This book provides an interdisciplinary exploration of the challenges faced by pastoral ministry in South African Pentecostalism as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as some interventions being made to manage these challenges. Contributors present descriptive approaches to churches’ reactions to lockdown measures, and especially the adaptations generated within Pentecostalism in South Africa. Through a variety of approaches—including pastoral care, virtual ecclesiology, social media, and missiology—contributors offer intervention techniques which can help readers to understand the unique role of Christian ministry during the pandemic, in South Africa and beyond.

"Not even the most imaginative novelist could have imagined the world created by the coronavirus pandemic. The face of the church also changed radically, challenging it to reinvent itself. In this volume, South African scholars meet these theological, practical, pastoral, liturgical, and institutional challenges from a Pentecostal perspective. They concentrate on the various dimensions of spirituality and pastoral care in the 'virtual church.' The work contributes to rethinking the 'new normal' of the post-Covid-19 church." -Marius Nel, Research Chair - Ecumenism: Pentecostalism and Neo-Pentecostalism, North West University, South Africa "A very relevant book! And another opportunity for people living in the North to learn from the South. The South African churches are doing a great job in the midst of a difficult economic situation." -Volker Kessler, Gesellschaft für Bildung und Forschung in Europa, Germany This book provides an interdisciplinary exploration of the challenges faced by pastoral ministry in South African Pentecostalism as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as some interventions being made to manage these challenges. Contributors present descriptive approaches to churches' reactions to lockdown measures, and especially the adaptations generated within Pentecostalism in South Africa. Through a variety of approaches-including pastoral care, virtual ecclesiology, social media, and missiology-contributors offer intervention techniques which can help readers to understand the unique role of Christian ministry during the pandemic, in South Africa and beyond. Mookgo Solomon Kgatle is Professor at the University of South Africa. He is a National Research Foundation (NRF) Y Rated researcher (2019-2024) in the area of African Pentecostalism. Additionally, he is the visiting scholar at the Centre for Pentecostal and Charismatic Studies-University of Birmingham (2020-2022) and founding President of the Southern African Society for Pentecostal Studies. Collium Banda is extraordinary research fellow at North-West University, South Africa, and adjunct lecturer at the Theological College of Zimbabwe. He is an emerging researcher with interests in African Pentecostalism, Christian doctrines in the African public space, African traditional religions, African indigenous knowledge systems and Christianity in African contexts.

The nine chapters in this book, along with a critical introduction, address complex theological issues relating to structural inequalities of our society, exacerbated by the experience of the COVID-19 pandemic.

"We all prayed at the altar at about 2:00 p.m. We had to pray because we were bitter. I know my people, and several of us were hurt at the sheriff being called-on a church. A couple of members were even bitter with me for cancelling service this Sunday. It was a mess, and all we could do was pray" (pastoral journal entry, Thursday, April 2, 2020). Pastoring through a Pandemic captures, in detail, the first ninety days of the historic, once-in-a-generation, worldwide pandemic of 2020 as experienced by the pastor and people of the historic King Solomon Baptist Church of Vicksburg, Mississippi. The Pastor and people defied state and local ordinances to have in-person worship services at the height of the pandemic. Read of the harrowing tales of members, old and young, who sought answers for their own personal crises as they "sneaked to meet" while discovering a newfound strength and spirituality in the midst of their quiet defiance. See the four pillars of leadership in action from the pastor, who in the very midst of his personal battles with fatigue, fear, and nascent faith, kept a day-to-day journal of the church's struggles and triumphs. Pastoring through a Pandemic will be studied for years as an example of how one faith community responded to the early days of the pandemic while also navigating its way through a historic time of political and social unrest.

Structure your ministry to start with patients’needs, hopes, and resources and to be clear what difference your ministry can make! Hospital chaplains value who they are and what they do as contributions to patients’and families’healing and well-being. And they are continually stretching to enhance their ministries. Hospital administrators and other professionals on the care teams, however, often need help to grasp those same values in outcome oriented, observable, documentable, changes-for-the-better terms. The Discipline for Pastoral Care Giving: Foundations for Outcome Oriented Chaplaincy offers a powerful new paradigm for enhancing supportive, effective spiritual care for patients and families as well as communicating substantive outcomes to leaders and clinicians alike. This is all the more important in these times when every possible resource must be well used for the good of our patients and their families. By evaluating the pastoral care you offer, you can become more aware of the discrete skills you exercise in the assessment, planning, intervention, and reflection process. Such evaluation efforts highlight the discrete differences excellent spiritual care makes. This can help you track contributions you are making in terms of the patient's healing and well-being. Having a sound, replicable way to make the process more conscious also helps you communicate your assessment, strategies, and contributions more clearly to other care team members. Furthermore, consistently using The Discipline over time will enable you to discover patterns of spiritual dynamics in how people live with different health care challenges in their lives. These patterns translate into valuable insights as your care for others. The process discussed in The Discipline for Pastoral Care Giving calls on the chaplain to: identify the patient's spiritual needs, hopes, and resources construct a patient profile through identifying the individual's sense of the holy, sense of meaning, sense of hope, and sense of community design the desired outcome(s) you hope your care will contribute--for example, a person who has suffered a spinal cord injury integrates the effects of their injury in their sense of identity and meaning, a person living with cystic fibrosis healthfully grieves the loss of others in the CF community, a patient 'disabled’by the absence of her support community regains use of her personal resources for coping and self-care develop and share a plan for the patient's spiritual care choose interventions (which may range from facilitating a life review, to compassionate confrontation, to reading Scripture, to active listening, to arranging a family care conference) measure outcomes, identifying and communicating the difference your care has made in terms of the patient's healing and well-being The Discipline for Pastoral Care Giving offers case studies, personal experiences, helpful figures and charts, and suggestions for dealing with patients experiencing unique, complex health care challenges, including adults living with cystic fibrosis and violent victims of violence. The wise advice and practical suggestions in this book will help you recognize and document the solid value of your hospital ministry.

This book is an interdisciplinary study of the relationship between prophecy and politics in South African Pentecostalism. The role and the power of prophecy in enhancing the presence of politicians in the church square are unpacked through historical examples, as well as case studies of contemporary prophets. Solomon Kgatle argues that the influence of prophecy in politics has the potential to weaken the prophetic voice of the church in general and the Pentecostal movement in particular. He proposes a Pentecostal political theology of prophecy. This theology is developed by taking into cognizance the theoretical and theological frameworks of prophetic imagination and pneumatological imagination. In addition, this theology seeks a balance between prophecy and power and prophecy and sovereignty.

At the end of February 2020, Larry and Ann Thomas left their home in Issaquah, Washington, for a three-week vacation visiting family in Colorado and Texas. News of the coronavirus pandemic was slowly spreading. By the middle of March 2020 the world had changed and the global pandemic was in full swing. The Thomases decided to shelter in place in Flower Mound, Texas, for the next six weeks. On March 17, 2020, when Larry returned to his work as the interim pastor at Sammamish Hills Lutheran Church in Sammamish, Washington, it was from a makeshift office in Texas, not his office in Sammamish. Working remotely, Pastor Thomas began organizing weekly virtual prayer gatherings and Bible studies. In order to connect with the congregation, he started writing pastoral letters as a way of reflecting on the intersection of faith, hope, and love while living through the pandemic. Lily Packed a Facemask is a chronicle of one pastor's commitment to engage with a congregation during the 2020 coronavirus pandemic. Grounded in biblical texts, Thomas takes the threads of a variety of writers and contemporary resources and weaves a tapestry of living life faithfully in the midst of a year of constant changes and challenges.