How Can the Church Cope with Loss in the Time of COVID?

By Beth Yarborough

It has not gone unnoticed that the real estate market is, for lack of a better word, crazy with bidding wars and offers above listing prices. A friend who is a property appraiser said that those in the business are calling it “panic buying.” I wonder though, if rather than panic buying, what we are seeing is a response to grief. It is not unusual to look for something to take the place of that which has been lost. Undoubtedly, much has been lost the past two years. Lives, health, businesses, relationships, schedules, vacations, traditions… the list is endless. It makes sense that people would look for a way to fill the void of so many losses, and what better way to ease the pain than with a brand-new over-priced house?

We are in a unique time in history when literally not one person on earth has been unaffected by some kind of loss in this pandemic. A colleague’s social media post expressed his deep concern about his congregation and his own discouragement. He said that in pre-pandemic months leading up to Christmas in 2019, the average Sunday morning worship attendance was 500 people. Since in-person worship services have resumed they are now averaging around 70 people.

Churches cannot be overlooked in considering the losses during this period of history. Some churches will never recover; some will reinvent themselves and be stronger than ever. Either way, the church has changed, losses have occurred, and grief is present. A question to consider is how can leaders deal with their own loss and at the same time encourage and offer hope to their congregations?

In the book The Myth of Closure, Ambiguous Loss in a Time of Pandemic and Change by Pauline Boss, the author argues that in times of loss, rather than search for an elusive sense of closure we are better served to strive to live through and in our grief. While this sounds like a tall order, Boss offers these guidelines for the resilience to live with loss: “finding meaning, adjusting need for mastery, reconstructing identity, normalizing ambivalence, revising attachment and discovering new hope.” Grief never really goes away. Rather, it eventually becomes a part of the fabric of who we are, hopefully helping us to build resilience and find peace.

Another way of looking at this concept of resilience and grief is captured in this quote by the mother of a six year old girl killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook School shooting. Nelba Marquez-Greene says this about her own grief, “I feel the weight of a million grief struck mothers in my soul. I can’t outrun it or ignore it. I have decided to make it a seat and whisper, ‘I am not afraid of you. Teach me how to use what I hear & understand – to be helpful.’” Perhaps in the church, leaders and their members can make a seat of the grief as a place to hear and understand stories of loss and hopefully, build resilience by learning and being helpful.