Reverend Harold Dugger shares about how his congregation, First Baptist Church of Capitol Heights, is navigating the impacts of COVID-19. Pastor Dugger’s church, a historically black congregation, is a Sacred Sector Community participant organization, and has a long history of serving its local community. In this article, Pastor Dugger reflects on how Sacred Sector’s learning community has helped his congregation understand how public policy, even during COVID-19, impacts the sacred sector and civil society as a whole. Pastor Dugger emphasizes that it is vital for congregations to understand that government, in times like this, has a distinct role to play.
Making a Sacred Impact During COVID-19: One Church's Response
Victory Church, a 2018-2019 participant in Sacred Sector Community, has a longstanding, mutually-beneficial relationship with the Center for Public Justice. In this interview with pastor(s) Jamé Bolds and Mark Shanks, Sacred Sector Director Chelsea Langston Bombino talks with both pastors about how they see Victory Church and CPJ’s Sacred Sector initiative strengthening each other as they seek, in community with other congregations and faith-based organizations, to live out their sacred animating beliefs, in every area of their organizational lives. In light of the current COVID-19 pandemic, Pastor Bolds sees the health crisis as an opportunity to live into his congregation’s faith-based commitments in everything they do, with respect to how they engage their own faith community, how they serve the broader community, how they coordinate with other churches and community-based organizations, and how the church interacts with government. This principled pluralist, public justice framework shapes Victory Church’s approach to living into God’s good purposes as a congregation, and recognizes that each institution in society must live into their God-given strengths and innovate based on those strengths, while at the same time, encouraging and working with other social institutions and government to live into their right roles.