Recently I was in Ohio, sitting with a small group of pastors, when the conversation turned to pastoral care.
All of them were confronted regularly by staggering issues within their congregations: cancer, disintegrating marriages, unemployment, tragic accidents, suicides, sexual abuse, chemical dependency, business failures, runaway or rebellious children. The list seemed endless.
“As a pastor,” said one, “when someone in the church comes to me, I want to enfold that person with attention until the problem is resolved. After all, we’re family!”
Others around the table agreed but immediately pointed out the tension they felt.
“You can spend most of your week on three or four people’s problems. Do you focus on the needy few or the needs of the body as a whole?”
“Churches pastored by ‘pastoral-care types’ generally don’t grow, and yet you can’t grow unless you’re caring for people.”
“If the church becomes a spiritual hospital, focused primarily on bandaging wounds, it tends not to develop the muscular faith necessary to engage the increasingly secular world with the gospel.”
Sometimes it seems as if pastoral care and visionary leadership are incompatible.
I was reminded of an observation made by Gil Beers, former editor of Christianity Today: “When Moses was leading Israel through the wilderness, he had to move at the speed of the slowest sheep.” With slow lambs, you have three choices: (1) abandon them, (2) pick them up and carry them, or (3) move at their speed. Since they couldn’t carry them all, they moved slowly.
Some churches choose not to lose any sheep, and thus allow the hurting lambs to determine the pace and sometimes the direction of the whole flock. Other churches feel that the direction and destination of the flock is a higher priority than the needs of every individual, so they carry those they can and admit they can’t meet the needs of others.
All of the pastors in that group in Akron said they limited their counseling so they could give adequate attention to preaching, training lay leaders, and setting the direction of the congregation.
But these weren’t callous institutionalists playing with strategies and programs, ignoring the hurts of individuals. These pastors felt the pain. Some confessed their own painful upbringing in situations of abuse and alcoholism. They recognized pastoral care as an important function of the church. It’s one means of applying the love of Christ to the needs of people.
Finally someone asked, “I always feel guilty about not doing more. What is adequate pastoral care? How do I know if I’m doing enough?”
No answer will apply to every situation, obviously. But this group of pastors eventually identified two indicators of adequate pastoral care.
A person is adequately cared for when he or she perceives that (1) “Someone in the church leadership loves me,” and (2) “If I need attention, I can get it without feeling guilty.”
In the midst of overwhelming individual needs, these two conditions seemed like reasonable and reachable goals.
This issue of LEADERSHIP focuses on the important ministry of pastoral care.
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I’m pleased to announce that Mark Galli has joined the LEADERSHIP staff as associate editor. He comes from Grace Presbyterian Church in Sacramento, California, where he served for six years as pastor. Prior to that, he served four years as associate pastor of Union Evangelical Church in Mexico City.
He has already made his mark in LEADERSHIP as a book reviewer and writer of articles such as “Awakening from an Assistant Pastorate” (Winter 1986) and “The Fair-to-Middling Preacher” (Summer 1987).
His lighthearted confession of becoming enamored with his computer, “Sins of Software Seduction” (Winter 1988), won an award in the humor category at the Evangelical Press Association convention.
Mark and his wife, Barbara, wondered how their children, Luke, Katie, and Theresa, would handle moving from California to the Midwest. When they presented the idea, they found the biggest concerns were: “Can we get a house with stairs?” and “Can we take along Sega (a rival of Nintendo)?”
The answers to both were yes.
We’re glad they’re here, and I know you also will enjoy Mark’s continuing contributions to the journal.
Marshall Shelley is editor of LEADERSHIP.
Copyright © 1989 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
