PCPs interact one-on-one with congregants, often over an extended period of time. The commitment of time, self-growth, training, and supervision required of PCPs is different from other volunteer activities in a faith community. While the commitment is substantial, the rewards, both to the church community and to the pastoral care provider, are incalculable.
Before we look at the components of a lay pastoral care program, I want to speak briefly about lay pastoral care in more general terms. To do so I’ll steal from a formula used in college journalism classes: In organizing any important story for publication, students must understand the WHO, WHAT, WHERE, WHEN, HOW, and WHY of their subject. For our purposes, we will start with the WHAT.
WHAT is lay pastoral care? As outlined above, pastoral care involves working closely with an individual, family, or special group in the church community to support them in securing their well-being and meet their spiritual needs. For instance, it might mean helping someone coming out of the hospital to identify and secure the resources to get the ongoing social, vocational, or other services needed. It may mean partnering with someone starting the frightening journey to recovery from addiction, a partnership that in itself can be healing. A PCP might become a regular visitor and special friend to a shut-in congregant, providing a caring and compassionate lifeline to the outside world, paying attention to the congregant’s health and spirits, perhaps sometimes acting as a go-between with health care providers or distant family members. Pastoral care might mean supporting a mother of young children as she moves through a prolonged and difficult divorce, being a sounding board for ideas, an ear for venting, and a shoulder to cry on. It may mean any of these opportunities and many more, where hope arrives in the selfless, caring presence of another, one who accepts the troubled parishioner in her wholeness just as she is. Lay pastoral care providers represent a tacit understanding that ordained ministers have no corner on the capacity or wherewithal to be of spiritual and emotional comfort to others. More of the WHAT will become evident as we talk about the HOW and WHY.
WHO does lay ministry? As we will see later, there are certain characteristics of personality, character, commitment, and reliability that a person should possess to be considered for this special role. Because of its sensitive nature, this role is usually filled through a careful screening and selection process. Experience shows, however, that many in a faith community possess a combination of attributes that would recommend them for service as pastoral care providers. It can be very useful in the formation of a PCP program to solicit the participation of one or more congregants who have training in health services, such as counselors, social workers, and clinical psychologists. With their expertise and experience they can play an important role in the organization, training, and supervision of the pastoral care providers.
Because the services of pastoral care providers can take many forms, those interested in serving their fellow congregants in this role should seek to identify their gifts—the special ways they may be equipped to contribute to the lay pastoral care program. Some people may prefer to work behind the scenes in support of other PCPs. In one church in New York, Sheila, one of the most active, dedicated, and appreciated lay ministers, keeps the pastoral care visit records in good up-to-date order; she also serves as a librarian for the PCPs’ collection of printed and video resources. Sheila has found that keeping the pastoral care resource library up to date on information about local health care providers, health-related meetings and events in the community, twelve-step meetings, and so forth requires a commitment of time and attention. In the relatively small church where she is a member, her enthusiasm and expertise are indispensable to the functioning of the lay pastoral care program (and indeed to the church’s entire lay ministry program in all its activities). She has also become a visible representative of the church in the community as she gathers the resources that support her church’s lay pastoral care initiatives. Indeed, several new members of her church were introduced to it through dealings with Sheila, who, picking up on their interest in liberal religion, invited them to come to Sunday worship. When Sheila first was asked about lay pastoral care, she dismissed it out of hand. Why? She was too shy, she felt, to work with congregants one on one. But she found her niche. As Sheila’s story suggests, there are many ways to serve in a pastoral care program. Invariably, one of the most exciting aspects of the organization of such a program is just this process of discovery, encouraging and supporting members in looking deep within themselves for their special gifts.
WHEN and WHERE do lay pastoral care ministers provide their services? It is tempting to reply, wherever and whenever there is a congregant in need of support and attention. And for the most part this is the case. Most commonly, though, pastoral care encounters will transpire at church, in the congregant’s home, or in a health care facility such as a nursing home, hospital, or hospice. Quite often, a PCP will be approached on Sunday morning at coffee hour, and if such is the case, the PCP will seek out a quiet place at church or agree to meet later. It is also sometimes necessary to coordinate pastoral calls with a congregant’s family member or caregiver or to take into consideration the visiting hours of a health care facility. When and how pastoral care providers engage with congregants should be important focuses in the organization of a church’s lay pastoral care program. However initial contact is made, thereafter the pastoral care provider can set the rules about when she will be available to be contacted and how that contact should be made (for instance, whether she wants to be contacted on a personal phone or prefers communication to go through a central church contact). As a pastoral care relationship develops, the dynamics will change, and the question of how, where, and under what circumstances a PCP makes herself available to a congregant can be revisited and fine-tuned.
HOW is a lay pastoral care ministry carried out? It may take many forms. Ultimately, how it’s done is however it needs to be done, given the scope and resources of a particular church. That’s why it’s so important to muster a variety of folks to do this work. The activities may differ, but most often, whatever the effort, at its heart is a very simple gesture—making oneself available to another who is suffering and sharing the load through compassionate, nonjudgmental presence. PCPs bring no agenda of their own other than to be of help. They do not try to fix a difficult personal problem or proffer advice. Do you know the criteria for the giving of advice to be successful? The person you want to give advice to must
1. need advice
2. know she needs advice
3. want advice
4. want advice from you
5. want advice from you at that moment
The likelihood that all five of these criteria will be met in any given situation is precariously close to zero. Suffering people often just want us to care enough to be there. In their distress they aren’t looking to an MD or a marriage counselor or a CPA. They are not looking for advice, a cure, textbook wisdom, or other authoritative pronouncements. The yearning in their heart is for a compassionate companion whose presence they can count on no matter how difficult things get, another human being like themselves whose presence—even in silence, perhaps just holding their hand, perhaps singing a song or making soup—makes this commitment: “I will be with you. You will not be alone.” Simple presence is the great gift we have to offer as pastoral care providers. It is a gift that can and has changed people’s lives.
WHY a pastoral care ministry? Among all the other ways in which lay pastoral care enriches the personal and community experience of church life, it has a very practical reason for existence. Even in a small church, it is impossible for the church pastor to minister at every moment to everyone with a need. Every church requires a pastoral care program to supplement the care provided by the professional staff. There will be people who do not think their problem is serious enough to bring to the minister or who won’t be comfortable speaking to the minister about a particular problem, but they might be comfortable bringing that problem to a lay care provider. There will be people in need whom the pastor will be unaware of and who are in danger of being invisible. But the additional eyes and ears of the lay care providers tremendously reduce this possibility. In the church where I first
