Creating Community Online and In-Person

Urban Village Church
Chicago, IL

Our challenge at the Urban Village Church in Chicago is how to extend what has been developed in our pandemic online worshipping experience into our new reality as a (once again) in-person church. Our additional challenge is how to create forms of community that will be deep, unique and inclusive as we grow online, and be flexible to the further changes the religious environment will bring.

We recently completed the purchase of equipment and hired an interim Online Pastor to facilitate community experiments and connections until our final one-year part time hire is made. Throughout the fall of 2021, we will worship online weekly, solicit feedback from the community regularly, and adjust to that feedback. We will try one “village style” event in the location that has the most organic support for it.