With COVID, clergy stress at new high
When training pastors and chaplains, educators frequently stress the need for boundaries between work and home.
Clergy need – somehow – to find personal time, along with face-to-face contact with loved ones. That challenge became more difficult in the age of smartphones, texting and emails, noted Marlon C. Robinson, pastoral care director at AdventHealth in Manchester, Ky., and a specialist in marriage and family therapy.
Then came the COVID-19 lockdowns and the pressures on clergy zoomed to a whole new level.
Everything came home, all at once, said Robinson, reached by telephone. Pastors were spending more and more time with their families – jammed into one space. But this wasn t quality time. Everyone was at home, but they were staring at their own phones and computer screens. There was no intimacy, and all the pressures of ministry grew even more intense.
NASHVILLE (RNS) Colleen Reese was ticked at her preacher.
Listening to the minister’s sermon at Franklin Christian Church, south of Nashville, she took exception when he began to criticize parents for passing bad habits and bad genes on to their children.
He included a joke about mothers passing on mental illness to their kids. Reese, who deals with depression, thought the joke was in poor taste and had little to do with Christianity.
When Reese typed the sermon title into Google, a link to her pastor’s latest sermon series popped up. But so did a three-year-old series from a church in Kentucky. The Kentucky sermon was almost identical to the sermon her pastor had preached.
5 ways to make an aging congregation younger
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5 ways to make an aging congregation younger
5 ways to make an aging congregation younger | Tuesday, April 13, 2021
It is one of the top three requests for help we get at Church Answers: “Our church membership continues to get older. What do we do?”
The members and leadership see the handwriting on the wall. One church leader with whom I spoke just two days ago summarized their challenge. Ten years ago the church’s median age of church members was 42. Today it is 74. One-half of the church members are 74 years old and older.
Easter is over. Now what?
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Engaging views and analysis from outside contributors on the issues affecting society and faith today.
CP VOICES do not necessarily reflect the views of The Christian Post. Opinions expressed are solely those of the author(s). CP Current Page: Voices |
Easter is over. Now what?
Easter is over. Now what? | Monday, April 05, 2021
You pastors and church leaders have been through so much. While others have likewise had severe challenges, pastors have truly had one challenge after another.
You lead an organization that is designed to meet and gather. You lead a church that by its very nature seemed shackled by the pandemic. You had to lead both a virtual church and deal with real in-person needs. Many of you had never preached to a camera before COVID.
Beth Moore, famed Bible teacher, quits Southern Baptists
Beth Moore addresses a summit on sexual abuse and misconduct at Wheaton College, Dec. 13, 2018, in Wheaton, Ill. Bible study teacher Beth Moore has been beloved among Southern Baptists for years, packing out stadiums and selling millions of books. But when Moore began to criticize Trump and call out sexism, racism, and abuse in the church, she became a pariah. Now Moore has left the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, saying she can no longer identify as Southern Baptist. (Emily McFarlan Miller/Religion News Service via AP)
by: By BOB SMIETANA Religion News Service