Limatula Longkumer
Introduction
2020 was full of fear, anxiety, pain, agony,
loss and uncertainty due to the Covid-19 crisis. The second wave in 2021 is
more serious, many lives have been lost! Everyone on this planet Earth is
suffering miserably and pastoral ministry is no exception. Churches around the
world were locked and he was also the last one to open. After several months of
unlocking, many places are locking again due to the second wave. The new normal
measures of "staying safe", "social distancing",
"wearing a mask" and "staying at home" have suddenly
disrupted physical gatherings for worship. Covid-19 forced churches to go
online. It is an emergency move from the physical service to the virtual world.
The coronavirus may one day be defeated and normalcy restored, but when it
comes to pastoral ministry, it may not be the same as before after Covid-19.
This document briefly evaluates the functioning of the pastoral ministry during
the Covid-19 pandemic.
What is Pastoral Ministry?
First, I want to recapitulate the understanding
of pastoral ministry in general. Pastoral service is a comprehensive care
service that cares for and equips all of God's people for transformation.
Pastoral ministry focuses on five activities, namely:
• Kerygma – service of preaching
• Koinonia – service of reconciliation and communion
• Diakonia – service of service, witness and mission
• Leitourgia – service of worship and service
• Oikodomia – Ministry of Construction or
Education.
Thus, pastoral ministry is a comprehensive
ministry that includes liturgy and worship, teaching, care and counseling,
preaching, mission and service, and community transformation. It is not limited
to Sunday services, but is diverse and multidimensional according to contextual
needs. It is the service of the community of believers and the service of
society - based on the central message of Jesus, i.e. the rule of God on earth.
Jesus called his disciples to preach about the kingdom of God and call people
to repent and accept this good news. His ministry of healing, teaching,
preaching and miracles demonstrated the power of God's rule and provided
assurance of peace, justice and hope for all. The uniqueness of pastoral
ministry lies in what it offers to people and society. It should touch people's
lives and respond to the needs of communities. It is for holistic salvation –
physical, mental, emotional, spiritual and ethical. It is not only for
individual salvation, but for the entire humanities and the entire creation.
Pastoral service in the context of Covid-19
An empirical survey was conducted in Northeast
India and used as a case study in the evaluation of pastoral ministry. This was
done through phone conversations, WhatsApps and emails; materials from the
Newspaper and YouTube have also been collected - specially recorded sermons
preached from April 2020 onwards. We hope that some of these findings will be
applicable in the wider context of pastoral ministry. However, due to space
limitations, the survey only focused on pastoral ministry in general and
preaching ministry during Covid-19.
Covid-19 decentralized pastoral ministry in the church
" What are the main activities of the church before Covid-19?" was first investigated. The current pastoral service is mainly focused on the church building. Most of the activities include joint services on Sunday, Wednesday, Saturday, women's fellowship, youth fellowship, Sunday schools, Bible studies, revivals, retreats, seminars/workshops, prayer chain/fasting, missions and evangelism that are carried out in the church building. In addition, the main activities are home visits, visits to sick, needy, bereaved families, dedication of children, home community. The graph below shows the main activities of churches/pastoral ministries in general before Covid-19:
The chart above shows that 90% of pastoral
services are performed in the Church building, in a corporate context (regular
church activities 40%, preaching service 30%, teaching service 15%, Bible study
3%, fasting and prayer 2%). Maybe the pastors are busy doing all the related
activities especially in the church. Home visits (4%), counseling 2%), missions
and evangelism are carried out outside the church. Many churches have home
evangelists for home visits and prayers, especially in mega churches. Home evangelists
are those who deal with the basic level of people. They are mostly lay people,
although there are also a few theologians. Very few churches have trained
counselors; in fact, all shepherds are shepherds for nurturing and caring
ministry. Thus, home evangelists provide both counseling and accompaniment in
caring for and caring for members. One negative reaction was that pastors did
not make home visits. One reason could be the mega-church structure where
membership is large and most pastors are busy. The mega-church system with
large congregations needs serious consideration for effective pastoral
ministry. Use of social media (1%) and print media (1%) was too low before the
pandemic.
Why church-oriented ministry?
Christian worship is communal and communal worship is deeply rooted in the theology of worship. Thanks to this emphasis, a ministry focused on church building could be developed. Moreover, the people of Northeast India are tribal and community oriented. But church building is not the only place where pastoral ministry can be done. God is present everywhere and pastoral ministry is for the whole world. The history of the church and its magnificent church architecture began gradually from the 3rd and 4th centuries AD. Common worship, like the worship in the Jerusalem temple, existed in Old Testament times. Synagogue services, both in exile, post-exile and early church times, existed, but most early Christians worshiped in house churches. It was gradually replaced by church buildings. Many magnificent cathedrals and church buildings were built in Europe in the 12th - 13th centuries, and the same pattern continues today around the world. As the number of church members increases, the expansion of church buildings becomes mandatory for large churches, especially in Asia, Latin America and Africa. Today, there are megachurches both in cities and in villages.
…………..
In Northeast India, there is a competition to
build mega-churches; this can apply everywhere. However, we need to reevaluate
this passion for the megachurch in terms of the effectiveness of pastoral
ministry. Does it serve people's needs? Many churches are closing in Europe.
The same event may happen to us in the near future if we do not check the
effectiveness of the current pastoral ministry.
Pastoral service during the Covid-19 lockdown
Dubbed the modern leprosy,[1] Covid-19 has changed the way people communicate as a community and the lockdown has made it impossible for pastors to carry out their ministry. It caused three consequences:
Questions about God and suffering - Why God? End of time?
Fear of death, anxiety, worry and uncertainty
Sudden disruption - frustration and hopelessness
These three consequences require responses:
Seek comfort and hope.
Finding Faith and Ritual - Turn to religious activities to find refuge and hope.
God's divinity - discernment and change, thinking about what it means to be a community and a gathering - the identity of being a child of God at the moment when I think the end or death is coming.
The reactions of many Christians, including pastors, during the lockdown were very negative; some have called it the antichrist movement - 666, God's curse, end time sign, devil's work to stop the church and so on. People thought without going to church; there is no spirituality. This has led many pastors to completely shut down pastoral work. Many pastors defied administrative orders and held services. As a result, many people died from Covid-19. The lockdown was really sudden, people were frustrated, restless and depressed. I have had some people who I know very well and are not regular churchgoers call and ask me my opinion on the church being locked down and why the church has to be closed? Many pastors felt embarrassed, frustrated, and discouraged because there was no alternative to church-building ministry.
Covid-19 has shifted the pastoral ministry from
the traditional to the online church, where social media and the internet play
a significant role. During the lockdown, the primary pastoral ministry was
examined with the following questions: What are the main pastoral works carried
out during the lockdown? How do you do it? Some of the significant pastoral
services during the lockdown according to respondents are:
Impact of Covid-19 in pastoral ministry
according to respondents
The bar chart above shows that the traditional
pastoral service centered on the church building has been completely disrupted
during the lockdown. Family services (23%) are becoming the most important
activity in urban and rural churches. Next is telephone and WhatsApp (15%),
where prayers and counseling were done, followed by online services (13%),
YouTube, Facebook, recorded sermons and songs (12%), online Sunday schools
(10%) and relief work (15 %). Experiences vary in villages where ministry has
been carried out as before (discussed in the impact section later.) The use of
online church and social media has been an emergency shift due to the lockdown,
but let's also remember that technology alone is not sufficient to carry out
the overall ministry of the church. It can never replace physical and pastoral
presence in church service. Covid-19 is teaching us that both digital media and
physical service must be blended for a holistic service.
Positive impacts
⮚ More family worship and quality family time
⮚ Churches are online. The use of information technology and communication or social media in pastoral ministry, which in the past was considered a taboo and a phobia around pastoral ministry, has become the medium through which a large part of pastoral ministry is carried out.
⮚ Live broadcasts of sermons on Facebook, YouTube, recorded messages and songs posted on WhatsApp, and telecasts on local TV networks are useful.
⮚ The use of smart phones, WhatsApp, Facebook, zoom, email, Instagram, tweeter, telegram and online worship has increased.
⮚ Recorded sermons can be listened to at any time, not only at the appointed time of the service; for some, the best time to listen to a sermon is when they go to bed.
⮚ Family and community gatherings. In some villages, returning students organized educational courses for children and conducted seminars, especially for the youth.
⮚ Realizing the importance of the media in pastoral ministry, many churches have established media cell committees; some churches have set aside budgets to purchase equipment such as cameras, computers and Wi-Fi devices.
⮚ Spiritual awakening – the moment of turning to God.
⮚ Churches did relief work during the lockdown, opened quarantine centers. In Northeast India, churches have spent more money on Covid relief, some even more than their respective state governments.
⮚ Pastors visited quarantine centers and prayed for people.
⮚ Some churches have started community self-sufficiency projects for returnees and unemployed young people. For example, the parakaleo program of the Dimapur Ao Baptist Church in Nagaland promotes self-reliance and entrepreneurship.
⮚ Surprisingly, some churches were not locked down, but services were held with SOPs, although attendance was lower in city and village churches.
⮚ Covid-19 has increased tithes and offerings in some churches despite the lockdown.
⮚ In the villages, although strict roles were established, they performed normal activities within the community.
Negative impacts
▪ Digital divide and digital illiteracy among people emerged during the COVID-19 crisis, especially in villages. The internet church, YouTube, was down except for the phone. In rural communities, moreover, many do not have a telephone.
▪ Shepherds in rural villages were having a hard
time because there were no facilities other than leading services and preaching
through loudspeakers. While this helped to some extent, the entire municipal
community could not be covered by the loudspeaker. And so sometimes pastors
went around the village and preached with a loudspeaker.
▪ In some villages, the church was not closed despite the government's order, and normal activities continued in the church, albeit with little attendance.
▪ Pastors in some places may have refused to hold funerals for victims of Covid-19, perhaps out of fear of contracting the coronavirus.
▪ Many recorded false prophecies were spread
through WhatsApp. For example, Covid-19 has been interpreted as a satanic work,
a sign of the end of the world, the second coming of Christ and the Covid
vaccine compared to the number 666 which warned people not to take the vaccine.
▪ Economically, people in the community suffered a lot.
▪ In some congregations, the income of the church - tithes and offerings - has been drastically reduced.
▪ Many church programs could not be implemented as planned.
▪ Some pastors were threatened with salary cuts
because no pastoral activities were carried out during the blockade.
▪ Attendance at the church dropped after it was unlocked. People don't go to church like they used to because of fear.
▪ Social stigmatization was very serious among the infected and in closed zones.
▪ Relief work was limited to the own community;
it was not extended to other communities like people of other faiths.
Pastoral ministry during Covid-19 shows the
decentralization of church-oriented ministry and points to a diverse ministry.
Only regular churchgoers/people come to church on Sundays, but the poor,
alcoholics, addicts, disabled, HIV and AIDS, thieves and robbers do not go to
church. We have to reach out to these people, go find them. We must think of
pastoral ministry without borders. The church should be open to all. Covid-19
has affected everyone, irrespective of religion, caste, race, ethnicity and
colour. This pandemic teaches how to develop the diverse pastoral ministry of
the church. How can churches move forward? How can pastors be more effective in
their pastoral ministry? Innovation is needed in pastoral ministry to combat
the challenges that the Covid-19 pandemic has brought to the world.
Preaching during the Covid-19 lockdown
Preaching is one of the main parts of pastoral ministry. Preaching is communicating God's word in context with people's needs for transformation - interpreting and reflecting on God's word in context. Preaching is a dialogic reflection on the human condition that involves the text of the Bible written in a particular cultural context, the preacher and his theological position/affirmations, and the hearer or audience context. Preaching is born from an intensive process of theological reflection - about God in the context of the preacher based on the biblical text. So the written text (biblical world) and the present context in balance are vital in preaching.
Covid-19 has caused fear, anxiety, suffering and
loss of life; people seek hope and comfort in the midst of fear and adopt
various coping mechanisms. In this context, a random survey was conducted on
the topic/content of sermons preached during this pandemic based on the
following questions: What is the content of sermons preached during the
Covid-19 lockdown? What are the main themes of sermons preached during the
Covid-19 pandemic? In addition to the questions, I listened to several sermons
posted on WhatsApp and YouTube from about April to December 2020, mainly from
India, especially North East India, and a few sermons outside of India.
The following categories are listed for evaluating sermons:
§ About socio-political, economic injustices
§ Fear and anxiety
§ Suffering and hope
§ Psychological trauma, isolation and stigmatization
§ Coping
§ Belief in God in seclusion
§ Identity as children of God
§ Repentance and righteousness
§ Covid-19 and creatures
§ A
question of human rights and justice
The table above shows a rough idea ofpreaching
in the church. Usually the sermon in the church is circled according to the
liturgical year or the Christian calendar. This chart shows the themes or areas
preachers emphasized during the pandemic: Faith in God and suffering and hope
made up 55% of the sermons. Next, I asked about the content of these two sermon
topics; many preachers have narrowed down and focused on preparation for life
after death, no more suffering in heaven which is one sided. For example, one
respondent said, “Covid-19 may be a sign of the end of time, so it focuses on
preparing the soul for heaven. A rapture can occur at any time; therefore,
Christians must be prepared.” Furthermore, Christian identity as a child of
God, stress and coping, fear and anxiety, but a focus on social justice is
still marginal in our preaching and teaching process.
Some of the interview responses from the preachers are:
● Covid-19 is a punishment from God and therefore there is a need to confess sins.
● Following the Christian calendar and church lecturers touched lightly on the issue of Covid-19, but not directly on the topics.
● Many admitted that they do not consciously focus on people's psychosocial, economic, spiritual and ethical crises.
● Some said they touched on hope and suffering
but focused on life after death.
In addition, I have listened to many sermons preached in churches since April 2020. I notice that many of the sermons are deductive preaching; some sermons are very dynamic and effective. The deductive approach focuses more on revelation, which is existence. The sermon begins with an understanding of the text, interpretation and application at the end. God's revelation is deductively applied to the human situation. The audience is a passive listener; both preachers and audiences are detached from reality. We need effective communication and active participation of the audience in the sermon. We need a paradigm shift in preaching:
o From "how" to "who"?
o From "How Should I Preach?" to "whom shall I preach?",
o From
traditional preaching to audience-oriented preaching.
Inductive preaching suggests that the center of preaching is in human existence. God's revelation is read and applied in an existential situation. Inductive preaching is based on contextual and personal realities. Preaching is about reflecting the reality of the audience in biblical interpretation. In preaching, we need to develop a dialectic and dialogue centered on God - in the biblical world/written text - the preacher - today's world.
A sermon that does not reflect the situation of the audience is bound to fail in communication. Preaching is not just exegesis, but communication, not just exegesis of a text, but delivering a message from God to living people who need to hear it. Today's preachers are not preaching to the people of Ephesus or the Corinthian church in the early church or the people of Moses or Abraham in ancient Israel, but to today's audience. The audience in preaching is important as part of the exposition. Preaching is for transformational activity.
Therefore, it is necessary to keep in mind the
current reality of people, their socio-economic, spiritual and ethical
realities when preaching. The goal of preaching is to preach God's word, which
brings change and transformation to people's lives; free them from injustice
and empower them. So the word of God should touch people's lives and their
needs.
Conclusion
We examined pastoral ministry in the context of Covid-19. It broke up the traditional pastoral ministry of the church, which was primarily focused on the church building. The use of social media and information technology is rapidly developing in churches to carry out pastoral ministry as an alternative way during this pandemic. Many people experience psychological trauma, rejection, isolation and exploitation. Many have gone through the pain of losing loved ones. Pastoral ministry such as preaching, care and care, accompanying the bereaved and psychosocial issues is important. The formula of mega-church ministry is also being challenged by the Covid-19 pandemic, which is a pointer to thinking about decentralizing church ministry and introducing transformation in today's pastoral ministry.
[1]Endnote
Michael J. Byrne and Daniel R. Nuzum, Pastoral Closeness in Physical Distancing:
The Use of Technology in Pastoral Ministry During Covid-19 (Sheffield: Equinox Publishing, 2020), 211.
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