Pastoring During a Pandemic

Pastoring during a pandemic. It isn’t something taught in seminary.

Yet it’s what all pastors around the world have been challenged with doing for more than a whole year in 2020 and 2021, and it’s the reality they continue to face at the time of this writing.

And while no pastor would likely say they’d choose to go through this kind of thing ever again, many will admit that not everything about the past year has been negative. While there were many, many difficulties yielding sorrow, disappointment, fear, and grief, there were also areas of growth and forward thinking that brought about new ways of doing things as these churches look toward their futures.

During the month of February, nearly one year out from the onset of life and church changes necessitated by the Covid-19 pandemic, Tony Brooks, BGAV field strategist for the Southside region, held Zoom conferences with several pastors. The discussion and their comments revealed exhaustion and frustration, for sure—but notes of hope emerged as they spoke of things they’ve learned and witnessed in their congregations.

These ministers shared openly about their struggles and successes—both to support and encourage each other and also to highlight new ideas and ways of doing ministry that will likely shape their churches for many years to come.

• Todd Blake, Madison Heights Baptist Church, Madison Heights, VA

• Scott Curtis, Heritage Baptist Church, Farmville, VA

• Jonathan Hillard, Moffett Memorial Baptist Church, Danville, VA

• Wyatt Miles, Monte Vista Baptist Church, Hurt, VA

• Greg Randall, Clarksville Baptist Church, Clarksville, VA

• Adam Tyler, Grace Hills Baptist Church, Appomattox, VA

Challenges & Difficulties

“We had to redefine how to do pastoral care. Processing grief and loss with families when they couldn’t have proper funerals or memorial services was incredibly hard." - Adam Tyler

Limiting the number of worship leaders on the platform for so long has shown us how we need to open that up once we are fully back in person. I look forward to including more people leading worship once it’s safe to do that again." - Adam Tyler

"We know that it will probably be a long time before everyone feels comfortable attending corporate worship in person, and many people have found online worship participation to be meaningful and fulfilling. So I think we’ll see a redefining in what it means to be a part of a church family. People who attend online are definitely part of that family, but we need to understand that better.” - Adam Tyler

“We learned to do funerals outdoors, and we bought a better sound system so we could do that even better.” - Jonathan Hilliard

“Throughout this time while we’ve been online and also doing limited in-person worship, we’ve lost some people who wanted to go somewhere that was more fully open in person. We’ve [also] lost people to death and haven’t been able to mourn our losses fully during this time—we haven’t gotten to grieve.” - Scott Curtis

“We’ve been using only prerecorded music, and I really miss singing in person.” - Wyatt Miles

Areas of Growth & Hope

“We polled parents and learned that Zooming with the kids at 2:30 on Sundays was a better time than Wednesdays. I don’t have strong enough internet at home to do that, though, so my husband and I stay at the church on Sunday and use Zoom from there in the afternoons. We held a virtual VBS the same way.” - Erica Motley

“We’ve discovered that more people attend consistently online than they did when we were only meeting in person in the building.” - Greg Randall

"Online worship has caused us to reduce the length of our service to 35 minutes. We may not necessarily do a full hour when we return in person; we may adjust the schedule somewhat. In producing content for online worship services, we learned that we could show things from the past that we already had on video. It’s changed the way we look at worship—we can use existing footage instead of needing guest speakers." - Jonathan Hilliard

“We use Facebook Live for our worship services. It’s no Hollywood production by any means, but it looks professional without appearing overly produced. It’s enabled people outside our area to worship with us, so it’s really opened up our way of being able to include people in worship. Patterns of attendance have [also] shown us that more kids attend our church on Wednesday nights than on Sunday mornings, so we are looking at shifting more discipleship opportunities in that direction.” - Todd Blake

“During the first months, our deacons took the opportunity to ‘up their game’ in caring for our congregation, which allowed me as pastor to address some technical challenges I was initially swamped with. We [also] had to rethink deacon ordination—doing notes of encouragement instead of the laying on of hands—but that’s an element we’ll still keep once we go back in person. Handwritten notes are something tangible and meaningful that will last beyond the day we lay hands on newly ordained deacons.” - Adam Tyler

“We got a $1,000 grant from BGAV and planted a 100’ x 60’ garden, and for six weeks we provided veggies and clothing for our community." - Scott Curtis

“Medical and other trained professionals in our church have been able to share their expertise with us as we’ve had conversations about protocols and safety. We had a group of nurses who helped us discuss this early on, and one of our deacons is a trained contact tracer, so their advice was invaluable.” - Todd Blake

“Taking care of each other’s health during the pandemic, by observing Covid protocols, enabled us to keep our focus on caring for each other rather than any partisanship or politics that emerged on a state or national scale." - Adam Tyler

“Just before the pandemic, we had been looking into doing online worship on Facebook Live, so we had just ordered the equipment to do that. We were able to jump right into online worship. This has been a healing time for us. We’re moving forward in a good way—moving together and working on a five-year plan. We’re considering how to make it special when we do come back together fully in person.” - Scott Curtis

“We’ve started a 'blessing box' where we put household items and non-perishables for anyone to pick up who may need them. Sunday School classes are taking responsibility for keeping it stocked." - Wyatt Miles

"Several people from other churches where things are more in person are coming to us and attending online because they’re more comfortable with the safer format. It’s been nice to give people a place to come. I keep their pastors informed of those people, so they’ll know they’re still active in a church." - Wyatt Miles

“Livestreaming video hasn’t been a great option for us because of limited internet, but drive-up worship using FM radio has been effective. We’ve used conference calling for meetings, Sunday School, and other things. We’re planning to start doing our prayer meeting that way.” - Wyatt Miles

“The realization that we’re not alone is a challenge. When we are “back,” the Church will be forever changed. The return to normal worship schedules will not solve our grief. In the Old Testament, when the construction of the second temple was complete, the people go into the new temple and say, “It’s not like the old one,” and they weep. There needs to be some lament. And the time for dreaming what the future will look like is now.” - Greg Randall