Two types of doughnut
Tim Hortons fans will disagree with me on this, but there are essentially two kinds of doughnuts. I will call them American donuts and English doughnuts. American donuts are ring donuts – a big fat doughy ring with some kind of flavouring on them and sprinkles and sugar and…stuff. English doughnuts are balls of the same size but with a jammy (or custard) filling in the middle…. and sugar on the outside of course. And people can get very opinionated about which is better.
These two types of doughnut illustrate what Covid has done to our cities. Before Covid our cities were like English doughnuts – lots of stuff happening in the middle – lots of jam. But then Covid came along and our city centers emptied out. I vividly remember images of central London with no people in it, in the middle of the day. Most people were in the suburbs. Cities became like American donuts – with a hole in the middle.
The hollowed cities
Once we got over the shock of Covid, many of us discovered that we liked working from home. I mean who wants to travel in misery for hours each day by train or car or bus. Instead you can sleep in and still be on Zoom – in your PJs with good coffee – and enjoying the hours you save on the commute. So when working in an office became possible again, many people said ‘no thanks’. In the UK almost 20% of people changed or ended their career rather than go back to the grind* – and so we had the
“Great Resignation” ( see wikipedia).
When the cities loose employees, then the businesses which support those employees cannot keep going. Coffee shops, restaurants, dry cleaners, newsagents, these and more are the obvious ones. And then there are those who provide and service the offices. One underground station in the center of
London lost half it’s arrivals from Jan 2020 to Jan 2023. Office occupancy in San Jose, California has falling to around 50%. The whole city economy starts to change.
As many of you will know the Anglican Church of Canada national offices are adapting to the changing patterns of use we are facing. Hybrid and remote working is now well established. I have not been to Toronto since well before the pandemic, and have never met my boss in person. We are in the final stages of agreeing to share an office with the United Church and the Presbyterian Church
There is another aspect to this change. Like so many changes in our society the effects are socio-economic in nature. It is the rich who get the benefits of zoom working, the professionals who get to tele-commute. Another set of data* from the US identified that 60% of office workers don’t get the choice of hybrid or remote working. These are often the less well paid “frontline” workers.
How does this affect the church?
Many of our larger churches are in the downtown areas. They have developed ministries to the city center workers over the decades. Midweek services and lunchtime concerts suddenly become more challenging to run. Many of the people who used to populate these events are simply not there. The doughnut has a hole in it.
So how does the Church adapt to this change?
Firstly we continue to use the online skills we have developed through Covid to follow the people electronically. Later this year I will be publishing the statistics for online services. The data
I have so far is encouraging in that there has not been a wholesale move back to in person services only. Churches are maintaining their online services. We can follow our previous congregants back to the comfortable suburbs and connect with them in their own home-offices.
Secondly we can adapt our in-person midweek provision to the changing demographic we are faced
with. Meeting their needs – which may be different to the needs of the groups we have been dealing with. This is something that downtown churches can be good at, once they identify the
issue.
Or maybe our downtown cores will return to their previous
levels of busyness…. Many small business will be hoping the jam comes back to
fill the hole in the donut.
* https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/aug/12/never-again-is-britain-finally-ready-to-return-to-the-office
https://theconversation.com/san-jose-and-the-reemergence-of-the-donut-city-209319
Be First to Comment