The first infection occurred in February 2020 and the first measures were announced a month later: the coronavirus had also arrived in the Netherlands. SKIN-Rotterdam, a Christian organization that supports and connects international churches, has noted that during the two corona years the international churches have had to endure a lot, but that many beautiful things have also happened and that the church has really provided added value to society. To better map the impact of the corona pandemic on the Christian international communities and to see how SKIN-Rotterdam can support them even better, we commissioned a study by Luca Kappinga in 2022.

The most important results from the research are that the corona pandemic had a major impact on Christian international communities. This was partly due to the fact that these churches are often small and that in many cases the church members have a less strong socio-economic position. Many churches were forced to hold online services (sometimes attracting an international audience), people experienced a lack of sense of community and physical contact, which led to loneliness, there was polarization in some churches, there was more demand for spiritual or pastoral support and the churches are setting up great initiatives to encourage people. The impact was financial shortages, tired teams and overworked pastors. But above all, it appears that God remains faithful to His churches.

The entire study can be downloaded here (in Dutch).