The world changed overnight. One presidential address. One phrase — “reducing large gatherings” — and suddenly every church in America was staring down a crisis it never trained for. No playbook. No precedent. Just a locked building and a congregation wondering what comes next.
That’s exactly why Jeff Reed sat down with Greg Nettle (President of Stadia Church Planting), Nathan “Chivo” Hawkins (also from Stadia), and Ben Cachiras (Mountain Christian Church) for a raw, practical conversation about how the Church doesn’t just survive Coronavirus culture — it actually thrives in it.
The Crisis Is Real. The Opportunity Is Realer.
Let’s not sugarcoat it. Coronavirus didn’t just close church buildings. It exposed something the Western Church has been slow to admit: we built our entire ministry model around showing up in person. Gather, sing, preach, go home, repeat. When the gather part got taken away, a lot of churches didn’t know who they were anymore.
But here’s the prophetic flip side: the digital mission field didn’t close. It exploded. People who never would have walked through your church doors are now sitting at home, anxious, searching, and surprisingly open to something bigger than themselves. The harvest was always there. Now there’s no commute stopping them from finding it.
Church Online Isn’t Plan B
One of the core convictions from this conversation — and from Stadia’s broader church-planting philosophy — is that Church Online is not a consolation prize. It’s not the thing you do when you can’t do real church. It is real church.
That reframe matters enormously right now. If your leadership team views the livestream as a stopgap, your congregation will feel it. But if you approach digital ministry as a genuine expression of the body of Christ — a place where community forms, discipleship happens, and the gospel moves — everything changes.
Practically, that means:
- Stop treating your stream like a broadcast. Add a host in the chat. Respond to comments in real time. Create moments of interaction, not just observation.
- Create on-ramps for connection. Online small groups, digital prayer requests, virtual coffee chats for first-time viewers. People need somewhere to go after the service ends.
- Train your people to be missionaries in digital spaces. Your congregation is already online. They just need permission and equipping to make it count.
What Stadia Knows About Planting in Hostile Conditions
Stadia has been planting churches in difficult environments long before anyone had heard of COVID-19. Their insight here isn’t just theoretical — it’s forged in contexts where traditional church gathering is hard or impossible. Greg Nettle and the Stadia team bring a church-planting lens to this moment that most established churches desperately need.
The DNA of a church plant — scrappy, adaptive, mission-first, community-driven — is exactly what legacy churches need to rediscover right now. You don’t need a perfect production setup. You need a clear mission, a committed core, and leaders willing to move before they have all the answers.
As Romans 10:14 puts it: “How will they hear without someone preaching?” That someone is you. The medium has changed. The mandate hasn’t.
Concrete Steps to Move Forward Right Now
This isn’t a moment for more committee meetings. Here’s what you can actually do this week:
- Go live. Today. Don’t wait for perfect gear. A smartphone, decent lighting, and stable Wi-Fi is enough to reach people who need Jesus.
- Activate your digital hosts. Identify two or three people in your congregation who are already social media natives and deploy them to moderate, engage, and follow up with online attendees.
- Build a follow-up system. Every person who comments, fills out a digital connection card, or asks a question deserves a human response within 24 hours. Automate what you can. Personalize the rest.
- Resource your people for gospel conversations online. Coach your congregation on how to share their faith in comment sections, DMs, and group chats. The mission field is their phone screen.
- Check Stadia’s resource hub. They’ve compiled practical tools and guides specifically for this moment (linked in the show notes below). Don’t reinvent the wheel.
The Church That Adapts Will Outlast the Crisis
Coronavirus culture isn’t just a season. It’s an accelerant. It’s pushing every church toward decisions they would have had to make eventually anyway. The leaders who lean in — who treat this as a clarifying moment rather than a catastrophic one — will emerge with stronger, more resilient, more digitally-fluent ministries.
The locked building isn’t the end of your church. It might be the beginning of your real reach.
Ready to build your Church Online from the ground up? Head to thechurch.digital/start and take the next step today. And grab Stadia’s full coronavirus ministry resources at stadiachurchplanting.org/churchonline/coronavirusresources — then come back and listen to the full episode above.
