Whatever Happened to Pastoral Care?

 

by David A. Fiensy

It is unusual when someone enters your office, sits down, and immediately begins crying. When the white-haired lady regained her composure, she said only, “My husband is in the car. Would you come out and talk to him? Our minister won”t.” Thus began my acquaintance with this saintly, if unusual, couple that would continue over the next six months for him and over the next few years for her.

Later, as I stepped inside the door of their small, frame house on the appointed day of my visit, the wail arose almost immediately. The poor man was suffering from a terminal illness that had left him, though not in serious pain, certainly very uncomfortable. For the next hour I listened in shocked silence to the most bone-chilling screams and lamentations. The man knew his days were numbered and begged God to take him immediately so he could escape his misery.

Finally, the howl died down, and as I prayed and stumbled out the door, the patient remarked, “I feel better. Can you come back at the same time next week?” So, until he passed away, I experienced the weekly ordeal of listening to the screams of this suffering human being.

Sometimes I groused on the way to their house, “If some preacher had done his job, I wouldn”t have to endure this.” But then I realized I was no better than the other guy. If I could have gotten out of this, I would have. Besides, the man desperately needed somebody to help him. Still, usually I had to bribe myself with the promise of a banana split or a walk in the park in order to get the courage to return to the house of pain.

Sometimes this is what pastoral care is about. It can be most unpleasant. Most persons in the ministry today did not think they would be doing such things. Rather, we all wanted to stand, like Joel Osteen, before 45,000 adoring congregants and receive their weekly homage to our spellbinding sermons. Maybe that is why pastoral care is diminishing among some ministers, especially senior ministers.

 

NEGLECTED

I do not intend to say in this essay that I”ve found no one ministering to suffering persons. I recognize there are still men and women in the ministry who are doing a great job of pastoral care. They are compassionate servants who genuinely care about people”s pain. They are models for us all. I commend them and admire them. But at the same time, there may be a disturbing trend.

I began to think about this issue when my graduate students told me stories like those below. So I took an unscientific survey of every active minister I encountered. Their perception almost always was that pastoral care is being neglected in the ministry.

Consider the following:

“¢ A lady told me after her husband became debilitated and bedfast due to a stroke, her minister (of a congregation of 200) called on him only once in 15 years and that was after she begged him to come by.

“¢ A man whose mother had just died received a phone call from his minister. The minister apologized for not coming to the house to pray with him but said being in the company of grieving people upset him too much.

“¢ A member of a midsized church told me his minister almost never made hospital calls because hospitals “depressed” him.

“¢ A graduate student told me the story of a fellow preacher of a congregation of 30 souls. The preacher announced he did not have time for hospital visitation because his days were filled with sermon preparation.

Admittedly, this is only anecdotal evidence and may represent only the people I know and not the ministry in general. But it is also possible that in our quest for the ever-larger church we find less and less time for things that will not promote church growth.

Is it possible to justify avoiding unpleasant visits of the sick, troubled, and shut-ins by appealing to our evangelistic duties? Holding the hand of a dying person will not add to the numerical bottom line. And it is the growing church (especially the megachurch) that receives the attention and approval of the Christian community at-large. So, pastoral care may be pushed aside as a marginal responsibility.

 

DANGER

I see three dangers in allowing this trend to continue. First, such an attitude ultimately harms the church”s witness. Sooner or later unbelievers hear about it and it serves as grist for their mill of excuses not to believe. And, of course, to be neglected, or even rebuffed, in a time of personal crisis is very hurtful for anyone””Christian and non-Christian alike. It can destroy someone”s faith.

The second problem with the lack of pastoral care in ministry is the neglect can affect preaching. One minister told me about his friend who first decided that, since he had to prepare sermons, he had no time for pastoral care visits. In other words, since he had to preach, he could not visit.

Later, he sensed his preaching was losing relevance and failing to connect. He then decided that since he had not been visiting, he could not preach.

But perhaps the worst problem with a failure to do pastoral care is the theology behind it. It may decide how we understand our faith.

Every now and then I need a good dose of Luther. One of Martin Luther”s core concepts was the “Theology of the Cross,” especially as it played against the “Theology of Glory.” The latter celebrates public displays such as rituals, fame, and status. The Theology of the Cross embraces a God who speaks to us through brokenness, weakness, and grace.

The God of the cross speaks to us, for example, in the hiddenness of illness. We wonder why there is no miracle but find instead, in God, a new strength to believe. This God, the authentic God of the Christian faith, hides himself in lowly things like a cross and human suffering. Our eyes cannot see him, so we must exercise our faith.1 

Luther wrote:

He who does not know Christ does not know God hidden in suffering. Therefore he prefers works to suffering, glory to the cross, strength to weakness, wisdom to folly . . . (but) God can be found only in suffering and the cross. . . . A theologian of glory . . . works to avoid suffering. And if he is afflicted with adversity, he concludes that he failed in his works.2 

Our problem is we seek to find Christ in our vigor; but he often comes to us instead in suffering. We pursue him in success; we find him in defeat. We desire to have him meet us in exaltation; but he is frequently at the end of humiliation. We assume following him will mean gain; he is our Lord in loss. We want him with abundance; but he speaks to us in poverty. We long to be his friend in the resurrection; but in this life, he offers us the cross.

When we avoid unpleasant service, we can also avoid the God of the Christian faith. We need to minister to the hurting and afflicted to advance our witness. Further, if we grow lax in our spiritual care of suffering humanity, our preaching may falter through lack of connection with the real problems of life.

But most importantly, we need pastoral care to set our faith right. We need it to see the authentic God””the God of the cross.

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1David Steinmetz, “Reformation Theology” class notes, Duke Divinity School.

2Martin Luther, “Heidelberg Disputations of 1518,” English translation at www.catchpenny.org/heidel.html#E021.

 

 

David Fiensy has served as dean of the Graduate School of Bible and Ministry at Kentucky Christian University in Grayson since 2004.