Is this email not displaying correctly? View it in your browser.
New and Inspiring Stories of Innovative Ministry Opportunities
Bread Breakers: New Jersey Church Finds Creative Way To Do Ministry During Pandemic
When New Dover United Methodist Church in Edison, New Jersey, closed its doors in 2020 to prevent the spread of COVID-19, parishioners went home and made sandwiches. 

To date, members of the New Jersey church have made almost 100,000 of them.

“When the pandemic hit, people were calling and asking, ‘What can we do?, What can we do?’” said the Rev. Chuck Coblentz. “We needed to figure out a way people could be involved, given the circumstances, without being here.”

And that’s how a sandwich ministry was born.
Despite Pandemic, N.C. Church Comes Together to Buy School District Food Truck
First United Methodist Church of Graham has always helped its school district. Providing school supplies and clothing for its students is nothing new.

But after reading an article about the difficulty of feeding students over the summer, the church had a big idea: Buy the district a food truck.

“What we were doing was already pretty robust. This was next level,” said the Rev. Claire Clyburn.

The campaign launched in early 2020, just a few months before the pandemic was declared  a national emergency.

The congregation didn’t let that stop them.
New Research from Our Partners
The Project on Religion and Urban Culture 2.0 , a joint initiative of the Polis Center and IU School of Liberal Arts at IUPUI, recently released a new issue of their "Research Notes" newsletter highlighting our Exploring the Pandemic Impact on Congregations study. The issue compares their local Indianapolis findings to the findings of our national study to date. RUC 2.0 is a partner in this research and will be looking at the effects of the pandemic as one eight representative cities across the U.S in our regional case studies component.
Explore New Additions to Our Timeline
The Timeline feature on our website continues to explore how the events of the past 24 months have impacted congregations, and the myriad of ways in which they have adapted and persevered. Recent additions to the Timeline account for the surge in COVID-19 cases as a result of the Omicron variant, as well as other challenges and creative responses across the national landscape during the latter portion of 2021.

The Exploring the Pandemic Impact on Congregations project plans to continue tracking how congregations navigate and emerge from this crisis in an interactive format. Explore the latest additions or the full chronological experience.
Recent News Coverage of Our Research
Exploring the Pandemic Impact on Congregations | www.covidreligionresearch.org