” and those things in-between; the pandemic made people feel like life was unstable because, in many ways, it became unstable. You couldn’t gather with your own family or closest friends. Businesses were closed. You may have been out of a job, or for the first time ever found yourself trying to work from home. Your kids couldn’t go to school and you became their teacher. You couldn’t always buy at the store what you wanted or needed. How you routinely lived life on a daily basis had become destabilized and for many people that felt intensely personal, as if they were destabilized. Many people are still trying to “right themselves” from that experience, but don’t know what they can trust yet. It will take some time for people to regain a sense of stability and figure out who and/or what to trust again, but without that sense of stability people feel deeply insecure (which breeds, stress, anxiety, etc.).

Being traumatized and then destabilized, many people became paralyzed with fear. Even though we’re now slowly pulling out of the harsh initial impact of the pandemic, fear can cause deep wounds and leave ugly scars. For many, it’s not that easy to “just move on” from the depth of fear they experienced.

Having been hit with trauma, and having their lives destabilized, and having been racked with fear left many, many people deeply confused. More than not knowing what to think about their circumstances, they didn’t know how to interpret them because they were new and negative. Some people are still working at clearing the cloud of confusion they experienced for an extended period of time during the pandemic.

Research revealed that instead of turning to their faith, or the Bible, or the church,, etc., during a destabilizing, fearful experience of trauma, the most popular way of dealing with the pandemic was … streaming movies and television shows. After an extended time of languishing in their pajamas watching Netflix marathons, that languishing settled in as a common, negative experience from the pandemic for many. Working their way out of the sluggishness of languishing is taking some time, not everyone is rebounding energetically or enthusiastically.

One of the problems for some ministers is that they’re thinking of process — “if the people just come back, we can get back to normal” — and they don’t always first remember many of those same people need to heal from trauma, re-stabilize their lives, regain some courage, clear away confusion, and shower and put on some clean clothes in order to move into the “new normal” back at church.

I know, I know — one of the best ways to craft a new normal is in fellowship with your church family.

Just understand the reason why so many who will return to the church haven’t yet is that it’s bigger than just being dazed and confused.

Scotty

P.S. And please remember, folks, your church leaders also experienced all of the above as well, so cut them a LOT of slack!