Maria Shupe thought the day when she would be able to pay off Highlands Presbyterian Camp & Retreat Center’s mortgage “might never come.” Before she arrived as executive director, the camp near Boulder, Colorado, had borrowed millions of dollars to build a lodge and retreat center.
As the reality of COVID-19 set in, it forced the postponement of the UKirk Collegiate Ministries Association’s national gathering until this year.
Stephanie Fritz, associate coordinator for Christian Formation, asked the UKirk national board to consider tangible ways to inspire, support and equip network ministries from around the country during the pandemic.
When Edward Byron Elam, Ryan Atkinson and Ralph Lowe arrived in Clinton, Tennessee, in 2019 to participate in Racial Equity & Women’s Intercultural Ministries’ Conference for Seminarians of Color held at the Children’s Defense Fund’s Haley Farm, they had no idea that they would connect with individuals with whom they remain close one year later.
When the Rev. Dr. Fairfax Fair began her ministry at First Presbyterian Church of Pasadena (Texas), a city bordering Houston, on Dec. 1, 2019, she had a few scant months to see church members before the global pandemic shut everything down.
Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) World Mission co-worker the Rev. Sharon Bryant has three Bible verses that guide her work theologically as coordinator of Christian volunteers for the Church of Christ in Thailand (CCT).
The Book of Lamentations begins with these words: How lonely sits the city that once was full of people! How like a widow she has become, she that was great among the nations! She that was a princess among the provinces has become a vassal. She weeps bitterly in the night, with tears on her cheeks; among all her lovers she has no one to comfort her (Lam. 1:1–2a).
Is there a passage filled with more irony than this? The church leaders and the crowd, infuriated by Jesus’ message on behalf of the poor, decided to lynch him. They knew they could not simply murder him — given his loyal following — so they brought him to Pilate, who had the executioner’s power. Pilate, finding no legal fault in Jesus, offered an alternative to killing him. He would release Jesus under the tradition of releasing one Jewish prisoner at each Passover.
It had been several weeks of selling glasses of lemonade in the fellowship hall after worship, but the children of Northminster Presbyterian Church in Endwell, New York, were determined to raise enough money to provide a garden well to a community in need.
COVID-19 has us all rethinking the way we do ministry. And now, as churches ponder reopening, what will worship service look like? Will the new model of online worship service become the new normal?
