St. Armands Key Lutheran Church implements plans for post-COVID world

With the help of several task forces, St. Armands Key Lutheran Church is looking at the future of the church post-pandemic. Church leaders such as membership development chair Michael Bodnyk and post-COVID chair Steve Gunderson realize that now that the floodgates of technology in church have opened, they can’t be shut. 

“The task forces were a byproduct of COVID and the reason for them was we realized early on that the church will be different after COVID settles,” Bodnyk said. “I think every nonprofit organization, every arts organization, every business is dealing with the same thing. There’s just these new realities that you have to confront and I was one of the people championing these conversations because it’s kinda easy to get left behind, and I wanted to make sure that we as a church were discussing this and planning for it and that we would be ready to move when things opened up a bit.”

The biggest thing the church learned is that it can’t move forward without a virtual presence in pretty much all the programs offered. More than a year of virtual services and online exercise classes made it inevitable. Each task force focuses on this in a different way — the governance task force is figuring out how to bring the voices of virtual members into the bylaws, the membership development task force is looking at expanding the virtual programs for both those who are flung far and wide and those who prefer to stay safe at home and the post-COVID task force is redefining some classic church activities to fit them into a virtual landscape.

“It's very exciting to redefine the mission and the ministry of a church based on all that we have learned during the pandemic,” Gunderson said. “In particular, we have learned that we must become a church that serves both on-site and online, which also means that we expand the territory of our congregation or our church from mainly in Sarasota to one that literally serves people who are located across much of the country.”

Gunderson, who is also the president of the congregation, said that the church is trying to focus on bringing in new members. There’s a lot of outreach geared towards new residents who moved to the area during the pandemic, as well as younger families looking for more community. 

“We have a lot of destination attendees, but we also know that we are the only church on the island and we need to serve that community and be a church available for them, even if it's just for using the facilities,” Gunderson said. “In other words, being the good neighbor we claim to be.”

There is some overlap between Gunderson and Bodnyk’s task forces. The membership development task force is looking at two big areas — how to reach out into the community and how to keep church attendees and members engaged. That means developing a combination of religious and community programs such as bridge, movie nights and concerts on Bodnyk’s end, while for Gunderson, that means ramping up the focus on the audio and video quality of church services and finding ways to keep virtual members engaged in communion and Christian education programs like Bible study and fellowship. 

“Two weeks ago, we had a baptism and one of the sponsors was a couple that stood up online,” Gunderson said. “They were not in the church, but we literally had the tablet there, and they did the vows as a sponsor ... that's a really good example of what a post-COVID church will probably be. Imagine, even if there's not a pandemic, and you have a baptism here in Florida from a family that moved from the Midwest, and the sister and brother in law that they want to sponsor … now they can be sponsors via technology.”

The task forces have been busy for months developing plans that are now being put into place. The governance task force is moving forward with an annual meeting to revise bylaws, while the post-COVID and membership development task forces are starting to implement best practices.

“As you walk around St. Armands and Bird Key and Lido Key, St. Armands (Key Lutheran Church) is the sort of neighborhood church, and we would like to work with our local communities and see how we can serve them, not just at church on Sunday mornings but what can we do during the week that can be beneficial to them too,” Bodnyk said.