Covid and running churches in India
These past two years of the pandemic have undoubtedly been the most difficult of my 15+ years in pastoral ministry here in India. I became the lead pastor of our small urban church in 2009, and since then by God’s grace, we have become a cluster of four churches with about 600 members—many of whom come from different faith backgrounds. In May 2021, our church family was shattered by the deaths of four highly active and beloved church members in just over three weeks. In addition to this, almost all of our people lost at least one relative due to COVID, several of our members lost jobs or experienced pay cuts, many have struggled with post-COVID anxiety and panic attacks, and our children did their schooling online for 23 months straight. Every person in our church has been affected negatively by this pandemic in some way or another, and many have been devastated. As a church, it’s also been challenging to navigate the unchartered territory the pandemic led us into: not being able to me