What is it like to be unable to gather physically for Sunday church services? Phenomenological reflections on three church leaders’ experiences of community during COVID-19

This paper uses phenomenology to explore three Christian church leaders’ lived experience of community during the COVID-19 restrictions in Melbourne, Australia, focussing on what it was like to be unable to gather physically for Sunday church services. The phenomenological texts of these church leaders are reflected on using three insight cultivators – Heidegger’s notion of community as a horizon of common concern, Jean-Luc Nancy’s idea of community as what is happening to us, and Emmanuel Levinas’ notion of community as the experience of alterity. While noting that there can be tension between phenomenological and theological reflection, we conclude that the insight cultivators used enable us to see new possibilities as well as limits, and in light of this, we posit some tentative recommendations for church leaders in moving forward into a post-COVID era.