Being Faithful in the Time of COVID-19
One Pastor’s Experience of the Coronavirus Pandemic.
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It’s been two weeks since I received my second shot of the Pfizer COVID-19 Vaccine which means I am fully vaccinated. I still wear masks because it is still the state mandate, but it feels like the pandemic is nearing an end. It is not over and things could change that makes things worse. We don’t know if a variant could arise that the vaccines would do very little. That said, it feels like we are moving away from a year of staying away from public spaces. People are starting to peer outside for the first time in a year. Events like the March Madness Basketball tournament are back on after being canceled last year.
Being at the beginning of the end has allowed me to look back at how apocalyptic this pandemic truly was. When I say apocalyptic, I am not talking about the end of the world (though if you lived in NYC during the early days of the pandemic or currently in Manaus, Brazil it certainly feels like the end of the world). Apocalypse comes from the Greek, apokálypsis, which means an uncovering. So when I talk about the pandemic as being apocalyptic,I mean it was revealing. An apocalypse reveals what has been hidden before. This is what happened in my own life over the last year. I saw some things that were hidden that were now out in the open and this is very clear when it comes to the church and my role as a pastor. I’ve learned some things about myself as a minister in the church and society in general. In listening to other pastors, I think this feeling is not unusual. We’ve all learned a lot and it will affect us as we move along away from the dark days of COVID-19.
I’ve learned how much pastors were frustrated. When you are the pastor of a small church, you wear a lot of hats and one of the hats I wore was video producer. I’m thankful I have that background, but that skill comes with a cost. I can’t tell you the many times I would hear other pastors say something to the effect, “we are getting more people than we did before the pandemic!” and feel a sense of envy and shame. You start to wonder why no one is viewing the video you made. You up the production value, try to preach better and still the numbers on YouTube don’t tick up. So, you remind staff and members to like the video and share it with others. You…
