It’s been an extraordinary five years for AV for worship. Before pandemic, I saw audio, video, and streaming beginning to democratize as churches of all sizes understood the power of audio to shape experience, and the power of streaming to expand communities. The reality and restrictions of pandemic moved many things from wishlist status to must-have status. A particularly knowledgeable individual at a big manufacturer confirmed to me that the loss of in-person worship wasn’t just a blow to community it was a survival-level issue in terms of funding for many faith communities. That of course stands to reason.
But what Covid put into peril, the Paycheck Protection Program…protected. According to Christianity Today and other sources, staff salaries were the largest covered expense, however many churches also chose to use the money to support members for healthcare and other pressing needs of Covid. In my position, I heard the stories where the loans were applied to AV. In talking to people over those years, there were a lot of streaming buildouts, but it wasn’t just that. Churches used the opportunity of empty buildings to make longoverdue audio upgrades. People I talked to went big, in part because they may have had money but just as importantly, they had time. They also adjusted their audio and video systems designs to integrate better with streaming, and many said they were trying to be ready for a return to in-person, ready in a way that would capture the magnitude of coming back together.
This was my anecdotal and unscientific experience during those years. However, there is also hard data about just how impactful the PPP was for churches, and by extension to some extent for AV. The program was conceived as allocating taxpayer funds as loans to small business to ride out pandemic, and the forgiveness terms were generous. (It was remarkable enough for people to pay them back that I recently heard an entire radio program dedicated to one guy who paid his PPP loans back in full). As a small business program, and being taxpayer-funded, churches needed an exemption to the Establishment Clause to participate, which they got. The Small Business Association reports that some $7 billion in tax dollars was distributed to over 123,000 faith-based organizations across denominations, making religious organizations one of the largest categories to receive PPP. That’s slightly more than one-third of all US churches, with the largest recipient being Catholic dioceses and other Catholic institutions for over $3 billion combined.
Christianity Today reports that individual loans to Christian organizations ranged from a few hundred dollars to over $10 million. Heritage Christian Services, a Christian organization serving those with disabilities, received one of the largest forgiven loans at about $10 million. Life.Church in Oklahoma received about $7 million.
Perhaps most relevant to AV, Christian colleges were also able to receive PPP loan forgiveness specifically for expenditure to expand remote learning. Philip Dearborn, the president of the Association for Biblical Higher Education (ABHE), told Christianity Today last year that “the technology they purchased met the immediate COVID-impacted demands and now, postCOVID, is being leveraged to continue developing and expanding delivery methodologies beyond the traditional face-to-face classroom.” I heard that anecdotally as well.
If you had asked me in 2019 what the biggest trend would be in AV for worship, no one would have come up with this plotline. And yet, here we are.
