The coronavirus pandemic has created a wide variety of religion-beat stories — from empty local pews to the U.S. Supreme Court debating how many people can occupy local pews. And sometimes it feels like all roads during this crisis, for better or worse, lead to the internet.
Yes, we had lots of ground to cover in this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in).
Empty local pews have, in some cases, led to near-empty offering plates. Leaders in religious groups that were struggling before COVID-19 — look for closing congregations, seminaries, colleges and even cathedrals — are now hearing the demographics clock tick, tick, tick even louder.
We’re talking about huge stories, but they are also stories that are hard for journalists to cover, simply because they require information at the local, regional and national levels.
It was easy to cover local clergypersons as they learned to mount smartphones atop camera tripods and stream worship services to their locked-down flocks (as opposed to megachurches that already had cameras and massive websites). It was also easier to cover black-sheep clergy that rebelled against social-distancing guidelines than it was to report on the remarkable efforts of leaders in entire denominations and religious traditions seek ways for their people to worship as best they could within constantly evolving (and often hostile) government guidelines.
Journalists, of course, were also being affected by lockdowns and, in some cases, budget cuts. This was an equal-opportunity crisis.
Let me give you an example of an important story that everyone knows is unfolding right now. Consider this Baptist Press headline: “Pandemic division causing pastors to leave ministry, pastoral mentor says.” Here is the overture:
Brian Croft jokes that masks are the new “color of the carpet argument” in churches, with similarly poor outcomes. Pastors are resigning from the stress “kind of in a way I’ve never really seen.”
The founder of Practical Shepherding transitioned from fulltime pastoring to lead the shepherding outreach fulltime in January, pulled by a need for coaching and counseling that has steadily increased among pastors over the past decade.
Then came COVID-19.
