The perspective shared here is purely personal, prepared as part of something larger that I wrote last year during my sabbatical. There was much more happening in the life of the church than is discussed here, but this, at least, is my own personal perspective.
The pandemic brought a new challenge to the church. Almost overnight, we had to navigate a new way of being church. Just a few days before lockdown, I remember attending a public meeting at the Rugby Club to discuss the community response to the crisis. The room was packed, with dozens of people volunteering to visit those who would be housebound or deliver food and supplies. I recall feeling a strong sense of guidance as I left that meeting—that the ‘social’ response was being well taken care of by the town’s secular organisations. And so, our role as the church should be to focus on what is unique to us: a spiritual response. We needed to find a new way to continue offering a public worship and proclaiming of the Word, no matter what lay ahead. There was an irony in this, as my own journey from the evangelical church into the denominations had been partly because I felt (perhaps unfairly) that evangelicals neglected the social call of the gospel.
At the start of the pandemic, I poured all my energy into establishing an online presence and public ministry for Caersalem. I understand that this focus wasn’t universally welcomed. Some believed that pastoral care and maintaining the church community should have been prioritised over sustaining a public witness on Facebook and YouTube. Perhaps they were right. But I did what came naturally to me—I invested time and energy in the area of ministry that aligned with my gifts and calling. Yet, because this decision was criticised, I spent much of the pandemic questioning myself. I fell into the trap of trying to stay busy with visible tasks—things that could be seen—rather than giving my wife and children the attention they deserved.
During this time, I shared more and more content on social media. Some of it—though not all—was of high quality (at least by the standards of amateur Welsh-language Christian material!). The audience for Caersalem, and my own personal following, expanded almost overnight. People from all over Wales were tuning into our online services each week and sending messages saying they were blessed. When we ran the Alpha Course on Zoom during the pandemic, we had attendees from Holyhead all the way down to Pembrokeshire. Caersalem’s ministry had gone national!
But there was a downside to this. With this new, national platform—and with more people working from home, myself included—came increased scrutiny and criticism. Within the Welsh-speaking Christian world, it’s fair to say that I sometimes pushed the boundaries. More than once during this period, an article or video I shared on Facebook sparked a storm of opposition. Some of the feedback was fair, arising from constructive dialogue. But much of it felt unnecessarily personal, as though driven by a critical spirit. At least, that’s how I received it at the time, given my mental state.
I worked hard each week to create new teaching and worship content to share online—content I believed (and knew) was reaching people who would normally have little time for Christianity. But then, in the comments below those posts, there would inevitably be a firestorm of arguments between Christians. I was disappointed that material designed to help those outside the church consider faith often led to debates where fellow believers felt the need to correct my theology. At the time, I felt frustrated that so much energy was spent critiquing my ministry. I took every word of criticism—both from within and beyond the local church—as a personal attack on my calling and character. Looking back, I see now that this was when my mental health problems began, though I couldn’t recognise it then. Some family and friends tried to warn me. But in hindsight, I was overreacting and worrying too much about what other Christians and church leaders thought of me. I had fallen prey to social media algorithms, losing perspective far too often.
It was a busy period work wise, even while confined to the house. I continued working one day a week for Cyhoeddiadau’r Gair, mainly maintaining their websites and producing online resources. I spent another day each week on pastoral care, keeping a list of vulnerable members—those who were elderly, unwell, or in high-pressure jobs due to the pandemic—and making sure to call them for a chat each week. I found this emotionally burdensome. I’ve never enjoyed phone calls; I much prefer messages or emails when face-to-face conversations aren’t possible. But these people needed to talk. We kept our Community Groups running, now over Zoom, and eventually launched an Alpha Course online as well.
But the biggest job each week was putting the online service together. Because our children were young, I had to wait until they were asleep to have the quiet I needed to record certain parts of the services. Some weeks, I was up until the early hours trying to record a message or a song. Then came the video editing, which took several hours each week, followed by rendering on my old, worn-out MacBook, and then the weekly upload—before the days of fibre-optic.
I know that some ministers used the lockdown period as a time to slow down—a kind of unofficial sabbatical. At the time, I remember feeling envious of those ministers who had the freedom to do this. But, knowing that I burned out within two years, I now regret not taking the opportunity to slow down, or even stop completely. There is always that tension between seeing church leadership as a public role—leading and serving—and the call to be set apart, to withdraw into prayer and contemplation. I put everything into the public side of ministry, even from my small home studio. Perhaps I should have embraced the stillness of that moment, a once-in-a-lifetime pause in the world around me, rather than striving so hard to keep going.
