Church sees record-high attendance amidst COVID-19-prompted drive-in services

As the threat of COVID-19 escalated in mid-March, Pastor Matt Henslee crafted a message to his congregation, outlining how the church would adapt to the state-wide limitation of all gatherings to 50 people.

Attendance at Mayhill Baptist Church in Mayhill, New Mexico, had been hovering around 100, so Henslee swiftly made plans to begin offering two services at the church so that all members could attend on Sunday morning while still meeting the limited-size requirement.

On Friday night, Henslee typed away at his computer, explaining to his church members by email the logistics of how they could “spread out” across two services, with 40-50 people in one, and 40-50 in the other. But just as he was about to hit “send,” the governor of New Mexico announced that, as an extra precaution, gatherings would now be limited to just 10 people.

So, “just kind of on the fly,” Henslee says, despite having no idea how they would pull it off, Henslee decided the church would have a drive-in service instead. Discarding the first email, he wrote a second, explaining the new plan to his congregation and committing himself to the idea, hoping that he could figure out the details over the next two days.

On Sunday morning, Henslee preached from a lectern set up on the church’s front porch, with the worship team standing beneath him, all of them amplified by loud speakers projecting to the roughly 80 people who attended that morning, listening and worshiping from their vehicles.

The following week, attendance increased to 100. The next, 120. Finally, on Easter Sunday, Mayhill Baptist Church saw its highest attendance ever at 140 people spread out across two parking lots.

Henslee admits he did not expect such a high turnout for these drive-in services.

“I just thought it would be some of our ‘Sunday night’ folks,” he says, referring to those members “who would come even if a tornado was tearing through.”

“That’s what I expected our drive-in to be, was kind of for the real committed folks,” Henslee says. “Instead, it’s found a lot of the fringe members who maybe haven’t been that active, and then just people from the community coming.”

“To me, that has made all the extra work and the sunburn worth it,” he says, clarifying that he has, in fact, been sunburned “just about every week” from preaching outdoors. “That, to me, has been the biggest win from all of it.”

Henslee, a 2017 Master of Divinity graduate of The Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and a current Doctor of Ministry student in church revitalization, says his time at the seminary has helped him appreciate that while every church will face challenges, “the Word that we faithfully proclaim is still the same.”

“So we adapt to whatever context we’re in and give that unchanging Word to our people in the best way they can hear it,” he says. “… Southwestern really taught me the importance of that.”

A number of Mayhill’s members do not have internet, so Henslee says these drive-in services, as opposed to pre-recorded or live-streamed services (which the church also offers), have “allowed those who wouldn’t be able to worship otherwise to be able to come and be encouraged, hear the Gospel, get out of the house safely, and have some measure of community with their brothers and sisters in Christ.”

Preaching the Word through a drive-in format has been a learning process, he says. The church has begun using two parking attendants to direct traffic, for example, because the church’s parking lot lacks actual parking spaces, meaning that “it only takes one car to mess everything up,” Henslee says. Also, due to the increased attendance, church members have had to begin parking in front of Henslee’s house across the street from the church as well.

Another development in the process has been the use of an FM transmitter for those parked too far away to hear the loud speakers, which allows them to simply listen through their radios with their windows rolled up. The spreading out of church members has also impacted how the worship leaders arrange themselves. “They space out so the people on any side of the parking lot can see at least somebody as they’re leading,” Henslee explains.

One “comical” aspect of the drive-in services Henslee has noticed is that just as people tend to sit in the same pews, so they now tend to park in the same spaces. “And, like, a family might park together, with grandparents and the kids in one area, and maybe some of their friends or neighbors will be in one section of the parking lot,” Henslee says. “So they’re waving and encouraging one another from their cars.”

One person who had already been visiting the church decided to become a member during this season of drive-in services. “He said he didn’t want to wait until we were back in the building,” Henslee says, recalling the man’s thought that “now is the time to be a part of this family.”

Furthermore, on Easter Sunday, a young girl gave her life to Christ.

Beyond these specific encouragements from the Lord, Henslee says among the greatest blessings of the drive-in format has been the “overwhelming community-wide excitement about it.”

“I think just the community excitement about ‘here’s a safe way to get some fresh air, be encouraged, and see your community at work’ has probably been the greatest encouragement for me,” he says. “Obviously, knowing that the Gospel is being heard by more than normally would has been an encouragement. But the fact that the whole town has rallied behind it is something I didn’t expect.”

Among the new faces (and vehicles) the church has seen are those of the town sheriff and a state representative, plus “a bunch of visitors who don’t go to church,” who have been “asking a lot of questions about faith and what they’re hearing,” Henslee says.

Some of Henslee’s neighbors, who have not previously expressed interest in church, have listened to the services from their front porch. Another neighbor, a Methodist preacher, has been unable to view his own church’s live-streamed services since he does not have internet, and so he has been attending Mayhill’s drive-in services instead.

“So just on a personal level, that’s been an encouragement for me, that even across denominational lines, there’s been some encouragement for folks to be able to come and be a part of,” Henslee says.

Reflecting on this season in which ministers must be creative in how they reach their communities, Henslee speculates that with drive-in services and online sermons from across the nation, “we probably had more Gospel presentations on this Easter Sunday perhaps than ever in history.”

“And there’s no way to really calculate,” he says, “but my prayer is that God is going to bless those efforts of pastors thinking outside of the box, or outside of the building, to get the Gospel out to those who need to hear it. And that’s obviously everybody. So, without the walls around the church, so to speak, that’s opened up maybe more Gospel presentations than we’ve ever had.

“So that’s something I’ve been encouraging pastors—to just keep pressing on and keep doing what they can in their context to continue to get the Word out and see that, maybe, on the other side of this could be revival or revitalized churches. … So that’s been something I’ve steadily encouraged pastors, is just to not waste this opportunity.”