Tending Body Life
For deacons, elders, and others in caring ministry and spritual leadership.
Pastoral care and congregational change
By Marcus Smucker
Pastoral care can foster health in a congregation during the process of change. By attending to the experience of the community and of particular individuals who struggle with change, the pastor can be a significant resource for missional change while also enabling a deeper, longer-term unity in the church.
The word pastor is rooted in the biblical concept of the shepherd. This metaphor is particularly helpful in identifying the role of pastoral care in times of stress. The Bible portrays the shepherd as one who leads the sheep out to water and green pastures, who guides and protects, who seeks the lost, and who leads the sheep home at the end of the day.
Change often generates inner struggle, personal insecurity, and fear. It can evoke a conflict of values or of interests and needs. Sometimes there is a deep sense of loss and grief. Frequently differences of conviction and opinion deteriorate into power struggles. When tensions increase and conflicts erupt, people can get lost in the maze of positions, attitudes, and emotions. Often they need a shepherd to help them find their way home again.
Like good shepherds, pastoral caregivers take note of stress and anxiety in the congregation. They invite individuals and the community to name and reflect on their experiences of themselves, others, and God. Here are five ways to give care in times of change:
1. Stay in touch with people in the congregation through formal and informal visits. During any time of stress in the congregation, pastoral visits need to be increased, particularly with the individuals and groups most involved.
When tensions increase, people can get lost in the maze of positions, attitudes, and emotions.
2. Be a calm, reassuring presence. In these visits don’t promote any particular position. That way you will be free to genuinely care for the people in stress and to invite them to prayer and open conversation on the issues.
3. Create a safe atmosphere for reflective, prayerful conversation about the person’s concerns. In the presence of the caregiver people must be able to express their deepest convictions, fears, hurts, anger, and so on without any negative consequences.
4. Help people to name their pain, and help them to find healing.
5. Have reflective pastoral conversations with individuals and groups about themselves and the issues. The role of the caregiver is not to debate positions or to counter arguments, but to engage people in a process of reflection that invites and enables individuals and the community to encounter themselves, others, and God, and in the process to become able to make good decisions.
This ministry of engaging in reflective conversation is essential in times of change and stress. To initiate such conversations caregivers can focus on a particular area of the person’s experience and ask a simple question or two. It is most useful to have such conversations begin with the person’s own inner experience of the change. Ask: “How is your life being affected by this change?” or “What is it like for you to face this change?”
The caregiver may want to help a person who is in opposition reflect on that experience by asking questions such as:
1. What is at the heart of your opposition?
2. What is it like for you to be in this place of opposition in the congregation?
3. How are your relationships with others in the congregation during this time?
4. How can you express your concerns most effectively and constructively?
5. In your present role how do you think you are being viewed in the congregation?
6. What do you think would be a fair and constructive way to work out the differences of vision in our congregation?
7. How have you been experiencing worship during this time? How are you praying about this matter? What is God’s response to you when you pray? What might God be asking of you?
The first responsibility of caregivers is to attend to people’s whole experience, both inner and outer, thereby helping them to come to greater personal clarity about their concerns, their behaviors, and their relationships. Reflective questions can invite people to greater self-awareness, selfperception, and self-correction, as well as increased awareness of others. Because of the nature of the questions being asked, such conversations also have an element of accountability.
Even though asking reflective questions in pastoral care conversations is a simple process and easy to do, it is greatly undervalued in congregational life today. Wellworded questions that invite people to serious reflection can be an important tool for enhancing personal growth and missional change in the life of the congregation. It is an excellent expression of the pastoral role of walking alongside and guiding.Marcus Smucker, professor emeritus at Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary, now lives in eastern Pennsylvania, where he teaches occasionally for Eastern Mennonite Seminary and is involved with the Lancaster Mennonite Conference leadership development program. He goes to East Chestnut Street Mennonite Church in Lancaster.