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coronavirus

New COVID-19 QuickSheets available from youth workers, Christian formation ministries

With youth across the nation stuck at home during the coronavirus pandemic, two new “Quicksheets” resources from the Presbyterian Youth Workers’ Association provide ideas for youth ministry leaders and parents that help young people to “look beyond themselves and love their neighbors while they’re at home.”   

Pastoring in a pandemic: ways to care for your church and yourself

Usually open wide during this season of Lent and Easter, church doors are now closed and locked and signs are posted, requesting people not enter. The coronavirus pandemic has turned the world upside down, separating friends, families and faith communities. Social distancing is the new normal and church congregations are apart. How do we worship when we can’t be together? How do we fellowship? How do we minister? How can we offer pastoral care?

Hosannas and honks

Where there’s a will, there’s a driveway. And although this year’s Palm Sunday festival procession into an “upper parking lot” more closely resembled a line at a carwash than a celebration of worship, exigent circumstances call for extreme creativity, imagination and grace. And honks over Hosannas.   

One Great Hour of Sharing ministries provide support during the pandemic

In a world beset by disaster, hunger, and oppression, One Great Hour of Sharing (OGHS) is dedicated to aiding the millions of people who lack access to sustainable food sources, clean water, sanitation, education, and opportunity. Never has this been more prescient than in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. 

‘People delight in the feeling of making a difference’

Leaders of worshiping communities may be hesitant as they seek to bolster funding during a pandemic. But there are ways to do that by inviting people to do what they want to do anyway, the Revs. Jon Moore and Princeton Abaraoha told about 40 people participating in a Thursday webinar “Funding your Ministry in a Time of Crisis,” put on by 1001 New Worshiping Communities.

‘We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed’

For a Zoom gathering of about 65 people ready to hear Wednesday about doing intentional, authentic evangelism in the time of a pandemic, the director of Theology, Formation & Evangelism, the Rev. Dr. Ray Jones III, looked to one of his favorite biblical texts in Paul’s second letter to the church at Corinth: “We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair;  persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies.”