Pastoral Ministry in Unsettled Times: A Qualitative Study of the Experiences of Clergy during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Background COVID-19 and its associated restrictions around in-person gatherings have created unprecedented challenges for religious congregations and those who lead them. While several surveys have attempted to describe how pastors and congregations responded to COVID-19, these provide a relatively thin picture of how COVID-19 is impacting religious life. There is scant qualitative data describing the lived reality of religious leaders and communities during the pandemic. Purpose and methods This paper provides a more detailed look at how pastors and congregations experienced and responded to COVID-19 and its associated restrictions in the early period of the pandemic. To do so, we draw from 26 in-depth interviews with church-appointed United Methodist pastors conducted between June and August 2020. Pastors were asked to describe how their ministry changed as a result of COVID-19 and interviews were analyzed using applied thematic analysis approaches to identify the most common emergent themes. Results Pastors reported that COVID-19 fundamentally unsettled routine ways of doing ministry. This disruption generated both challenges and opportunities for clergy and their congregations. In the findings, we describe how clergy responded in key areas of ministry–worship and pastoral care–and analyze how the pandemic is (re)shaping the way that clergy understood their role as pastors and envisioned the future of the Church. We argue for the value of examining the pandemic as an “unsettled” cultural period (Swidler 1986) in which religious leaders found creative ways to (re)do ministry in the context of social distancing. Rather than starting from scratch, we found that pastors drew from and modified existing symbolic and practical tools to fit pandemic-related constraints on religious life. Notably, however, we found that “redoing” ministry was easier and more effective in some areas (worship) than others (pastoral care). Conclusions and Implications The impact of COVID-19 on pastors and congregations is complex and not fully captured by survey research. This study provides a baseline for investigating similarities and differences in the responses of pastors within and across denominations and traditions. It also provides a baseline for assessing whether changes in ministry implemented during the early stages of the pandemic remain in place in the post-COVID world.

The Perceptions and Lived Experiences of African-American Pastors at the Onslaught of the COVID-19 Pandemic in Mississippi

“…They also provided counseling when needed. These findings aligned closely with Johnston et al (2021) . These researchers used Swiler’s Framework to analyze their data.…”

Religious Congregations’ Technological and Financial Capacities on the Eve of the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…This literature suggests that congregations that are smaller, located in rural areas, are in a more liturgical tradition such as Catholicism, are predominantly Black, have older members, and have more lower income members will be less likely to have both the financial and technological infrastructure that could help mitigate the social and economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Some early research on how religious leaders have responded to COVID-19 has already shown that responses and readiness to face the pandemic differed across religious tradition (Sulkowski and Ignatowski 2020) and rural/urban location (Village and Francis 2020;Johnston et al 2021), but there is still limited research conducted on a broadly representative sample documenting which congregations were more vulnerable to the effects of COVID-19 on the eve of the pandemic. In this article we examine the ways that these congregational characteristics intersect and overlap with one another to identify the congregations that appear to be most vulnerable in a time of social distancing and its associated financial challenges.…”

Pandemic Spiritual Leadership: A Trans-national Study of Innovation and Spiritual Practices

“…Writing amid COVID, Tim Hutchings ( 2020 ) suggested three common reasons for online churches: “The desire to amplify, to connect, and to experiment” (61). Johnston et al ( 2021 ) note a lack of qualitative data on the lived reality of religious leaders and communities during the pandemic. Their study of a representative sample of twenty-four United Methodist pastors described adaptations that were primarily practical, concerned with new ways of doing ministry or worship.…”

“…Their study of a representative sample of twenty-four United Methodist pastors described adaptations that were primarily practical, concerned with new ways of doing ministry or worship. They did note some unsettling of “taken-for-granted understandings of ‘the Church’” and called for further research (Johnston et al 2021 ). While these existing studies helpfully display the spiritual and leadership practices that are emerging in this moment, they do not consider the relationship between the creativity that marks this moment and the religious values and practices that guide leaders’ service in a particular community of faith.…”