Post-Pandemic Realities: How Will Churches Staff for Ministry in the Future?

Abstract

The Religious Workforce Project is a Lilly Endowment-funded effort to map the nation’s changing Christian religious landscape. A quantitative component identifies broad US trends, while our qualitative work focuses on Christian congregations in the Washington, DC metro area and surrounding counties, to understand how congregations staff to fulfill their missions, and to learn how congregational leaders understand the nature of their ministry today. In 2019–2022, we conducted case studies in 40 congregations in a variety of Christian traditions and contexts. For our analysis, we used a framework based on three societal trends that have impacted congregations: long-term member loss in churches, a skewed distribution in church attendance in which most people attend large churches while most churches are small, and a pandemic-induced movement from brick-and-mortar spaces to online spaces. This analysis revealed the consequential impacts of these three trends on congregations and their leaders, and some of the essential skills needed for effective church operation during this “wilderness moment,” a liminal time in the life of the church. We see these impacts not only as responses to external pressures but also as signs of internal reimagining. Understanding these dynamics is crucial for developing effective strategies for church staffing and for preparing future congregational leaders that can adapt to the future needs of ministry.

1. Introduction

The Religious Workforce Project was generously funded by the Lilly Endowment, Inc., whose goals included understanding how Christian congregations staff to fulfill their missions; the demographics of clergy leaders in congregational settings; and how clergy leaders understand the nature of their ministry today. The project began in 2019 and continued through June 2024, which included a generous one-year extension during a pandemic-induced hiatus.

The study included both quantitative and qualitative components. The quantitative component offers significant analyses of recent national data on characteristics of Christian congregations and their leaders. Our qualitative work focused on Christian congregations in the Washington, DC metro area and surrounding counties, because of proximity to the seminary that oversaw this project, to understand how they staff to fulfill their missions, and to learn how congregational leaders understand the nature of their ministry today. This paper analyzes data gathered from this more localized qualitative work and explores how churches are adapting their staffing models considering long-term decline, technological change, and the ongoing effects of the pandemic. The other project goals are addressed in some of our other reports.

Although this qualitative project does not produce a national, representative sample, it is not our desire to generalize findings to all Christian congregations in the United States. Instead, it was our intention to provide in-depth reporting to the Lilly Foundation of what we observed happening across Christian traditions that may be signs of changes in the ways that congregations staff for ministry. We believe that our findings provide interesting insights that can jump-start important conversations about what churches (at national, regional, and local levels) should consider as they plan for how they prepare people for church leadership for staffing models in congregations.

In 2019 through 2022, we interviewed 41 congregational leaders from a variety of Christian traditions and contexts within the DC metro area and surrounding counties, participated in their worship and staff meetings, surveyed them on budgets and staffing, and analyzed their websites and Facebook pages.

Although we were also interested in understanding how clergy leaders come to be where they are and what they experience in their roles, our unit of analysis was the individual congregation. We strove to include diversity by church size (as measured by average weekly worship attendance), context (we were careful to include a mix of urban, suburban, and rural congregations), and tradition or denominational affiliation. Our sample ultimately included 40 congregations in a variety of traditions, including Roman Catholic, non-denominational, Evangelical Protestant, historically Black Protestant, and Mainline Protestant churches.

To explore how churches will staff for ministry in the future, we noted how the congregations in our study were currently staffed. We asked congregational leaders about their typical weekly responsibilities and the challenges they encounter, and we asked whom they would hire if they were given a blank check. We also asked them what they thought were the greatest challenges facing their congregations over the next few years.

This approach, coupled with our understanding of three major societal trends that affect the American Christian religious landscape, suggested some consequential impacts on congregations and their leaders, and revealed some essential skills needed for effective church operation today and in the next several years. Understanding these dynamics is crucial for (1) developing effective staffing strategies that can help congregations adapt to the future needs of ministry, and (2) helping theological seminaries and other institutions that prepare candidates for congregational ministry to plan for the near future.

To better understand the context in which these congregational changes are occurring, we turn first to the existing literature on church decline and size characteristics, as well as known impacts on clergy leaders and congregations from the COVID-19 pandemic.

2. Three Societal Trends Affecting Congregations: A Review of the Literature

Three particularly important societal trends have led to dramatic long-term impacts in churches: (1) long-term church membership losses across all US religious traditions (Chaves 2017; Weems 2024a), which contributed to (2) a trend first identified by Mark Chaves in the late 20th century in which, of the Americans who attend church, most of them attend large churches, while most of the churches in this country are small churches (Chaves 2009); and (3) a gradual shift toward online business and organizational operations, greatly accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. We could have focused solely on the shift to online operations and what that meant for church ministry and how congregations staff for ministry, but it is hard to ignore these other societal trends that have also greatly impacted church ministry and staffing.

After we provide some background/context for these three trends, we will share how we observed them impacting the congregations in our study and how those congregational leaders believe their future staffing needs will be changing.

2.1. Trend #1: Long-Term Declining Membership and Attendance

Over the past several decades, researchers have documented significant changes in the American religious landscape. Mark Chaves (2017) has written extensively about the long-term decline in church membership and attendance across nearly all Christian traditions. While this trend was initially most visible in Mainline Protestant churches from the 1970s through the early 2000s, more recent studies have shown similar patterns emerging in Catholic and Evangelical congregations as well. Tim Keller (2022) has noted the decline of Evangelicalism, pointing to broader cultural and institutional shifts that have reshaped the role of churches in public life. Lovett Weems noted that although several Mainline Protestant denominations experienced a short-lived membership plateau in the 1990s, after 2001, the decline has resumed, and he cites evidence from national congregational data that his team analyzed recently (Weems 2024a).

Although there is declining religious participation across Christian traditions in the United States and most Western societies today, it should be noted that many congregations are still growing; the Faith Communities Today (FACT) 2020 survey showed that about one third of US congregations are growing and vital (Thumma 2021). While most of the Mainline Protestant churches were shrinking, many of their larger congregations had achieved enough of a critical mass to maintain their membership or at least minimize their losses. At the same time, at least until the early 2000s, most Evangelical Protestant churches were still experiencing growth, and among the largest churches today, most are Evangelical Protestant, and most megachurches are continuing to grow (Bird and Thumma n.d.). This phenomenon continues to fuel a second societal trend affecting the US religious landscape.

2.2. Trend #2: Though Most US Congregations Are Small, Most Americans Who Attend a Church Attend a Large One

In an online article published in 2009, sociologist Mark Chaves shared that through his years of religious research, he had discovered a paradox: most churchgoers in the United States attend large churches, but most churches are small (Chaves 2009). This trend had been identified earlier in the National Congregations Study in which Chaves was the principal investigator (Chaves et al. 2021), but in 2009 he argued that this dynamic has important implications for how clergy are trained and deployed. He noted that many seminary students come from large congregations and may be unprepared for the realities of ministry in smaller, resource-constrained settings.

Since then, the National Congregations Study has consistently shown that while most congregations in the United States are small, most people who attend worship do so in larger congregations. In the 2018–2019 wave of the study, the median congregation had 70 regular participants, but the average attendee worshiped in a congregation with 360 participants (Chaves et al. 2021). This pattern has remained stable across multiple waves of the study and is echoed in other national surveys. The 2020 FACT survey found that approximately 70 percent of worshipers attend congregations with more than 250 in weekly attendance, while about 70 percent of congregations report fewer than 100 in weekly attendance (Thumma 2021).

This skewed distribution of worshipers has important implications for congregational life and staffing. Larger congregations are more likely to employ multiple clergy and specialized lay staff, while smaller congregations increasingly rely on part-time or bi-vocational pastors. According to the Religious Workforce Project, the percentage of Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) congregations with multiple clergy declined from 15 percent in 2000 to 8 percent in 2018 (Kubichek and Weems 2024, p. 8). Similarly, in the United Methodist Church, fewer than 5 percent of congregations had multiple full-time clergy between 2000 and 2019, despite modest growth in the numbers of associate clergy during that period (Kubichek and Weems 2024).

The 2020 FACT survey found that 71 percent of congregations with 1500 or more in weekly attendance experienced growth in the five years prior to the survey (Thumma 2021). This trend suggests a continued consolidation of worshipers into fewer, larger congregations, even as the overall number of congregations declines. Unless there is a significant paradigm shift, this pattern is likely to persist.

One consequence of these two trends is a growing demand for part-time clergy leaders. Lovett Weems (2024b) has highlighted the increasing number of churches served by part-time clergy due to both financial pressures and changing expectations around pastoral leadership. Weems notes that these trends have led to a rethinking of traditional staffing models, particularly in smaller congregations where full-time clergy and support staff are no longer financially viable.

Another consequence of these trends may be that as future congregational leaders prepare for ministry, many will have come from larger congregations; however, because most congregations are small, the demand for new congregational leaders may be highest in small congregations, which newly ordained clergy may be ill-prepared to lead (Chaves 2009).

Before we further explore the implications of these long-term trends for church staffing, let us not overlook a more recent societal trend that has impacted congregations and how they staff for ministry: a technology shift that was slowly happening through the early 21st century but accelerated during the recent COVID-19 pandemic.

2.3. Trend #3: A General Movement to an Online Presence

It is well-known that the COVID-19 pandemic caused much of the United States (and much of the world) to change the way it operated beginning in early 2020, when most non-essential businesses were ordered to close their doors by local government officials in most states. This was a monumental event that lasted for at least several months, and possibly longer in some contexts, which we will hereafter refer to as the “great shut down.” Those of us who were fortunate enough to have jobs that could be carried out remotely took our work home. Remote working became increasingly popular, and many new online businesses sprang up. Many brick-and-mortar businesses were permanently shuttered as shopping went online.

In early 2020, churches across the country were among those forced to close their doors and move worship and ministry online. This “great shut down” brought both disruption and innovation. Research from the Hartford Institute for Religion Research found that many congregations adapted quickly, embracing hybrid worship models and expanding their digital presence (Thumma 2024c).

However, these adaptations also placed new burdens on clergy and staff, who were often required to take on unfamiliar technical and administrative responsibilities. In addition to these structural changes, the pandemic also intensified emotional and spiritual strain among clergy. A 2024 report from the Hartford Institute titled “I’m Exhausted All the Time” (Thumma 2024b) found that more than half of clergy surveyed had considered leaving ministry altogether. Many cited emotional exhaustion, increased administrative responsibilities, and a sense of isolation as contributing factors. These findings echo the experiences shared by clergy in our study, who described sleepless nights, moral distress over staff layoffs, and the challenge of sustaining community in a time of disconnection.

Other studies have explored how clergy have responded to these pressures through spiritual practices and intentional self-care. Research from the Duke Clergy Health Initiative, for example, has shown that practices such as mindfulness and structured rest can help clergy manage stress and maintain resilience (Duke Clergy Health Initiative 2017). These findings suggest that the future of church staffing may depend not only on financial and organizational strategies, but also on a renewed focus on the spiritual and emotional well-being of those who lead.

To understand the institutional and spiritual shifts that congregations experienced during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, we draw on the anthropological and theological concept of liminality. First introduced by Arnold van Gennep and later expanded by Victor Turner, liminality refers to a transitional phase in which individuals or communities are separated from a previous state but have not yet arrived at a new one. It is a space marked by uncertainty and disorientation, but also by the possibility of transformation (van Gennep 1960; Turner 1969).

Turner emphasized that these periods are not only times of disruption. They are also moments when the usual structures of society are suspended, and a different kind of social relationship can emerge. He refers to this as communitas, a mode of connection marked by equality, mutuality, and shared purpose. Communitas arises when individuals are stripped of their usual roles and encounter one another not through status or hierarchy, but as whole persons (Turner 1969).

Claudia Schnugg’s (2019) work on ArtScience collaboration offers a contemporary lens that deepens our understanding of liminal spaces. In her book, Creating ArtScience Collaboration, Schnugg explores how these “spaces in-between” allow for reflection, experimentation, and transformation. These liminal spaces are not just physical locations but cognitive and social environments where traditional roles and routines are suspended, enabling new ways of thinking and being.

This study builds on the extant body of research by offering a qualitative account of how Christian congregations in the Washington, DC metro area have experienced and responded to these trends. Through interviews, observations, and document analysis, we explore how churches are adapting their staffing models in light of long-term decline, technological change, and the ongoing effects of the pandemic.

While these studies offer valuable insight into national trends and institutional challenges, our research focuses on how these dynamics are unfolding in specific congregational settings. The following section outlines our approach to gathering and analyzing data from churches in the Washington, DC metro area and surrounding counties.

3. Methods and Sampling

While the quantitative part of the Religious Workforce Project offered a broader context for our questions about the state of the U.S. Christian religious workforce, this qualitative phase of the research allowed for a “deep dive” exploration of a relatively small number of congregations, which helped us develop an in-depth understanding of the experiences of and staffing at each congregation through interviews with congregational leaders; investigation of each congregation’s publicly available materials, such as church or denominational records and websites; and attendance at congregational services and meetings.

3.1. Sampling Frame and Procedure

To maximize sample diversity while still maintaining a degree of randomness, we attempted to create a random sample of 45 congregations stratified by the following:

• Congregational size: measured in terms of average weekly attendance and categorized as either small (50 or fewer), medium (51–300), or large (more than 300); these three size designations come from USA Churches.org (n.d.), but this size designation is a standard breakdown in the academic literature on churches;
• Christian tradition (Catholic, Mainline Protestant, Evangelical Protestant, historically Black Protestant, or Other Christian): the Other Christian category was intended to capture congregations that might be underrepresented in the other categories, such as independent churches and racial and ethnic minority congregations. With input from an advising team composed of well-published American sociologists of religion, we ultimately used this category to include a selection of Latino congregations. Some of these were Protestant and some were Catholic;
• Setting (urban/suburban/rural): our method of designating the setting is described below).

Just as the primary challenge in drawing a national sample of congregations is the lack of a reliable, centralized list of all US congregations, that is also a barrier for drawing a Washington, DC-based sample. Online directories of churches are unreliable for rigorous research because not all congregations are included. We wanted to include independent churches, and we did not have the time to field a survey of a representative sample of DC-area residents. Therefore, we utilized a geographic-based sampling frame.

First, we drew a random sample of Census block groups (sub-units of Census tracts, each containing between 600 and 3000 people to approximate a neighborhood) in the greater Washington, DC metro area: five block groups from the city; five from the DC suburbs; and five from the nearest rural area. Our research team then used Google maps to identify all Christian congregations within each of these 15 Census block groups. These congregations were compiled into three lists: urban, suburban, and rural, based on their locations.

From these lists of congregations, we randomly drew congregations in threes—one urban, one suburban, and one rural—and slotted them by size and tradition into a matrix that allowed us to create a sample that was as diverse as possible in terms of the above-stated criteria (size and tradition, as well as location). As we reached out to these congregations, if they did not agree to participate in the study, we continued repeating the sampling process and, in this manner, recruited approximately 30 congregations.

At that point, there were more Mainline Protestant congregations in the sample than we had intended to include, and our sample contained few rural, Catholic, or Latino congregations. Realizing we needed another strategy, we returned to our trusted team of advisers, who suggested we try snowball sampling to target the missing demographic characteristics.

To accomplish this task, we hired a Spanish-speaking Catholic research assistant, who did a wonderful job of recruiting Spanish-speaking priests and pastors, conducted the interviews in Spanish, and then translated the transcripts into English so that the whole qualitative team could participate in the analyses. As each interview was completed, the researcher asked for recommendations of someone else who might be interviewed, which resulted in several additional churches being added to our sample.

Another team member found that when they were unable to reach anyone at a church, attending worship services provided them with the entrée needed to make a connection with the congregational leader, who sometimes consented to be interviewed at that time.

3.2. Sample Characteristics

Our sampling goal for this project was to find 45 congregations to participate, with the desired mix noted previously. Although we were initially able to convince 45 congregations to join the study, a few were unable to complete their interviews and were removed from the project. In total, we recruited 41 clergy leaders to be interviewed from 40 congregations (one of the congregations had a husband-and-wife copastor team).

Table 1. Characteristics of the final sample.

Religious Tradition	Small	Medium	Large	Total
Evangelical Protestant (17.5%)	4	1	2	7
Mainline Protestant (37.5%)	3	10	2	15
Historically Black Protestant (17.5%) 1	3	3	1	7
Roman Catholic (7.5%) 2	0	1	2	3
Latino (Catholic or Protestant—20%)	3	1	4	8
Totals	13	16	11	40

¹ Although 7 of the congregations in the study were in historically Black Protestant denominations, 11 of the congregations in this study were predominantly African American with a Black congregational leader. ² Although we were only able to recruit 3 white or multi-cultural Catholic parishes for the study, an additional 4 Catholic parishes with Spanish-speaking leadership were included, for a total of 7; however, we categorized those 4 parishes as Latino.

shows the breakdown of this final sample by size and tradition. The sample breakdown by geographic location is as follows: 22 were suburban, 12 urban, and 6 rural. Though this is not an optimal sample (we would have liked to see an even distribution of participating congregations by religious tradition, size, and geographic location), we felt that there was sufficient variation to feel comfortable with proceeding with our analyses.

In these congregations, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 41 pastors. We were also able to conduct worship observations in all those congregations and meeting observations in most of them. All but one had websites that we were able to examine, and most also provided access to budgets and job descriptions. Of the 40 participating congregations, 33 also completed a questionnaire, providing additional information about their staffing and budgets.

3.3. Fieldwork

Between 2019 and 2022 (with a one-year hiatus in 2020 due to the pandemic), we conducted in-depth interviews with 41 clergy leaders representing 40 congregations across a range of Christian traditions, including Roman Catholic, non-denominational, Evangelical Protestant, historically Black Protestant, and Mainline Protestant churches. Our sampling strategy was purposive, aiming to capture diversity in church size (as measured by average weekly worship attendance), geographic context (urban, suburban, and rural), and denominational affiliation. We also intentionally included Latino congregations and leaders and noted that bi-vocational clergy were underrepresented in our sample, largely due to scheduling challenges that prevented them from completing interviews.

Data collection included semi-structured interviews, participant observation in worship services and staff meetings, an online survey about budgets and staffing, and analyses of congregational websites and Facebook pages. Interviews explored weekly responsibilities, staffing structures, perceived challenges, and hypothetical staffing decisions if they were to be given a blank check. These conversations provided insight into how clergy leaders navigated the pandemic, challenges they faced, ministry staffing wish lists, and how they envision the future of ministry staffing in their congregations.

3.4. Analysis

A team of researchers, all trained in qualitative IRB protocols, collected and analyzed the data. We began our coding using NVivo software but transitioned to Dedoose as the project progressed, which made collaborative coding more accessible for the entire team.

We coded and child-coded the data iteratively, refining our codebook through weekly team meetings in which we discussed, debated, and clarified the meaning of each code. This process helped ensure inter-coder reliability and consistency across the dataset. We continued coding until we reached thematic saturation and were able to answer the primary research questions guiding the study, as well as secondary questions that emerged from the data, such as impacts of the pandemic.

To support our analysis, we created a master spreadsheet that integrated data from interviews, observations, questionnaires, any documents provided by the churches, and online sources. This allowed us to build detailed profiles of each congregation and each clergy leader, including demographic, geographic, financial, and ministerial characteristics. The spreadsheet also helped us track trends in staffing, worship practices, and congregational challenges.

Conducting qualitative research across diverse Christian traditions required careful attention to language and context. Terms such as “deacon,” “minister,” or “ordination” carry different meanings across traditions, which affected how we coded and interpreted the data. To address this, we developed a glossary of terms and required all coders to consult it regularly. Our team’s religious and cultural diversity enriched the analysis but also required ongoing communication to ensure shared understanding and accurate interpretation.

We were in some ways fortunate to have begun our study before the pandemic began, because it allowed us to peek inside the inner workings of quite a few congregations as they were emerging from the “great shut down,” and making difficult decisions about their worship, ministries, and buildings. Although no one had yet heard of the COVID-19 virus when this project was in its infancy, as this project progressed, it became a salient topic of study whether we wanted to include it or not. In fact, we had to shut down our own project for a year, even after we had completed a number of interviews and recruited additional congregations for participation in the study.

When we were able to resume contact with these congregations, we were delighted to learn that, even in many smaller churches that were already struggling with low attendance and small budgets, congregational participation had continued and, in some cases, increased. In many cases, members increased their giving, and churches increased their community outreach services.

This observed trend was corroborated by a post-pandemic study (also funded by the Lilly Endowment) conducted by the Hartford Institute for Religious Research, “Exploring Pandemic Impacts on Churches” (EPIC), which found a trend of increased giving across the country (though the increased income of congregations has not kept pace with inflation) (Thumma 2024a).

In the next section, we provide details of the impacts we observed, not only from the pandemic, but also from long-term member losses in some of the congregations, and in the larger congregations, our observations about how they divide responsibilities among ministry staff members.

4. Findings: How We Observed These Societal Trends Impacting Congregations

Before we get into the impacts of these societal trends on staffing and on the congregational leaders in our study, we think it would be important to share how the congregations participating in our study fared overall during the pandemic. The churches in our qualitative study found resilience as they pivoted after the pandemic to re-think how they conducted worship, meetings, and educational activities. Most shifted to online services and virtual gatherings during the first year of the pandemic when restrictions prevented them from offering traditional in-person forms of worship.

During the “great shut down,” many congregations provided some form of virtual worship, either via online streaming or recording the worship and uploading it to a website or a social media account. After they were able to return to their physical worship spaces, many decided to offer both virtual and in-person worship, a term we often see referred to as “hybrid worship.” This allowed them to continue to reach those who had newly joined (virtually) during the pandemic, while also returning to traditional worship as well.

Most of the congregations in our study plan to continue offering hybrid worship. This trend was also corroborated by a 2024 report from the EPIC project, which found that 75 percent of congregations now offer online or virtual worship and most plan to continue doing so in the future (Thumma 2024c).

Some congregations have continued to use innovation and technologies in ways we had not observed in previous, pre-pandemic research, such as the use of QR codes on screens during worship to send people to online giving sites; or providing downloadable apps for receiving tithes, offerings, and donations; using online chats and/or texting to communicate during worship; using radio broadcasts; using more types of social media; and collaborating with other churches to increase their ability to offer online worship, Bible study, and other services. These innovations have been difficult to execute, but in many cases have helped these churches expand their reach to attract and retain younger participants, the homebound, and friends and family members who live in other parts of the country.

Congregations that survived often thrived, and as we emerged from the “great shut-down,” many of the clergy leaders we spoke with said that there was no way to go back to traditional ways of “being a church,” as they had experienced membership growth from expanding their worship services, study groups, and other ministries via Zoom and live streaming.

St. John’s United Church, a growing, medium-sized suburban Mainline Protestant church, received a grant to help them continue with their hybrid church model. This allowed them to install cameras and other equipment in the sanctuary, plus increase the hours of an administrative staff member to handle worship technology.

Alex, pastor at Open Hearts UMC, a large suburban congregation, talked about the mixed blessings of continuing to offer hybrid worship:

And then just the online piece. I mean, that’s every church, but I’m trying to really embrace it where I know other pastors who are fighting it. And so I’ve really talked to my folks about, we are not going to shame people for being online for worship. In fact, that is a valid and fine way to worship. And so we can encourage it. And people actually like it. People are going, “Hey, I like this.” I’m going, “Great. Then just worship that way. Come serve with us, come do other stuff in the community in person, but if you like worshiping online, God bless you.”

And then really trying to see how we form a really meaningful online community and how we prioritize that…Which means every [ministry] area has to be thinking about, “What are we doing next?” So it’s almost like two different churches. I mean it kind of feels like old contemporary traditional services and I want to make it so we never have…like, these are in contrast with each other…but rather we’re one church that…we do things differently…I think the mindset now is how do you be a full member [in the] life of our church when you [live far away and therefore] can’t ever walk in the building? And I think it’s possible but it definitely—you have to work at it and so that’s—I think we need just as much focus on figuring that out and seeing who those people are who would prefer that.

And it’s not just about worship. We have these race classes as part of this social justice [education] and all of them want to remain on Zoom because—they picked up more people who can actually take the classes than if we were in person. And so I think it’s across the board of how we’re going to do worship—or how we’re going to do church, so it’s interesting.

Some of the churches in our study returned to only offering in-person worship, especially Catholic parishes, because their theological beliefs encourage physically attending Mass. But many continued post-pandemic with hybrid worship, noting that for them, it was a pivotal moment. Annabelle, pastor at Trinity Lutheran, a medium-sized, growing suburban congregation, refers to it as a “wilderness moment”:

We are very much in the chapter of—let me think about how I want to—It’s almost the chapter of what’s next, standing on the edge of the—still in the wilderness. I don’t know. I have talked throughout the pandemic. Actually, not throughout the pandemic. The past couple of months, I have started talking to the congregation that I believe that we are in a “wilderness moment.” There you go. That’s what I call it, wilderness moment. I have been talking about how I believe that we are in a wilderness moment just as the people of Israel were in a wilderness moment long ago, that there is a strong pillar of cloud by day and fire by night that is leading us, but that we are going to a place that we do not yet know what it will look like, life coming out of the pandemic, into an intentionally hybrid church, into a church where you no longer have to live here to be a part of it, into a church that has taken the pandemic extremely seriously when your kid’s soccer team has not. I think we are standing in the wilderness. And God has big things that are coming. But we can’t yet see them…

…So, a lot of my writing and my preaching and my talking right now is about, when you’re in the wilderness, it’s always easier to go back, and that it’s always tempting to go back. And our human nature is to go back. And so, the leadership and I here have been talking a lot about how we’re not going back. We’re going forward. And that’s scary. But that’s our language. We talk a lot about that right now. Whether it’s our worship times or our sacred programs that we’re not coming back to, we are coming out of this to a different place. As a side note, one of the texts at my ordination was the Exodus passage. God could have led the people by the straight and narrow path of the Philistines. But they would have faced war and turned back. So, God led them. The phrase is, “the roundabout way of the wilderness.” So yeah, that’s where we are.

Congregations like Annabelle’s are reaching new people in other geographic locations that they would never have reached before. Would it make sense to suddenly exclude those new members? Of course not. Therefore, many congregations decided to continue offering hybrid worship services to include those who attend in person and those who attend virtually via live streaming or watching recordings. Many also continued to offer online study groups and committee meetings.

Hybrid worship and Internet-based communications require staff to be adept at both in-person and online ministry. Making the transition to hybrid worship often meant cross-training existing staff to handle various worship formats. The need for new skill sets in digital content creation, social media management, and online engagement became more prevalent. And they impacted church staff roles in a variety of ways: adding new technologies to the administrator role, adding new technology staff (paid or volunteer), and placing more burdens on clergy leaders (and to some extent, on other staff).

In this next section, we discuss what we believe have become the long-term impacts of these three societal trends for congregational staffing. We provide examples from the congregations in our study and how that affects their staffing models.

4.1. Impacts of These Societal Trends on Staffing for Ministry

Long-term decline has particularly affected the smaller, financially struggling churches in our study over the years, with budget cuts leading to reductions in staff or shifting of responsibilities among staff members. Many of these roles have been cut from full-time to part-time or eliminated entirely due to financial constraints, leaving some churches without adequate staff support. This section outlines the various ways we observed changes in staffing for ministry in the churches in our study.

4.1.1. Growing Demand for Part-Time Clergy

As noted earlier, many of the smaller congregations cannot afford to have full-time clergy leadership. As a result, a pattern has emerged among smaller congregations (those that started and remained small, as well as those that have shrunk over time): there is a growing need for part-time clergy (Weems 2024b). We observed this in some of our study congregations as well. A church might hire one part-time clergy leader or share them with one or more other congregations. Or they may join forces with another congregation to become a larger church that can consequently afford a full-time leader. Another option is hiring a specially trained lay person to provide leadership, though we did not observe any cases of that in the qualitative portion of our study, so we will not be discussing this option in this paper.

Within the qualitative component of our project, we did have a few cases to illustrate the trend of hiring part-time clergy leaders to replace full-time clergy leaders (Weems 2024b). Of the 41 clergy leaders we interviewed, 34 (about 83%) were full-time, paid positions. However, in one church, after our interviews were conducted, the full-time pastor left and a part-time pastor was hired. The other seven clergy leaders in our study were part-time.

Darryl, the part-time interim priest at St. Lawrence Episcopal Church, a small suburban congregation with an average attendance of about fifty people, is tired and ready to retire. He serves another part-time call in addition to this one and feels overwhelmed by the expectations of St. Lawrence’s members. It does not help that the previous full-time priest probably did more than they should have done to keep things running, which left the congregation too dependent on their priests. They are actively seeking a part-time priest but are concerned that they will not find one who is willing to serve in a part-time role.

St. Lawrence also has a volunteer lay leader who currently does all the administrative work, but Darryl would also like to hire someone to do that work, noting that the current volunteer

…essentially functions as an administrative leader. She does all the bookkeeping, all the financial accounting, does things like oversee the building, manages the rental contracts, [and] prepares the bulletins. I mean, somebody needs to be hired to do all that stuff, or pieces of it need to be taken care of. Because it’s like you can’t rely on volunteers to do all of that stuff forever.

Since we conducted the interviews, we have observed (via their website) a similar change at Westminster Presbyterian Church, another small suburban congregation. Bob, the former pastor whom we interviewed, was in his sixties, has since retired, and has been replaced with a part-time pastor who now serves two churches.

4.1.2. Staff Reductions or Status Changes

We noted that there was also a pattern of overall staffing reduction in many of the 40 churches in our study, primarily due to budget cuts after prolonged membership losses. The two most notable types of staffing reductions are replacing an outgoing associate pastor with a layperson or lay team (thus saving the congregation in salary and benefits costs but at the price of losing the expertise and experience of a trained clergy person) and replacing two or more specialist positions with one generalist.

• Replacing an associate pastor with a layperson or lay team:

St. John’s United Church was formed some time ago when two suburban Mainline Protestant churches merged. In the process, they sold one of the buildings and kept both pastors, but after a while with continued membership decline, they could only afford to keep one pastor, so a member of the congregation had stepped up to cover congregational care, in effect becoming an unpaid staff member. Her role “evolved into being an associate pastor,” noted Bryan, the current pastor, “but untrained. Before she retired, they did start paying her.” After her retirement, a committee was formed to take on the pastoral care, and Bryan is grateful for that, adding that “I got to come into a congregation that was used to doing pastoral care themselves.”

Sometimes the staff transition has a very positive outcome, though. Grace Lutheran Church is still a large suburban church, but it is declining. Pastor Iain noted during our interview that they “have a phenomenal care team. The [associate] pastor who used to do our congregational care retired…And we brought on somebody who’s a layperson, who’s doing a wonderful job…And actually, the congregational care’s gotten better.”

2.

Replacing two or more specialist positions with one part-time generalist:

Galilee UMC is a declining, medium-sized suburban United Methodist congregation with one pastor and several part-time staff persons. When Beth was appointed here, she was told that she would need to cut some staff. They had a full-time Christian education director whose hours were reduced to part-time, and whose role was changed at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic to become the tech person. That person had just left the staff when our interview with Pastor Beth was conducted.

The church had also previously employed a part-time congregational care person, who had left. They hired a new part-time staff person, who is able to preach, which takes some of the burden off Beth. But this new staff person’s primary role is what they refer to as “nurture ministries,” which includes pastoral care (or coordinating the volunteers who provide pastoral care). So, this new person serves as the Christian education director, an associate pastor, and a volunteer coordinator, but it is a part-time position. As Beth noted, the congregation is used to having staff do everything, and she is trying to help them through a culture shift in which more of the ministry is conducted by volunteer lay leaders.

Not all of the impacts of these trends are related to staff reductions, however. As noted earlier, many large congregations remain viable, and some are growing. This growth creates opportunities for these congregations to offer a more diverse variety of ministries, because they can afford to add ministry staff to plan and oversee them. We observe that they are often led by clergy and lay staff in specialized roles.

4.1.3. Creating Specialized Roles for Clergy in Larger Congregations

In lieu of having a more traditional ministry team that may have consisted of two or more generalist clergy leaders, with one of them as the “senior” in charge of the staff, the church’s leadership, and the management of the staff and schedule, we saw teams of specialized ministry professionals in large congregations. When a church has multiple clergy roles, the trend we observed is to create specialized job descriptions that might include the following:

• A senior clergy leader, who preaches, sets the vision for the staff and church, and provides overall leadership;
• An executive clergy leader, who handles the operations and administrative functions and manages the staff;
• A youth/young adult clergy leader, who ministers to youth and/or young adults, organizes youth groups and events, oversees volunteers, and may organize and lead specialized worship for this age demographic;
• A worship clergy leader, who plans, leads, and coordinates the worship services, including the technology and music aspects.

Because most of the very large congregations are Evangelical Protestant, this trend seems more likely in the Evangelical traditions, particularly the role of “worship pastor,” something we have not often seen in Mainline Protestant and Catholic congregations.

At Souls Harbor Baptist Church, a large suburban Black Baptist congregation, pastors (who may or may not be seminary-trained clergy leaders) are assigned to oversee volunteer teams who provide pastoral care. Pastor Claude explains how they are staffed for ministry:

We have a pastor on staff who’s focused on ministry with men. We have another pastor who’s focused on ministry with women. We have a pastor who focuses on the ministry of the children. And so those people, those pastors are the ones who are expected to lead the effort to minister to people in those different categories. But there is a team of non-paid staff, elders and deacons, who are a part of that team and are expected to help. But the pastor, himself or herself, doesn’t have to do all the visitation, doesn’t have to do all the praying, have to do all the—there are people who are sharing that responsibility.

Iain, the pastor we introduced earlier who leads Grace Lutheran, a large Mainline Protestant church, prefers a worship style and format, as well as a staffing model, that more closely resemble those found in large Evangelical Protestant congregations. But it is hard to make that happen within his Mainline Protestant tradition: Iain feels that seminaries and music schools are “turning out classically trained people” who are not trained to lead worship that explores the “breadth and depth of the musical experience of the Christian church.” He also feels that seminary students

…aren’t being trained in the leadership arts necessary for congregational leadership. And this whole other universe of skill sets that are now really helpful, if not necessary, is just not even a part of the conversation. So there are creatives in all of these environments who are already doing this, dabbling and figuring stuff out, but they’re doing it not because they’re being encouraged to by the seminary faculties…

…and so, he wonders where he would even look to find worship and music leaders to add to the church staff.

4.1.4. The Addition of Security Teams

Another interesting (and relatively new) role that we have observed is the security team, and it is not just in large urban churches. A 2020 article in Christianity Today noted that a Lifeway Research survey found that half of US churches now have armed security teams, and they are most likely to be in Evangelical Protestant settings (Earls 2020).

We observed this in our study as well. In Jeff’s church, Mount Hope, a small rural, independent Evangelical Protestant church, the security team is armed with concealed carry weapons, wearing headsets, and guarding all the doors to the church. If someone they do not know is approaching, they will say this into their microphones, so that the person monitoring the cameras is sure to get a look at the person.

Pastor Jeff worries that (even though the security team tries to appear inconspicuous) it may hamper their ability to appear warm and welcoming as a church:

[The congregation] would say they’re friendly; working on it. I think they think they’re more friendly than they are, which is the norm. But they definitely don’t get the idea of being overly gracious, not awful.

But I mean, we have a security team that I’ve never had at another church. There are literally three men that have concealed carry weapons. And they’ve even got little headpieces. They look like they’re greeting you at the door. But somebody’s watching all of the cameras and saying, “Somebody we don’t know is coming to door number one.”

And it was all in place before I got here. And it’s actually pretty odd because the doors are locked. I mean, I know the door you walked in. There’s another door where we have our handicapped people come in because it’s closer, and they don’t have to go upstairs. That’s locked. And if there is not a security person there, they just have to wait until somebody comes and opens the door because they’re so worried about security even though we’re not in downtown Baltimore. I don’t get it. So, there’s a lot of things that would stop people from feeling, I think, super welcome when they come through the door.

4.1.5. A Need for Church Staff to Have Technology Skills

Being the office administrator (typically a part-time or volunteer role in small churches today, from what we have observed) now requires technological skills for digital communications, in addition to traditional tasks. For example, an administrative office manager would previously have handled day-to-day operations and community outreach. Today’s equivalent of that person, who likely only works part-time today if it is a smaller church (and most churches today are small), now must also manage the church’s website, online newsletters, and the Facebook page where live streaming happens and/or worship recordings may be posted. Otherwise, they need to find a volunteer (or team of volunteers) who can handle these tasks.

When we interviewed clergy leaders, one question we asked was whom they would hire if we were able to give them a blank check. Brad, the associate pastor at First Presbyterian, a medium-sized suburban congregation, did not skip a beat with his reply:

So, we would hire a media person to do online stuff, whether that’s a media or tech person, someone who can do websites. And then I think we would also hire someone to help us figure out our hybrid technology. How do we do this hybrid worship thing well?

When a church could afford to do so, they may have added new staff roles such as technology director to assist with planning and overseeing hybrid worship. This person would typically oversee the worship technology team (paid and/or volunteer) who would handle worship planning, preparing slides and projecting them during worship, cameras, live streaming, recording, and editing. In addition, several hours each week may be spent in rehearsals to ensure that the various aspects of worship work together seamlessly.

Annabelle at Trinity Lutheran, which is the growing, medium-sized suburban congregation in a “wilderness moment” mentioned earlier, was able to add an audio and video producer for weekly worship during the pandemic. Pastor Marcus, who is a part-time, bi-vocational pastor at Pilgrim Baptist, a medium-sized urban church, hired a tech director and a media assistant. Pastor Clarence at Maranatha Baptist Church, a small urban congregation, hired a family member to help with technology. He explained that he felt fortunate to have someone available to step up quickly:

Well, with Zoom, one thing that we ended up doing was creating what we call a production team, which is our assistant minister, myself, and my daughter—who’s [a college student]…So, she kind of helps to do stuff behind the scenes, so we were able to figure out that.

The skill sets required for these people to take these roles often come with salary expectations that exceed what many churches can afford. Iain, whom we introduced earlier at Grace Lutheran, shared that it is frustrating to need a full-time tech person when you really cannot afford one:

We actually need a full-time person whose whole job can be organizing the media production. He doesn’t have to do it all, but just catalyzing it, planning it out based on the church calendar and themes and then making sure people are recording and the pre-production stuff is happening. And then we can use, like if we don’t have to have a sanctuary choir for [each campus] we can have one massive sanctuary choir, and whatever they produce together in either environment can be used in either environment for the glory of God. I mean, that’s part of where this goes. It makes us stronger. There’s no more “us versus them.” We just have a phenomenal contemporary music band. That’s one combined thing and combined choir and all of our worship. We’re moving towards more of a hybrid worship style anyway. And, yeah, yeah, that’s where this is going. And it would be wonderful to have one person—we need to have one person who’s just riding herd on all of those pieces. And [this one part-time guy on our staff] has the ability…he has the ability to do that…I think we’re growing that person in-house. We just can’t afford him.

Similarly, Pastor Troy, the solo pastor at Cornerstone Church, a small suburban, independent congregation that meets in a public school building, spoke of the need to add technology staff as their greatest current challenge:

Okay, we need an AV person like nuts, like crazy nuts. That would be the first person I would hire. In fact, we’re trying to hire a part-time person; we can’t find anybody. Our AV is a nightmare and it’s overwhelming. We used to live stream. We’re not live streaming now because we can’t get on Facebook because the Wi-Fi in the school blocks it. So, we’re desperate for AV.

Some churches are “winging it” with volunteer technology teams. Mia is the full-time pastor at Faith Presbyterian, a medium-sized (and growing) suburban congregation. She has a paid administrative person to run the church office but is grateful that so many volunteers have stepped up to help with hybrid worship: “The tech staff in the sanctuary, with going to hybrid worship, is mostly volunteers, pretty much all volunteers.”

Pastor Jerry at Canaan Baptist, a small urban congregation, talked about whom he would hire if he had the funds:

I think a young adult pastor, minister, savvy in digital media. Yeah. I think that would be the first. A close second would probably be someone with music, a music background. But yeah, I think we’re pretty woeful when it comes to—I mean, we just got approval to do Zoom a month ago. All through COVID, we were—we’ve been using our cell phones for service, we’ve been using Facebook, but we haven’t had that kind of technical expertise to guide us. So, someone with that kind of skill set would be a real blessing to us.

Pastor Vernon has a similar wish list for Lighthouse Baptist Church, a medium-sized urban congregation: “[I would] hire someone to do our audiovisual, cyber ministry. So, someone who could take control of the cyber ministry, and hire an outreach person to coordinate our outreach ministries.”

In some of the congregations in our study, to make room for hiring a technology person, a more traditional role was eliminated, reduced from full-time to part-time, or combined with some other role. If a congregation is fortunate, they have found someone to volunteer, or who is able to divide their time between two roles (for example, music leader and tech person). In some cases, though, the clergy leader has been required to add learning technology skills to their already overloaded list of responsibilities, which we will talk about in the next section.

4.2. These Societal Trends Have Created New Burdens for Clergy Leaders

Clergy leaders were already taking on added responsibilities before the pandemic due to membership losses, so going into the pandemic we were already seeing significant clergy burden and in many cases burnout throughout the United States (Thumma 2024b). Among the 40 congregations in our sample, a common theme emerged: clergy leaders are increasingly stepping into roles that were once filled by someone else—a retired senior clergy person, an associate clergy leader, administrative staff, volunteers, or specialized personnel. The pandemic added to this burden by requiring clergy leaders to acquire technology skills, provide more pastoral care and mental health counseling than before, take on additional administrative tasks, and engage more with their congregations and their surrounding communities. Many of the clergy leaders in our study did all of this while facing unusual emotional and mental stress and increased uncertainty about the future.

These added responsibilities, particularly in smaller congregations, alter the nature of pastoral work and contribute to higher workloads, stress, and, in some cases, burnout. Clergy leaders frequently reported that they now manage a range of duties, including office administration, community outreach, facilities oversight, and technological responsibilities. And sadly, in a few of the cases that we observed, consistent with Weems’ findings (Weems 2024b), they do it all on a part-time salary or have a full-time job outside the church and receive a part-time salary or, in a few cases, no salary, from the church or churches they serve.

4.2.1. From Two Pastors to One

In a few of the congregations in our study, downsizing involved a decision to not replace a full-time clergy leader when they retired or left. Instead, the remaining clergy leader simply took on the work of two pastors. This type of transition saves the congregation money but places an undue burden on the now solo clergy leader, who may not have been prepared for such a transition.

This trend potentially signals a broader shift in pastoral roles, where clergy members, often trained primarily in theology and pastoral care, are now expected to juggle both spiritual and operational leadership. These additional responsibilities not only consume time but also place clergy leaders in the position of managing crises—such as unexpected repairs or emergencies—that were previously outside the scope of their role.

For example, Mia, whom we introduced earlier, had been the associate pastor at Faith Presbyterian, a medium-sized suburban congregation. When the senior pastor retired, the congregation decided not to replace him but keep Mia as a solo pastor. Transitioning to solo pastor has been hard for her:

[I was] the associate pastor for Christian Formation and Family Ministry…But it’s changed a lot in the last three years or maybe even more. But naturally with COVID and the retirement of a long-term pastor, and just it being a smaller church, I pretty much have experienced it all. Which is, I guess, kind of unusual as an associate pastor. I’ve had to fire someone, I’ve had to—yeah. I’ve had a person leave in a way where they just dropped a bomb and walked away, kind of situation. I’ve done building renovations and emergency stuff. And yeah. All kinds of stuff.

In Catholic parishes, it appears that the role of parochial vicar, which is an associate or second priest, may be disappearing. Father Antonio, whom we introduced earlier as the parish priest at Iglesia Catolica Santa Ana, was excited that they were able to have a parochial vicar. He noted that in recent years, that role has largely disappeared: “I should say we’re the only parish in this county, and for several parishes into the neighboring counties, that has a parochial vicar.”

According to Father Antonio, the only reason they have a parochial vicar is because they have a Latino ministry and their diocese has an exchange agreement with a diocese in another country in Central America to send a parochial vicar there, and to receive a parochial vicar to serve in a US parish at the same time. An additional burden for Father Antonio was that he had just been assigned to be the administrator for a neighboring parish that did not have a priest, in addition to his numerous responsibilities in his own parish.

4.2.2. Increased Administrative Work

In many smaller churches, clergy leaders now oversee office management duties such as scheduling, communication, and financial oversight—tasks that would have traditionally been handled by administrative staff. This shift often results in clergy leaders spending substantial amounts of time on tasks unrelated to spiritual leadership.

For example, Troy, whom we introduced earlier as the pastor at Cornerstone Church, a small, declining suburban independent Evangelical Protestant church, explained that they have downsized the staff, sold the building, and moved into a local public-school building for worship. He had been grateful for their full-time “ops director” associate, who had helped them through the process of selling and moving before he left to plant a new church. This left Troy in the role of solo pastor with the additional burden of administration, which he had not had to deal with before. He said it adds at least five hours a week to his already busy role.

But this loss of clergy leaders does not only affect small congregations. Souls Harbor Baptist Church, which we introduced earlier, is a large suburban multicultural church that is maintaining its membership numbers, though Claude, the senior lead pastor, says that member attendance and participation have been declining. After they recently lost an associate pastor, he has taken on too much of the work that should be carried out by committed church members. He shared the following:

I think at this point in time I’m too involved with administrative things, okay? We were working towards putting in place a structure that required less and less of me in the ministry and stuff. But I find, at this point, I’m still too involved and too many questions are still being asked of me…I want to get to a place where people are confident enough in their own decisions that they don’t have to necessarily consult me as much as they do.

And we did have an administrative pastor, but we [no] longer have one. And so I find myself once again taking care of stuff that he was taking care of, or at least he should have been taking care of. That’s at the local—and I think even at the international level. I guess I need to work myself out of a job, so to speak. I don’t [need] to be as involved, but I still find myself…being consulted on decisions that I believe they’re capable of making. But we’ve got to work on that.

Father Miguel, the solo priest at Iglesia Católica Santísimo Sacramento, a large suburban Catholic parish with an average weekly attendance of 1000, described how his responsibilities had expanded significantly upon assuming the role of pastor:

So now here I am the pastor. I’m the only priest. So obviously not only do I have to do the Masses and take care of the people and the groups, but now I have to take care of the finances…If something breaks, [people say,] “Hey, who’s going to fix this? Who do we have to talk to?” So my role now has changed. I have to read a whole bunch of emails that they send me, and I have to be on top of that. So now there’s a little bit more of the administrative part that I didn’t have to do before.

When asked if there was one thing he would change about his role, Father Miguel had a quick answer:

If I could change one thing about my work, I guess, I would love to do less of a desk job, less bulletin, the email. There’s so many things that other people could do that they don’t really require my help.…Things that really take a lot of time over your day. So, yeah, it would be great if I could kind of be able to delegate some of that to somebody else.

Mary, the full-time solo pastor at Salem United Methodist Church, a medium-sized suburban congregation that has continued to shrink in recent years, worries about the congregation’s future. She said that their lovely building feels like “a coat that’s five times too large,” and laments that they have had to make staff reductions:

I’ve lost my admin person—she used to be here five days a week. Now, she’s here two. When I say “lost her,” I certainly have lost her but—she can’t do the level of minutia that I used to ask her to do. Some of that has come back to me. Some of that takes some of my time as well.

During the pandemic, the burden on clergy leaders from past staff reductions was felt more strongly, noted Darryl, a part-time Episcopalian priest whom we introduced earlier. He had been brought in to replace a full-time priest, who had already assumed many of the administrative tasks due to staff reductions when she was there. Now Darryl’s part-time role included the full-time administrative and spiritual tasks, plus additional burdens due to the pandemic, at a time when volunteers just did not come forward to help out:

And the pandemic has made it worse. I mean, because it’s hard to spread out those jobs and get together to coordinate who’s going to do what, and…the last priest we had, she was full-time and she just took over lots of the roles that would be volunteer roles. I mean, she did a lot of the Altar Guild stuff, she did the bulletins. When she left, there was nobody. It was like, we not only lost the priest, we lost a whole lot of things. And as I’ve taken on more and more to get us through—I mean, I think of it as just getting us through this time, but I know that at the end of this time, getting other people to jump in, and know what needs to be done, and to take on some of those roles, and many of our parishioners are getting older—I mean, there’s only more things that are going to end up on my plate, not less.

4.2.3. Increased Pressure for Clergy Leaders to Learn Technology Skills

In nearly all the congregations in our study, the rise of digital engagement, particularly accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, has placed another significant burden on clergy leaders. As churches have increasingly embraced online worship and virtual community engagement, clergy leaders have found themselves responsible not only for sermon delivery and congregational care, but also for managing and maintaining the digital infrastructure of their churches, unless they are fortunate enough to have a technology staff member to do it. And with the downsizing we have observed, only a few could afford to add a technology person to their staff.

Pastor Clarence, whom we introduced earlier at Maranatha Baptist Church, remembers when they had to suddenly close the church doors in 2020 and take their church services and meetings online:

It was scary, especially when we couldn’t do the conference line. But then we had to turn that frown upside down and say, ‘You know what? Both Jasmine and I work in the corporate world. We use Zoom for our business meetings, so, hey—Last night, we started using Zoom before a lot of other people did, because we did it in our regular corporate jobs. But then we just had to try to figure out how to massage it or to customize it, adjust it, because obviously, the way you do it at work is not how we do it now. Today you shared a document. So, we’re used to just sharing documents but then when we share the actual videos and everybody’s bandwidth was dropping, so we had to change it to say—okay, we’re going to play this song and then Jasmine creates a PowerPoint scripture to show up so people can see. Then we have an older congregation that doesn’t necessarily know how to dial into the computer, so we purchased the part where they can dial in by phone. So those are things that had to evolve. That’s why we read the chats because not everybody is dialed in by the computer. So, we can incorporate the rest of the congregation; they can be on the phone but have the same experience because the worship leader is reading the chats.

Mary, pastor at Salem UMC, whom we introduced earlier, talks about her typical week, which now includes the tech script for Sunday worship:

In the morning, I might do things, like begin to outline my sermon for the weekend. There’s also the reading for the sermon. It’s happening during the week. So let me say I might spend a couple of hours some day—it’s usually not Tuesday; it’s either Wednesday or Thursday—reading in more detail for the sermon. Just looking at and thinking about where I might go. And a lot of times, at that point, I have a general idea where I’m going, but it’s still [undeveloped]. Okay. So, and then Friday, final approval of things, like the slides for something we do. We’re not a church that has a screen. But when Zoom came into my life, slides became a part of my life, too. I also do a tech script that…I have to, just so that the people who are operating the magic while I’m trying to just preach and do that sort of thing are, “No. Okay, go here. Go there,” that kind of stuff.

Jeff, pastor at Mt. Hope, whom we also introduced earlier, shared that he had always wanted to learn more of the technologies for worship, and the COVID-19 pandemic kind of forced his hand. But it was a huge time-consuming thing to pick up at a time when everyone was already so tired:

…I had always had it on my list that I wanted to learn how to use Apple Movie Maker, one of the Apple programs that you used to create videos. And I could never find time. But guess what, there was time in COVID. And it needed to happen. And so to produce—I mean, I was preaching and producing, doing all the work for everything on Sunday to get out to everybody because you couldn’t be with anybody else. So it would take 60 h a week to put a worship together.

Now, of course, you weren’t going anywhere else. So I guess it was okay. But it was frustrating because roadblock after roadblock—and it’s kind of interesting. Frustrating goes hand-in-hand with—sometimes. It’s also kind of exciting. Like I like getting to the root of a problem. And so it can be rewarding. But the fact that you have to put in so much time and so much effort to get to the root of the problem, to come up with a solution, it gets very frustrating after a while because if you’re doing that, then you can’t be doing all the other things. Then you’re not visiting people. Then you don’t have enough time to do all the worship prep.

Iain, whom we introduced earlier, pointed out that he spends a lot of time doing what was a new term to us: “ministry production”:

Iain: …“probably another 25% of my time is spent in ministry production. And that’s the right language now.”

Interviewer: “Okay, right.”

Iain: “Ministry production, so that’s vlogging, communications.”

4.2.4. Increased Need for Engagement with the Congregation and Surrounding Community

Another area where we saw clergy leaders assuming greater responsibility was in the coordination of community outreach and social justice initiatives. As some churches in our study faced staffing reductions, clergy leaders were increasingly involved in running or directly managing mission projects, food banks, and local outreach efforts. This expansion of duties arises from a combination of reduced staff and heightened community needs, placing additional pressure on clergy to take on roles typically filled by dedicated outreach coordinators or volunteers.

Such responsibilities, which include managing logistics, coordinating volunteers, and addressing unforeseen community needs, take up significant amounts of time and can divert the clergy leader’s focus from primary ministerial functions, such as sermon preparation, spiritual counseling, and leadership. While outreach and social justice programs are central to many churches’ missions, the increasing administrative and operational demands in these areas can overburden clergy.

Pastor Raul used to be a Catholic priest in South America but joined the Lutheran tradition when he arrived in the United States. He is the part-time pastor at Iglesia Luterana Cristo Rey, a very small Latino congregation that is a ministry of a suburban ELCA congregation. Raul shared that he gets up very early three days a week to minister to local immigrants as they wait to see if they can find work for the day. Raul does it because it is a worthy cause and no one else is doing it in their community:

Basically three days a week I am at the parking lot at 5:30, 6:00 a.m. giving food and hot beverages all day. I’m doing summer, I’m giving them cold water. 6:00 a.m., I’m giving them cold water, t-shirts, hats for the sun, gloves for work. Sometimes as well—[he gestures at the sun and pauses, searching for the right word]…

Interviewer: Umbrella?

No, this cream.

Sunscreen?

Sunscreen.

Interviewer: I see. I see. Yeah, it’s a long day…That’s a lot of dedication.

It’s worthy.

Similarly, Pastor Lamont, who leads two small historically Black Protestant urban churches, which together comprise a half-time position, recognizes that the pastor is often called to go above and beyond:

So, in my context, at any given time, if you follow me, I’m the pastor. I change the light bulb. I take the garbage out. I answer the phone. I’m out in the community. So, we wear a lot of hats.

Pastor Vernon, whom we introduced earlier at Lighthouse Baptist Church, a growing, large urban congregation, talked about their ministry to the unhoused, and despite the extra work, he feels the intangible rewards of serving the community in this way:

From this past week…we have a young man, and this young man has been homeless for a year. [This] same time last year he was sleeping [in the park]. He talked about how the wind would blow him—the trash can blow upon him and hit him in the head. And so he was just tired of it. He’s been homeless for the past year. We’ve been working with him, [through our local homeless ministry]. And just last Friday, he finally moved into his own place. So we’ve been able to put him in a residence and I rented a U-Haul yesterday, went to a member’s house. They had a bed, they had a table, they had chairs. My back is still sore, but helping this man who was formerly homeless [was priceless]. We put the bed in their living room. They told me, “Pastor, haven’t slept on a mattress in over a year.” Satisfying knowing that through hard work of the church we’re able to help someone who sees no hope; now they have their own place and they can lay their head down on a mattress and on a pillow and see he looks much better…So the tangible work of helping other people…in the community where I am to find [them] shelter, to find food, that’s always very satisfying because you see the transformation.

And Pastor Jeff, whom we introduced earlier, shared that at Mt. Hope, a small rural independent congregation, the congregation is not willing to reach out to the community, so it falls on the staff to see it through:

We’re trying to reach the community, that means the pastors and maybe a couple of the leadership. But the rest of the church, they don’t really care about reaching the community. They kind of say they do. But really putting effort into it, it’s really between the associate pastor, and myself, and her family. We’re making things happen right now to try to reach the community.

For some, the pandemic “shut down” led to increased ministry activity to keep the congregation connected, which also added to the clergy leader’s burden. For example, at Principe de la Paz (Iglesia Luterana), a suburban Lutheran congregation with a small Latino-embedded ministry, Pastor Maria, who serves full time, told us about extra activities they were doing to stay connected because of the pandemic, and how exhausting it can be to keep coming up with new content for parishioners on top of other responsibilities:

The only two important activities we are doing are prayer and Bible studies, at the moment. Everything changed with the pandemic, and we have activities that are, we are told to tell you, temporary. Like right now during Lent, we decided to have forty days of prayer, and we have been gathering a group at 5:00 or 5:30 in the morning to pray in the sanctuary. And another group connected by Zoom at night. Twenty of those days I also did Lenten devotionals that I posted on Facebook, but, in the end they were very difficult to do because I was already very exhausted. I decided that we are going to focus on the two prayer services where I also do Lectio Divina. Because it is not only prayer, but reflection in the word, and we pray as a team. So, preparing that every day for both groups are things that happen from time to time.

But that time just had never been as long as forty days as this time…I mean, we do these things; we do Bible studies just for women; we have had studies just for married couples. So, we have these seasonal activities and they’re not permanent.

In several cases, we noticed that congregations had been pooling resources with community organizations or other congregations during the height of the pandemic to meet community needs for food, shelter, and other resources. Nikki, who co-leads Hope Collaborative Church with Lamont (whom we introduced earlier), also leads another small urban congregation, Memorial UMC:

On Wednesdays, we serve the community [surrounding Memorial UMC]. We have community meals, from 12:00 to 1:30…And we have a clothing closet upstairs and a pantry. And what we do is we try to make sure we have dialogue. Sometimes we plan to have dialogue or resources from the community come in and talk to the community that’s eating. We feed probably about 40 to 50 on Wednesday. And we call it a community meal because we don’t want to say we’re feeding the homeless. We want to make sure we’re intentional about making sure everyone has a safe spot and not marginalized in any way. So we have a community meal. So in that meal, police officers, postal workers, contractors show up; anyone that’s in there, unhoused people, everybody comes and eats. And we have partnered up with the National Church Campus Kitchens because they had so much resources they could give it away. So we worked with them so they provided the food and we served.

4.2.5. Increased Demand for Pastoral Care and Mental Health Counseling

Annabelle, whom we introduced earlier, is the pastor at Trinity Lutheran, a growing, medium-sized suburban church. She shared that she wished she had received more training in pastoral care during her preparation for ministry and for the pandemic:

And right now, in the work that I’m doing now in mental health, I would have been far better with a couple semesters in basic psychology, mental health, crisis management, those kinds of things. The Bible’s nice. The Bible stuff is nice. I like the Bible. I mean, I became a pastor, right? I get excited about that. But that’s not where people’s current needs are.

During the pandemic, those who had already felt adept in this area still reported feeling overwhelmed by the sheer volume of people who needed additional pastoral care at a time when they were already facing personal burdens. Father Matteo, the solo priest at St. Gabriel Catholic Church, a large urban congregation, explained this additional burden:

Many members of my family have been sick, and then a lot of people that I know have asked me to attend to them as well, just for whatever reason. Right now, for example, I’m going to visit this young man who is dying. I don’t know what’s going on with their parish, but when someone’s dying you don’t have time to tell them: “Go to your parish.” It’s the time to be present and help them with what’s necessary. And I have them as well on top of my daily activities here in the parish.

4.2.6. Clergy Leaders Are Taking on the Added Burden of Facilities Management

Clergy leaders, especially those serving smaller congregations, are often responsible for the management and maintenance of church facilities. This includes overseeing building repairs, coordinating maintenance schedules, and even ensuring safety and security protocols are followed. These duties, traditionally assigned to facilities managers or specialized staff, often fall to clergy members in smaller congregations who are already stretched thin by other administrative tasks.

Annabelle, the senior pastor at Trinity Lutheran Church, described earlier, shared with us that she found facilities management to be a real issue:

I joked that I felt called to be a pastor before I knew what pastors did all day. And while you spent the morning with the cancer committee, I spent the morning with a plumber discussing the finer points of urinals…he…handed me a flashlight and said, “Look down this urinal and then describe to me [what you see] in graphic detail.” No.

And while Annabelle’s story may seem funny to us, it is a common story. Monica, the associate pastor at Iglesia Episcopal San Cristobal, a Latino ministry within a large suburban Episcopal congregation, shared this quip: “Well, I think—this is less me and more my rector, but she gets pulled into really mundane things, like how the toilet paper dispensers are working. You know”? [laughter].

But all bathroom humor aside, taking care of an older church building can be serious business as well, as we learned from Father Matthew, who leads Immaculate Conception Catholic Church, a medium-sized and shrinking rural parish. Fr. Matthew shared his frustration at having to maintain a building and be in charge of…well…everything. And these high expectations of him come with very little help from staff:

One of the biggest frustrations I think of a small staff and of a pastor who’s running a church and a mission is the facilities. And so right away, you are given the keys to the kingdom and you’re in charge of everything. You have to know to make decisions and get contracts reviewed and you have a lot of phone calls with contractors and businesses to get them to come and look at stuff and all that. So right away, one of the frustrating things is that you are understaffed when it comes to facilities and maintenance. So, you’re kind of hands-on. You can be hands-on so that the facility goes according to the code, or you can let it go. But you don’t really have an option because you need it to be clean and you need it to be maintained. So that’s kind of frustrating.

Elizabeth, pastor of Holy Cross, a medium-sized urban Mainline Protestant congregation, did not speak directly to the issue of being expected to handle the building maintenance, as much as the social pressure to make it a priority in her role as a church pastor. Holy Cross is located in a historic neighborhood in Washington, DC, and has a rich history of social justice ministry in the neighborhood. Elizabeth feels a lot of pressure to preserve and maintain the building because of its historic significance. She came to this church not understanding that being the pastor of a church in that kind of setting would come with expectations from not only the church and its members, but also from the community. She noted that “when you have a historic building…I think that there has to be preparation for what that means; it’s one of your biggest assets.”

4.2.7. Increased Emotional Burden on Clergy Leaders

The pandemic was a very stressful time for everyone, and in some cases, the additional burden it placed on clergy leaders deeply affected their mental health. One of the clergy leaders we interviewed was Annabelle, the Lutheran pastor whom we introduced earlier. When asked, “What do you wish others in the congregation knew about your work?” Her reply was as follows:

How much sleep I lose over them. My care for these people runs deep. Their care for me and my family I also believe runs deep, but I lose a lot of sleep. I toss and turn over them, over their problems, their challenges. But I know what’s happening in their life over this church that I feel I have been entrusted to faithfully run financially well and staff while I lose a lot of sleep. I wish they realized that.

Father Diego, solo clergy leader at Iglesia Catolica Santa Maria de la Paz, a large urban Catholic parish, lamented that the administrative work is emotionally difficult, and the pandemic made that even harder:

The responsibilities are always to take care of the staff. Many of them are parishioners, and they worship here. It’s not easy to kind of reconcile, but I see them as brothers and sisters. And at the beginning it was hard with the pandemic. I have to let go of some people. And also the work of administration, to judge, to see who is feeling to be here, too, and also to each one of them, it’s not easy to handle people when you have a responsibility…yeah human resources. When you have responsibility over them, when they are wondering what will be their salary, what will be these things…I was not trained to fire people. I was not trained to fire someone.

4.2.8. An Uncertainty About the Future

Returning to Pastor Iain at Grace Lutheran, we observe how he laments that, although they got through the pandemic and learned how to produce hybrid ministry, the hard truth is that the congregation is still declining, their income is still dropping, and they will not be able to sustain it for long unless something drastically changes:

None of us [had] the skill sets necessary for doing the kind of ministry this moment is calling for. We don’t know how to be on television. We don’t know how to be on digital devices. We don’t know how to speak to a screen. We’re still trying to fit ourselves into a pre-COVID box and just add some digital elements on top of it, rather than realizing that the environment calls for a whole different way of inhabiting the space.

So I actually feel between myself and the team that I put together, we’re actually staffed for that, but I don’t know given the vector of the giving of the church that we’re going to be able to sustain this work past that. That the congregation is going to, it likes its outreach and it likes its buildings. And so when does everybody have to start taking pay cuts? And when does the incredibly gifted team that we’ve put together, when does this become a dead-end option for them?

Pastor Iain is not alone. Mia, whom we introduced earlier, pointed out that after the pandemic, it seems that everyone is burned out, not just clergy leaders, and this makes her wonder who will fill the lay leadership roles in her church in the future:

I also think this is COVID-related, but burnout is just so high, and I know most churches are struggling to find people to fill leadership roles right now because everybody is just so exhausted, so especially in a smaller church…It’s always hard to find people to fill leadership roles because so many leaders are already tapped in.

4.3. Additional Burdens on Other Staff

Besides the increased demands we have observed on clergy leaders, we also found those in more traditional roles (such as administrative staff, children’s and youth ministry staff, music staff, and other ministry area staff), often needed to pick up some new technology skills. But even when they did not, they still needed to know how to speak the language of and use the technology embraced by their constituents, which in today’s pandemic-influenced culture has become more important than ever before.

Pastor Troy, whom we introduced earlier, leads Cornerstone, a small suburban independent church. He shared how hard it has been on the staff. As we mentioned earlier, they meet in a local public school, so every weekend they must set up their worship space and then, after Sunday service, take it all apart and put it back in storage. The pandemic made it feel even more exhausting because they had to add recording and streaming to their roles, and it involved the whole staff:

COVID changed everybody’s job. I mean, you had to become a recording artist. Or you had to pick up editing. So…some of that impacted me. Not so much as my staff, honestly. But we are sick and tired of it because we don’t own a building. We spent so much time these last two years preparing for a Sunday, it’s ridiculous. So that has been complete COVID exhaustion for us.

4.4. The Need for Volunteers to Step up

In nondenominational, Evangelical Protestant, and Mainline Protestant churches, we observed that pastors and other paid staff are typically in charge of making ministries happen, such as pastoral care and Christian education. However, they are trying to get church members more involved in ministry.

For example, at Galilee UMC, a medium-sized suburban (and shrinking) church, Pastor Beth, whom we introduced earlier, would like to see a shift take place so that volunteers take charge. She notes that “the culture here at [Galilee] is we have a staff and they do these things. And I come from a place of a lot of people wearing a lot of hats. And this is a culture shift that we’re going through…”

Iglesia Catolica Santísimo Sacramento is a large, growing suburban multi-ethnic Catholic parish with average weekly attendance of about 1000. Yet, they only have one full-time priest and a janitor on their paid staff, and a volunteer office administrator. Father Miguel is frustrated at this:

So, obviously this is considered a poor parish kind of thing. So there will be a lot of things that you would like to do if you had a staff. But sometimes it’s a problem because sometimes I have to go out, door rings, nobody picks it up. So I mean it’s frustrating. Volunteers, sometimes you’d like volunteers to help out with something, CCD, or some kind of things and you don’t have it. You don’t have those kind of volunteers to help you, so. And this kind of thing sometimes it could become a little frustrating.

5. Discussion: Implications of Our Findings

We situated this paper within a framework of three societal trends that have impacted the religious landscape and the way congregations are staffing for ministry today:

• The US religious landscape began to change decades before the pandemic, marked by long-term trends of declining church attendance across various traditions.
• This same shift has co-occurred with a religious landscape that is increasingly composed of mostly small congregations. However, most Americans who attend church still attend large churches, which means that many large churches are maintaining their numbers, and some are growing.
• The advent of new technologies brought opportunities for churches to expand their outreach via websites, social media, recording worship services and sermons and sharing them on the Internet, and the use of Zoom meetings and live streaming worship services, to name a few. But many congregations had not taken advantage of these technologies prior to the pandemic.

The pandemic forced those congregations to improvise and find novel approaches to conduct worship services, day-to-day operations, and stay connected with members. Congregations that had already been using these technologies were able to adapt during the pandemic, but many others needed to pivot quickly without having the necessary technologies nor the skill sets to build and operate them. This created an urgent need for more specialized skills in communications and technology.

We observed a variety of consequences of long-term member loss and the various impacts from the pandemic. In this next section, we talk about their impacts on congregations and their leaders, and then we will discuss implications from all three of these trends for strategic staffing and preparing future leaders for congregational leadership.

5.1. Impacts on Congregations and Their Leaders

We observed that staffing patterns are changing as more congregations shrink. This decline has particularly affected smaller, financially struggling churches, leading to a reduction in staff members and consequently additional burdens on clergy leaders, staff, and volunteers among the church membership.

Those who lead small congregations must be ministry generalists, able to (literally) “do it all.” Because many congregations can no longer afford full-time clergy leadership, a pattern that we observed among smaller congregations (those that started and remained small, as well as those that have shrunk over time) is a growing need for part-time clergy, which may take several forms. A church might do the following:

• hire one part-time clergy leader;
• share a full-time (or part-time) clergy leader with one or more other congregations;
• or merge with another congregation to become a large church that can then pay a full-time leader.

In the larger congregations in our study, we noted different trends in how they staff for ministry. We saw a growing need for specialized ministry professionals for large congregations. They may be hired to serve part-time and have special training in areas such as communications and technology, music and worship leadership, community outreach or volunteer coordination. Sometimes one person is hired for two or more of these roles if they have those skill sets, and if the church has a budget for full-time staffing.

Adding specialist staff is often accompanied by cutting the hours of other staff members or eliminating their positions. The skill sets required for these positions often come with salary expectations that exceed what many churches can afford. Consequently, rather than adding technology staff, leaders in small congregations are more likely to figure out the technology on their own. This places burdens on clergy leaders who have not been well-prepared for this shift.

Additionally, we noted that the clergy leaders in our study have been experiencing increased emotional burdens and time burdens due to the pandemic and its impacts.

5.2. Implications for Strategic Staffing and Preparation for Ministry

Understanding these dynamics is essential for churches to develop effective staffing strategies that can adapt to current and future ministry needs.

• If most congregations are small and need generalists who are able and willing to serve part-time, the conundrum is, where will those people come from?
• If it is true as noted by Mark Chaves (2009) that more seminarians come from large congregations, how prepared will they be to take on part-time roles in small congregations?
• If most churches need more people to work with tech, which roles will be eliminated or reduced to make that affordable?
• If clergy leaders and/or volunteers end up doing the tech work, where do they learn how to do it?
• If churches need to have security teams, where do they find those people, and how can they afford to pay them? We see the alternative being volunteers who may not be properly trained for such a role, which could have disastrous consequences.

Churches must explore innovative solutions for human resource allocation, including developing or finding training programs for existing staff for a wide variety of roles. Developing partnerships within the community or with other congregations could also help share the costs of resources and expertise, ensuring more sustainable ministry practices. Although small congregations lack resources, they still have similar staffing needs, and it is a problem that needs to be addressed by thinking creatively about shared ministry, mergers, training for lay leaders, and so on.

We realize that seminaries and middle judicatory bodies of denominations are already aware of these trends, but if they have indeed been accelerated by the pandemic, we wonder what the impacts may be, as fewer churches will be seeking full-time clergy leaders, while there may be a shortage of congregational leaders with the technology knowhow to be effective leaders in this new post-pandemic era.

There is a concurrent desire for increasing volunteer staff, though in many cases the clergy leaders tell us that they are struggling to find people who will fill these roles as volunteers. However, we have also noted that in a few small-to-medium-sized churches, a lot of the ministry work is done by volunteers through small group ministries. In these settings, discipleship is emphasized so that people belonging to small groups are not only studying together and providing mutual support, but they are also recognizing their gifts for contributing to the overall ministry of the church and carrying out the programmatic activity that would be done by staff in larger churches. Middle governing bodies of churches and seminaries could be great sources of continuing education that is directed at discipleship and ministry training for the laity.

Inter-congregational collaboration can also offer relief for clergy leaders (who are often serving part-time) in small-church settings. Some smaller churches in our study banded together collaboratively to offer hybrid/online worship, Bible study groups, and other resources as a way to survive the pandemic when buildings were closed. This allowed their clergy leaders to share the load of writing and delivering sermons, which freed up time on their “off” weeks for more connectional ministries within their local communities and to provide more pastoral care to their own congregations. As a result, these small churches have become more vibrant communities, with larger numbers in worship and participating in other ministries than before the pandemic.

These findings illustrate the profound and multifaceted impact of long-term member loss and of the pandemic on congregational staffing, leadership, and ministry. As churches continue to navigate this new landscape, it is essential to consider not only what has changed, but also what these changes reveal about the deeper needs and possibilities for ministry in the years ahead.

6. Conclusions: Liminality in a Wilderness Moment

One of the most compelling themes that emerged from our interviews was the sense that the pandemic period represented a kind of wilderness experience for congregations. This was not a term used by all clergy leaders, but it was named explicitly by Annabelle, the pastor at Trinity Lutheran Church, who described her congregation as being in a “wilderness moment.” Her language echoed a broader sentiment we heard across traditions and contexts. The pandemic disrupted nearly every aspect of congregational life, and in doing so, it separated churches from the institutional stability they had long relied upon. Worship spaces were closed. Familiar rhythms were interrupted. Clergy and lay leaders alike were forced to navigate unfamiliar terrain.

In this “wilderness” time, congregations were challenged to rediscover what was essential. Many clergy leaders spoke of exhaustion, uncertainty, and grief. Yet they also described moments of clarity and renewal. Some found that their congregations became more connected through online prayer gatherings and virtual Bible studies. Others noted that members stepped into new roles, offering support and leadership in ways that had not been seen before. The absence of physical gathering spaces did not mean the absence of community. In many cases, it led to a deeper attentiveness to the needs of others and to the presence of God in unexpected places.

This wilderness was not simply a time of loss. It was also a space of formation. Congregations learned what they could live without and what they could not. They experimented with new forms of worship and communication. They re-thought uses for their buildings to better serve their communities. They asked hard questions about their identity and purpose. For some, this led to a renewed sense of mission. For others, it raised concerns about sustainability and the future. But in nearly every case, it prompted reflection.

The stories shared in this study suggest that the wilderness is not only a place of hardship. It can also be a sacred space. It is a place where old assumptions are tested, where new practices are born, and where the voice of God may be heard more clearly. As one pastor put it, “We are not going back. We are going forward.” This forward movement is not a return to what was, but a step into what might be. It is a journey shaped by what was learned in the wilderness and by the hope that something new is still possible.

In this study, we suggest that what at least one of the clergy leaders described as a “wilderness moment” can be understood as a liminal phase in the life of the church, to borrow from van Gennep (1960). The pandemic disrupted familiar patterns of worship, leadership, and community engagement. Congregations were no longer functioning as they had before, but they had not yet fully discerned what their future would look like. This in-between space, while unsettling, also created opportunities for reflection, experimentation, and renewal.

We observed congregations engaging in a kind of creative adaptation, or communitas (Turner 1969). They experimented with hybrid worship, restructured staff roles, and developed new forms of lay leadership. These were not only practical responses to crisis. They were also expressions of a deeper process of discernment and transformation. Turner noted that communitas often emerges in moments of crisis or transition, when the usual order is suspended, and new possibilities can be imagined (Turner 1969).

This resonates with the “wilderness moment” described by clergy in our study, where congregations, disrupted by the pandemic, found themselves in a threshold space. Schnugg’s insights about “spaces in-between” (Schnugg 2019) help us see this not as a void, but as a generative space for reimagining ministry, leadership, and community life.

By framing the post-pandemic church as a liminal institution, we are able to see these changes not only as responses to external pressures but also as signs of internal reimagining. The wilderness, in this sense, is not a detour from the path of ministry. It is part of the journey itself. It is a space where old assumptions are questioned, new practices are tested, and the future of congregational life begins to take shape. As Turner observed, wisdom lies in finding the right relationship between structure and communitas, attending to the needs of the moment without clinging too tightly to either. Each has its place. The challenge is to know when to let one give way to the other (Turner 1969).