volunteer—in time, ongoing training, and supervision. Although we will touch upon programs in the first category, this book focuses on the creation, organization, and maintenance of a church’s lay pastoral care program.
This book is organized beginning with an overview—the who, what, where, when, why, and how—of pastoral care (chapter 1). Next, the focus turns to the criteria for and the process of selecting members for the care team (chapter 2). There follows a discussion of two of the three core competencies of lay pastoral care: active listening and awareness of the presence of the sacred (chapter 3). Chapter 4 is devoted to a review of the various strategies in applying the third core competency: assessment. Chapter 5 takes up the organization and management of the pastoral care ministry, including communications and record keeping, and chapter 6 describes approaches to the training and supervision of team members. Finally, the prompting circumstance of many pastoral care encounters—crisis—is explored in chapter 7. The book’s appendices contain working documents for implementing a lay ministry program, and there is a comprehensive list of resources for care providers and their supervisors.
A lay pastoral care ministry is different from all other church programs in its foundation in spiritually centered caregiving. It is my hope that with the support and guidance of this volume, ministers and congregants in many congregations will be better equipped to make a thoughtful and productive commitment to expanding their pastoral care services to all of their members.
Note: In keeping with the growing custom of using gender neutral pronouns in printed works when reference is being made to both males or females, I have chosen to use the feminine pronoun throughout this book.
Chapter 1—The Basics
For many years I held a view of humanity that divided people into two categories: those who took care of others and those who did not, the latter being the more aggressive (and always male) movers and shakers who got things done and advanced the world from their leadership positions in all areas of life. I remember first having such thoughts as a boy growing up in Tucson, Arizona. When my best friend, John, and I got together to play, he’d ask, “Do you want to play war?” I’d typically say, “Sure, I’ll be the medic,” and he’d invariably come back with “I’ll be the priest,” which, even as an eight-year-old, I thought was a little strange. But what felt really good and made us buddies was that we chose to be this noncombatant team in our war game, ministering to the wounded and dying. Father John got the ones I couldn’t fix. Playing war was one of the things you did as a boy back in those days, and I always felt a little out of it being the soldier without a gun until I found a soul mate in John. Then a new house went up near us and brought Ricky into our lives. Ricky was our age but a fighter, both in life and in play. John and I were kind of excited to have a combatant in our game of war, since Ricky could supply a body for us to work on. Meanwhile, my worldview was solidifying; there were basically the tough, fighting people and the wimpier, take-care-of-others sorts, to which group I felt at the time unfortunately drawn. And this is pretty much how I saw the world as I grew up.
As I matured and became more comfortable with the gray areas of life, I began to see considerable crossover between my two groups. But I don’t think I completely gave up on my “two types of people” theory until a fellow member of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) named Leroy changed my thinking. I was still pretty green behind the AA ears, probably a year or so into sobriety, and attended a meeting every day, several of them also attended by Leroy. One of those meetings was known for brawls that regularly broke out in the parking lot and that almost always involved Leroy somewhere near the center. Even if I had been a fighter I would have stayed clear of this man. Leroy was about four inches taller than I and at least a hundred pounds heavier. Regardless of the weather, he wore a sleeveless denim jacket with born to die emblazoned across his oxlike back. As far as I could tell, every inch of exposed skin was covered with body art, much of it the sort one acquires in penal institutions. One day I attended a new meeting for me, a huge gathering at noon on a Saturday with hundreds of people in attendance—young, old, babies in arms, dogs, and every conceivable demographic slice of humanity. There were AA and Al-Anon meetings being held simultaneously, and there was a large room given over to day care. I had my ten-year-old daughter with me, so we checked out the day care. There in the middle of the room was Leroy, his enormous body enveloping the two kiddie chairs that were keeping his fanny off the floor, surrounded by dozens of running, screaming kids. With two kids on one knee and three or four others quiet at his feet, he was reading Clifford the Big Red Dog—a sight just made to cause a paradigm shift in a beholder. That was the day the world’s fighters and wimps became one for me. We are all potential ministers to one another. In fact, I now believe that the drive to be caring is a part of everyone. Its realization in some of us can be inhibited—by neglect, by embracing hurtful values, by existential depression or despair, by drugs and alcohol—but it is there, waiting to be released.
Although I only infrequently ran into Leroy at meetings over the next few years, he was always very friendly to me. I learned from mutual friends that in his biker world Leroy less and less frequently played the role that his appearance signaled, mean and aggressive. Although advancing age and the absence of drugs and alcohol in his life had considerably diminished his lust for head bashing, he was still not someone to cross. But at AA meetings, Leroy was a teddy bear. Apparently, though we all have caregiving in our chemistry, many of us need a setting where it is safe to let that aspect out. Leroy found that space in the halls of twelve-step recovery. Others may find it in their church. Indeed, I do not believe there is a more important reason for the existence of a faith community than to be such a sanctuary in which we can open our hearts to the suffering of others.
How (Where, When, and Why) It Works
This book is about one such opportunity to express in simple but often profound ways our compassionate concern for others. The opportunity is afforded by an active lay ministry program within our church community. As lay ministers we are called to serve our fellow congregants when their lives are overtaken by serious illness, loss, or other painful or threatening circumstances. Not only can it be transformative for individual congregants, such a ministry is fundamental to the integrity and purpose of any community of faith. Here the roots of personal and communal spiritual growth are held and nurtured in the rich soil of service to one another. With the well-being of our congregation in hand, we are ready to bring our message of free religion and our values of interdependence, justice, equality, and inclusion into the broader community. Before we can be prophets in the world, we must learn and practice a thoroughgoing ministry to one another. Not until we are lovingly taking care of all the members of our own church community should we be trooping our banners into the wider world. How we take care of our own will be as powerful a model of faith in action as any social justice programs we can devise.
There are always worthy projects for a church’s lay ministry; indeed, there will be at least as many as there are congregants experiencing a need for help. Thus, a lay minister might run an errand or take care of some other task for someone who is temporarily overwhelmed, as with preparation for a daughter’s wedding or a loved one’s memorial. The need might be for a day of child care while a congregant undergoes a minor surgical procedure. It might mean providing a ride to Sunday services for a church member in a nursing home, or an invitation to Thanksgiving dinner for an elderly congregant with no family nearby. If lay ministers take the time to really engage other members of the congregation, especially those who for some reason might be particularly vulnerable or fragile, they will find opportunities to serve. Engaging others, asking after their health and well-being, looking for hints of needs not being met, such should be standard operating procedure for lay ministers, especially since so many people find it difficult if not impossible to reach out for help without prompting from another. The call to service as a lay minister is a commitment to the intention that no congregant’s pastoral needs will ever go unnoticed.
Within a church’s lay ministry there is a special, core activity—a ministry with a unique calling in a community of faith. This is the ministry
