Nick Stumbo recounts a personal anecdote from the first years after Covid about returning to in-person church. He notes that simply attending in person produced at least ten brief human interactions (parking lot, check-in, greetings), arguing that virtual services often miss these casual but meaningful social contacts and can give a false sense of relationship.
In that season the first year or two after Covid that my family and I were choosing to find a way to go to church, make it work, you know, in spite of all the regulations we were all facing. I counted up between arriving in the parking lot and getting back in our minivan how many interactions I'd had with people and there were at least 10 people just and I hadn't, I didn't even go out of my way to seek someone out but walking into the building found a couple we knew and were just saying hi, checking our kids in, you know, knew that the pastor there. All we did was quote unquote go to church just like we would have online. But because we were there in person we had 10 human interactions with other people and it was like man, I think we just miss how easily in today's virtual world we settle for non personal interaction but think that we're still having relationships.
