Getting Ahead of COVID-19: How Spiritual Leaders Can Prepare To Meet This Crisis
For the last few weeks, spiritual leaders have been hustling to meet the challenges right in front of us. We made the hard decision to cancel in-person worship. We scrambled to find ways to gather online. Many of us have leapt into action, working to meet emotional and physical needs of congregants and neighbors, even in the midst of our own trauma.
Every increase in the stay-at-home order has created a new wave of change. I know that Baltimore, where I live and serve, is about two weeks behind New York City, though I pray our crisis will be less severe. What can we do now to prepare for what’s coming? (You can learn more about the timing for your area through these projections from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.)
I’ve asked colleagues in New York for advice, and chatted with nurses about what would be helpful. I’m not an expert in disaster, but what I learned as a pastor who lived in New York during Hurricane Sandy is that you have to be willing to adapt, and adapt quickly. So I’ve put together some ideas to help us get ahead of this. We will learn together as we go.
This article does not address self care and balance, which is incredibly important in a crisis. I would reccomend these two articles from The Institute for Collective Trauma and Growth, these resources from LEAD on leading in a crisis recommended by Rozella Haydée White, and my piece, “Your Brain Won’t Work As Well.”
Create Strong Back-Up Systems
Many of our congregations are dependent on just a few staff and volunteers. In many cases, only one volunteer or staff person knows how certain neccessary work is completed. The pastor or the administrator may be the only one who knows how to log into the computer system.
This will be an unpleasant thought experiment, but imagine with me for a moment that 25–50% of your staff and congregants are not able to serve in their ordinary roles because of COVID-19-related events. We don’t just have the illness itself to contend with. While some staff or congregants will get sick, others will have to care for those who are ill (and it’s a serious responsiblity). Still others will become exposed and need to be quarantined at home, others will need to travel to be with realatives in need. Finally, the financial impact of this crisis has already put 6.6 million people out of a job, which may result in congregants moving away to live with relatives or finding work elsewhere.
I suggest creating a chart of all the necessary functions of your church, from administration to your food pantry to pastoral care (more necessary than ever during this time). Look for places where only one or two people are “trained in.” Does only one person have the login for Zoom? Do only two people have the keys to the building? Who knows how to send out the newsletter, and who can access emergency contact information for congregants? Your leadership can help with this process, and ensure that you’re adhering to your constitution and by-laws.
Develop a Method for Communicating Needs
Amanda Cutcher Meisenheimer, minstering at The Riverside Chruch in New York City, suggests developing a system (such as a shared, live document) to assess, cataglogue, share, and respond to need. While we won’t be able to fill every need, our congregations can work together to try and take care of each other.
Meisenheimer suggests including needs for food and medicine delivery, pastoral care, prayer, death rites and rituals, financial loss and childcare in our assessments.
Finally, ensure that your contact information for congregants is up to date.
Create a Network of Care with Small Groups
I’ve already seen pastoral care needs increase in my own community. Those who already struggle with physical illness, mental illness, or live in poverty are particularly hard hit. As the crisis intensifies, the needs will intensify too.
Many congregations have created phone trees, small groups, or have commissioned deacons to check in on each other during this time and offer support. This is a brilliant plan, and will be much-needed not only to make sure congregants are physically well and informed, but can provide spiritual and emotional care as well.
Remember that your deacons or “pod leaders” as we’re calling them in my congregation, need training and care to give care in a crisis. They also need processess to follow in case there’s an emergency. I conducted a simple training over Zoom with my pod leaders. I shared this “Pod Leader Guide” (which you’re welcome to adapt for your own context with attribution, as well as this always illumiating video on empathy with context from Brené Brown. Our pod leaders check in with me once a week over Zoom so that I can provide care to them, and I’ve started a group text with them in case anything comes up.
Finally, imagine, once more, that half of your pod leaders are not able to continue in their role. Can you easily tap other leaders and train them in?
Shore Up Your Resources
Take a look around you. What local resources do you have available? Pastor John Marten reminds us that if we don’t know what’s available to us, we can’t make use of it. If you don’t have one, make a quick resource list of the shelters, food pantries, counseling centers, etc., in your area, remembering that some might be closed during the COVID-19 crisis. If you have contacts some of these places, all the better!
Form a Clergy Support Network
Let’s imagine now that you’re the one who’s unable to work, as a result of illness or caretaking. Who is your congregation in relationship with who could carry forward leadership at your church in an emergency?
I would think about this as if you’re going on a sabbatical, and need to prepare the pastor who’s filling in. Create a document with all the necessary information presented in clear way. What do they need to know about your online worship? Which congregants have the most pressing pastoral needs, and should be checked in on?
Make arrangements now with at least three colleagues who can serve as back up to one another if one of you is unable to serve. Share your documents now, and talk thorough procedures. If you congregation is not already familiar with these clergy people, introduce them now, over zoom if possible, or with a picture in your newsletter.
These clergy groups can also serve as emotional and spiritual support to you. You might check in on zoom once a week, just to support each other and share resources. Creating groups that have a diversity of skills, resources, connections, and needs make for a stronger team. For instance, if a church with a strong young adult group partners with a church with lots of elders, the young adults (as long as they are not immunocompromised) may be deployed to deliver medicine or food to elders at home. Another clergy person may have connections at the city that come in hand for the team.
Make a Plan for Pastoral Presence During Emergencies
Perhaps the most tragic stories we’ve heard in this crisis are of people dying alone. This thought is unbearable for many spiritual leaders, who are called to be present with those who are ill, and minister to the dying.
Many chaplains are no longer allowed in-person visits, and in some cases, nurses may be too overwhelmed with medical needs to assist. I am hearing that some chaplaincy departments are purchasing additional tablets, to make video conferencing easier. Hospital Social Workers are also working hard to make online family visit possible. What might we do to make communication with loved ones simple to offer?
Take time now to work with your congregants to develop a communication plan, should a family member less able to use technology fall ill. Remember that policies in hospitals are changing quickly, and every area has different policies. Pastor Lura Groen called her local hospital chaplaincy office to learn what she could expect, how she could support their work, and to tell them she was praying for them.
My colleague David Norse Thomas suggested that congregants can be encouraged to create an emergency contact sheet in collaboration with their families, which they can print out and carry with them to the hospital.Marijke Sütter, a nurse in Baltimore, suggests printing several contact sheets and placing them, clearly marked, along with phone and charger, in a plastic bag. The sheets can be clipped to the patient’s chart or hung in the room.
The sheet should include simple instructions for contacting immediate family members and their spiritual leader, as well as passwords for the devise the patient is carrying with them. If possible, the sheet should include pictures of the patient’s medications (pictures give important details about the medications, including dosage, as well as pharmacy numbers) and they times they’re taken. If the patient is on methadone, the number for their methadone clinic should also be included.
Here’s an example:
EMERGENCY CONTACT SHEET
[Patient Name]
Please contact:
My daughter, [name] by facetime. Her phone number is …
My pastor, [name] by whatsapp. Their phone number is …
My church is [name of church]. To reach someone there call…
[If the phone is not in the plastic bag with the contact sheet] My phone is kept in the outside pocket of my purse. My charger is in the same pocket. The passcode is:
My regular medications are: __________ and I take them at [times]. They are located ______________.
Include photos of medications if possible.
Presence Through Objects and Voice
When technology is not available, we nurse Bren Carobini reported that one family member has been mailing in photos and letters, laminated, so that they can easily be disinfected and delivered to the patient. A plastic sleeve may also be acceptable, depending on your local hosptial.
Pack a small hospital bag with necessary items and perhaps a calming object such as a rosary or small bible. Pastor Cynthia Horn Burkert recommends bringing your longest charging cable, a battery pack if possible, and a binder clip to clip your charging cord to the sheet, as hospital outlets are often far away/behind you. (Nurses have communicated not to bring a large suitcase, but just a few personal items.)
Lura Groen is thinking of ways to make her voice available to congregants, even when they might not have a cell signal. A youtube channel with prayers for times of illness and death will allow patients to hear your voice, and the link can be included on the emegency contact sheet. You could also consider including familiar hymns from church.
These preparations can be approached with calm and a “just in case” attitude, so as not to provoke anxiety. Being prepared is one of the best ways we can provide care.
Denominations: Form Support Systems
Clergy will need support too. I suggest that denominational leaders designate chaplains to provide spiritual and emotional support to clergy. In addition, leaders might consider creating a COVID-19 task force, comprised of lay and ordained leaders with a variety of backgrounds and skills. Doctors, reporters, statisticians, folks with training in disaster response, hospital chaplains, tech experts, government workers, and military personnel would make good team members. Members should be “tried and true” leaders who we know well and whose judgement we trust.
Rozella Haydée White, a disaster chaplain and coach, encourages denominational leaders to reach out to fellow leaders in areas that have experienced diasaster. While COVID-19 is unlike anything we’ve experienced, she notes that leaders in these areas often have diaster response teams in place. We can learn form their experience.
Chaplains: Develop A Robust Network Now
Hospital workers in New York City are currently seeking volunteer chaplains from around the country to offer emergency remoate pastoral care to the ill. We should consider similar measures to provide care in our own contexts. Hospital chaplains can put out a call for trained volunteer chaplains to support the effort, and work to see that the technology and processes are in place to make remote chaplaincy possible.
Thinking Ahead: Plan for Post Trauma Care for Families, Medical Professionals and “Front Lines Workers”
When the immediate health crisis dies down, we will be left with trauma. Healthcare workers how had to decide who received a ventilator. Children who were not able to be at their parents’ side when they died. Mothers who had to give birth alone. Grocery store workers who were made to work without protective provisions. People who provided for their family, and now cannot. The list goes on. Pastor Carla Christopher shared that her congregation is creating trauma-based curriculum for Sunday School and Christian education. Perhaps our programs and offerings will all need to be tuned to trauma-based care as this crisis continues.
Spiritual leaders can think creatively together to offer trama-based counseling even outside our spiritual communities. We are trained in pastoral care, and can shift to provide care approrpaite to those who do not claim religion. Can we offer open counseling sessions in central locations at regular hours? Provide additional presence in collaboration with hospitals?
Final note: not all of us can take on all of the measures above. We each have our own work to do, in our own places. Trust one another to carry out the work, and we’ll all pitch in where and when we can. But it’s time to think differently, and think ahead. The coming months will, in many cases, be about providing the stability of regular worship to our congregants even while we prepare to move into traige mode when things get tough.
Disaster chaplain John Marten notes that we are aiming “for a C-, not an A+” in these circumstances. What we planned yesterday doesn’t work today. We need to do what we can, and know we’ll have to let a lot go.
If we never need to implement these emergency measures, all the better. But being prepared for COVID-19 prepares us for a variety of other disasters, connects us to our neighbors and colleagues, and helps our congregants feel safe in an uncertain time.
When COVID-19 hits, there will not be time to develop these structures. It will be too late. Preparing now will give us the best chance to offer compassionate care through this global diaster.
Further Resources
The Institute for Collective Trauma and Growth has knowledge and resources to share specific to the COVID-19 crisis, in addition to coaching, and trainings before, during, and after disaster.
Rozella Haydée White, disaster chaplain, coach, and author of Love Big, recommends the book Disaster Spiritual Care: Practical Clergy Responses to Community, Regional and National Tragedy, edited by Willard W C Ashely Sr. and Rabbi Stephen B Roberts. Purchase it on bookshop.org to support your local bookshop!
She also recommends these resources on the five stage of grief.
For more on leading in a crisis, see these resources from LEAD.
Finally, Rozella reccomends this webinar, “Ministry in Times of Crisis,” hosted by Cal Lutheran Congregational Relations.
