It’s staggering to consider, but it has been five years since COVID-19 became a global pandemic. The virus was first identified in the United States in late January 2020, and by March of that same year, every state had implemented some measures to restrict gatherings in person. Easter Sunday fell on April 20th of that year, and it’s fair to say that fewer people were in church that day than on Easter in the last hundred years.
Pastors and churches were divided over a wide variety of approaches to the pandemic. Some were very public in defiance of government rules and continued to meet without interruption, even in the first half of 2020. Others ceased meeting in person for months or even years after the onset of the pandemic. However, many churches did something in between—requiring masks, limiting total attendance to allow for social distancing, or adding an online component
