Growing Together
Rediscovering Humanity Young Pastors Get Creative with Ministry During the Pandemic
Stay home, stay safe. Just over a year ago, the nationwide lockdown in response to COVID-19 sparked a season of isolation. As information changed daily, uncertainty increased and many churches closed doors for safety. Yet, in that time, creative methods of connection began to emerge. Four young pastors in the Texico Conference started an online Sabbath School program. It united districts as far apart as Central Texas to Northern New Mexico. Those pastors, Isaí Ramírez, Joel Navarro, Eliab Quinones and Josh Ramirez, not only discussed the Sabbath School lesson, but also worked together to create connection in their church families. “In the beginning of the pandemic, we thought that the lockdown would be a one-to-two week deal,” said Navarro. “But once we saw that it would be longer than two weeks, and that people were really getting scared and locking themselves up at home, we felt that we needed to find a way to connect with the people around us.” At that time, Zoom, or other video conference software, was not yet in wide use in those church districts. So these pastors filmed discussions each week to share digitally. “By filming our Sabbath School discussions, we could create a bigger district and produce content to hopefully help people feel a little less alone,” said Navarro. “When our church ministries, services and activities came to a sudden halt, it was wonderful to note that our young pastors hardly missed a beat. They have grown up in a digital environment and they just naturally gravitated to methods to not only remain connected with each other, but they found wonderful opportunities to bring ministry to people who were likewise feeling disconnected from their church families,” Texico Secretary/Treasurer Phil Roberston shared.
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Each of those four pastors are still in their first church districts since graduating from university or seminary. At the time, the process of recording videos together also helped them to feel less alone as new pastors. After each recording, they would sometimes stay on the video chat for several hours, talking and catching up with each other. “I was able to spend
