“I can’t say I’ve sat there and watched a whole sermon,” says Verdin, whose children are ages 4 and 1. When something interesting pops up in her Facebook feed, she clicks. She feels there are more options circulating now than there were before the pandemic began. In addition to watching the services broadcast by her home church, Christ Fellowship in Palm Beach Gardens, she’s checking other things out simply because she can. Congregating while cookingīekki Verdin, a therapist by training who is now a stay-at-home mom to two young children, is attending virtual services at multiple churches because it’s convenient to do so. “Now that we have this pandemic and you’re stuck at home all the time, you’re thinking more about yourself and you want to be better,” she says. When Griffiths is on the verge, she immediately stops what she’s doing and turns to the index cards, which she has tacked up in neat columns on a bulletin board.įor Griffiths, sheltering in place has spurred a period of profound self-growth. But even this unflappable woman finds herself overwhelmed during the week when her husband is at work and she’s home alone with the kids while trying to prepare for the upcoming school year. Laid back and soft-spoken, Griffiths is preternaturally calm and cool her broad smile comes easy and often. And now the broadcasts of the sermons are making a real difference in her daily life.Īs she watches the recorded services on Sundays from the comfort of her home, she’s taken to jotting down the pastor’s words on index cards - something she wouldn’t do if she was physically in the church and trying to care for her second grader and toddler. That Griffiths could tune in via YouTube was also part of the draw. “Nobody thought Noah had any sense until it started raining.” Todd explains in one video, discussing the story of Noah. “What’s crazy in one season will be counted as faith in another,” the Rev. The moving and often humorous sermons help reframe familiar biblical stories and concepts. In “Crazy Faith,” Pastor Michael Todd and guest preachers “talk about everything,” Griffiths says, including things “some people don’t want to talk about” like relationships and sex and homosexuality. Griffiths explains that she was drawn to Alabama’s Transformation Church because of its “Crazy Faith” YouTube series. But some religious leaders worry about the lasting impact church hopping will have on their congregations. Griffiths and other worshippers say they’ve learned a lot from the spiritual exploration made possible by the pandemic.
And of those worshipping virtually, a whopping 59% are peeking in at the live streams or videos of congregations other than their own. and widespread restrictions on in-person religious gatherings, 72% of those who attended services at least once a month prior to the outbreak say they have watched them online in the last month. In the wake of the coronavirus pandemic’s arrival in the U.S. New findings from Pew Research Center suggest that Griffiths isn’t alone in her church hopping habits.
She saves them for Alabama’s Transformation Church, where preachers offer sermons Griffiths describes as “different” and “a free-for-all.” Cathedral of New York, her childhood church in Queens, a borough that was hard-hit by COVID-19. On Saturdays, she Zooms into The Greater Allen A.M.E. Griffiths, a middle school science teacher who today lives in West Palm Beach, Florida, with her husband and their two children, now uses Friday nights to catch up on the Sunday services of the congregation she attended before the pandemic, Family Church, a nondenominational megachurch just up the road.
But when life went virtual in March, her worship did, too. SALT LAKE CITY - Born to Jamaican parents in Queens, New York City, and raised in a Black church, Navine Griffiths never imagined herself attending religious services in the Deep South - in Alabama, of all places.
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