African-American communities of faith experienced an unusually high number of deaths due to COVID 19. Pandemic restrictions prevented Celebrations of Life/funeral and memorial services. When there is limited or not communal grief expressions, how do people of faith grieve?

Unresolved grief is important to the Christian faith. At the early stages of the pandemic, houses of worship were closed, but even as some began to open, funerals were still restricted; limited – resulting in unresolved grief. It is traditional and expected for African-Americans to have funeral services in a church. The lack of communal support can lead to unresolved grief and challenges for Pastors and Clergy in generations to come.

A phenomenological approach will be utilized to investigate this concern by (1) engaging in and (2) documenting intentional conversations with funeral directors, clergy and lay persons of faith regarding their experiences providing services during COVID 19 while (3) reviewing literature on grief practices in African-Americans faith community.

The targeted audience will be Pastors/Clergy from the Baltimore/New York corridor (convenient sampling) via a ZOOM meeting. Funeral Directors will be interviewed and later, focused groups of family members who experienced a death during the pandemic; based upon availability and convenience. Each identified group will be interviewed individually to discuss how they have handled deaths in the past. They will discuss the modifications they had to make due to COVID 19.

As this project is completed, I envision that my ministry site will be changed because we will be utilizing our findings to focus on providing grief/bereavement support African-American of faith experiencing unresolved grief.

The report will help pastors/clergy to be intentional about dealing with dying, death and bereavement with parishioners and provide them with the tools to incorporate dying and bereavement in sermons and Bible Study.