Effects of Covid-19 Pandemic on Churches: The Nigeria Experience
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Date
2023-01-07
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Ruwaza Afrika: Department of Languages, Linguistics & Literature; Pwani University Kilifi, Kenya.
Abstract
Any pandemic disorganizes the life of a society, including religious life of the people. The Corona virus (COVID-19) has gone global affecting almost all countries, societies, and health systems. It is disrupting varying spheres of our social, political and economical lives. It is also intruding into our spiritual domain. Spirituality is the foundation of human existence and getting more attention in Global Health recently. "Spirituality is that aspect of humanity that refers to the way individuals seek, express meaning, purpose and experience their connectedness to the moment, to self, to others, to nature, and to the significant or sacred". Importantly, Corona virus (COVID-19) affected the church activities and priestly works of many pastors. Many churches as well as pastors in Nigeria start to explore other ways to perform their pastoral ministry to their church members. This study explores how churches, pastors and church members adjusted to the new normalcy
lockdown. The findings of the study revealed that some churches were still using some of the old traditional means of communicating with church members while some were sneaking to church all in the name of worship during the lockdown, surprisingly, many pastors as well as church members adapted to the current situation by exploring other possible means to perform their pastoral ministry to their church members. One prominent means was social media ministries which are ZoomApp, WhatsApp, Skype, Google Meet, Instagram Live among others. All these Applications gain currency during the pandemic as churches were forced to transmit or streamed to services all in the name of the novel virus (Covid-19). The work used historical and analytical methods for its findings.
Keywords: Covid-19, pandemic, Social ministry, lock down
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