For Meir Bargeron, a recently ordained rabbi and graduate of the Hebrew Union College Class of 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic has upended how he'll approach his new congregation in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

“It’s so important that we come together as a people and a community. For certain things [being together] is the condition that we need to have before anything else. 

Now that being physically together is off the table, divinity school graduates and newly ordained faith leaders are grappling with how to foster community and honor the traditions of their faith while maintaining social distancing. 

Many graduates are meeting new congregations virtually or adapting their ordination ceremonies for social distancing.

“I don’t think we have a protocol for ordination in pandemics,” said Anya Powers, a 2020 Yale Divinity School graduate approved for ordination in the United Church of Christ.

Powers is currently a second lieutenant in the Air Force and intends to serve as a military chaplain. The process of certification for chaplaincy involves ordination and an official endorsement from one’s faith tradition, something that’s difficult in the pandemic.

“My ordination is kind of on hold because we can’t really have the ceremony right now. There’s usually a group of people and a laying on of hands of the current ministers of the church. With the pandemic I don’t know if we can do that,” Powers said.

During her master’s program, Powers interned at Yale New Haven hospital as a chaplain, where there have been hundreds of COVID-positive patients. She said chaplains there were doing their best to adapt to distancing restrictions and delivering most of their services via phone, but that virtual pastoral care is tough. 

“I preached via Zoom on Sunday and Zoom had a world wide outage. Trying to get a whole congregation together is a challenge..But in terms of being and feeling connected to the whole, I think there’s a great opportunity for religion to reinforce and cultivate that,” Powers said.

Despite most houses of worship closing during the pandemic, many have recorded higher rates of attendance online.

“People are continuing to participate in religious services via Zoom. Who ever would have thought about that? I’m very optimistic about organized religion,” said Meir Bargeron, the newly ordained rabbi in Indiana.

Bargeron said that adapting the change was a longstanding part of Judaism. 

“Jewish tradition as we know it today was a response to an enormous crisis...We had to figure out radically new ways of coming together and being together,” he said. 

One such innovation was “consecration,” an online version of the official Hebrew Union College ordination ceremony that couldn’t take place in person.

“I found myself profoundly moved by it in ways that I hadn’t expected,” said Nora Fienstein, a Hebrew Union College graduate and new rabbi.

The college plans to hold an official, in-person ceremony when it’s safe. But it encouraged its graduates that they are ready to function as rabbis and have a responsibility to their communities and congregations that need them.

“We’re practiced in having conversations that might feel uncomfortable for people in other settings and that were really brought to the fore during the pandemic,” Feinstein said. “Our tradition gives us a sense of the broader scope of history. We may never have lived through this in our lifetimes, but our people as a community through time have experienced so much and there’s deep wisdom to draw from,” Feinstein said. 

Both she and Bargeron said religious services feel more important than ever in this time.

“People who are not affiliated with the religious community check out many different religious services around the country, because they’re desiring for connection and they’re reaching out for what faith and tradition have to offer,” Bargeron said. 

Daniel and Sherei Jackson, 2020 Duke Divinity School graduates, shared similar sentiments as they prepared to take on leadership roles in the Methodist church. 

The two graduates are married and had a baby girl in the middle of seminary, so the global pandemic wasn’t the biggest change they had to adapt to in their studies. They managed to attend class and give presentations with a baby in tow.

“The whole community was really working hard to be of support to us,” Sherei said.  

The Jacksons are finishing a certification to be licensed pastoral ministers (a step down from full ordination as an elder in the Methodist church) online, although the program was supposed to be held in person.

Daniel will serve as Lead Pastor at Trinity United Methodist Church in Durham, North Carolina and Sherei is working on coordination between the United Methodist churches in Durham, an effort she says will be even more important in light of COVID-19.

“We’ve had a lot of conversations about what safety looks like and how to do that from a place of love and not fear.”

If the pandemic had never hit, they would be prepping for their new jobs in a much more practical way, the Jacksons said, visiting their new church, preparing the parsonage and celebrating graduation with their friends.

For Danielle Goddard, who graduated from Boston College this month with dual master’s degrees in theology and ministry and counseling and mental health, graduation was something she’d been looking forward to when in-person school shut down in March. 

Instead of the traditional ceremony, her roommates organized a surprise Zoom party with professors, friends and family from all over the country.

“This was so special because all these people were there to celebrate that wouldn't have been otherwise,” Goddard said. 

Still, there is something powerful about being in the same room with somebody, she said.

“It’s something that I really miss.”

Kristi Allen is a freelance journalist normally based in East China, but stuck in the U.S. during the coronavirus pandemic.