Pastoral Care

I believe ours is a covenantal religion of relationships which places pastoral care at its center.

When I started my congregational internship as a seminary student, my teaching pastor suggested I have some one-on-one conversations with congregants as a way to get to know the Fellowship. We settled on 100 visits. I had to do my last one in the final week of my internship, but I made my goal!  It turned out to be one of the best spiritual practices I have engaged in and taught me so much about the people I served, about pastoral care and about the life of the congregation. So, I invite those same conversations when I begin each interim ministry.

I also feel my time as a hospital chaplain prepared me well for congregational pastoral care. I did a year of Chaplain Residency in a large, urban, trauma-one, teaching hospital. In addition to our regular 40-hour work week, we did one overnight on-call shift per week, sleeping (when possible) at the hospital. Between my internship and my residency, I did rotations in Palliative Care, Medical Specialties (in a hospital without a psychiatric unit, individuals with mental health challenges often end up on this unit), Pulmonary, Neuro ICU and step down, Labor and Delivery, Neonatal ICU, Mother/Baby, and Acute care of the elderly.

Chaplaincy is a study in suffering. People often assume the suffering in a hospital is about death and insults to the body, and of course, that is often true. But people are not so one dimensional. They arrive at the hospital with all the complexities of their lives and their experiences; their bodies are just one part of that. My approach to visiting with patients was to introduce myself, pull up a chair and invite people to tell me their story and after a surprised breath, they would. What a fertile education for congregational pastoral care.

We all arrive on Sunday mornings with the complexity of our own experiences. We want to be seen, known and loved for who we are, and we are afraid if we are seen and known, we will be found to be unlovable. Good pastoral care reminds people that they absolutely have inherent worth and dignity and are loved and helps them to find their own truth as they speak it out loud.