Editor's Section




Where'd They Go?

The story of the ninety and nine is not in the bible just to be a tearjerking sermon illustration.

Might I suggest your church measure its pastoral care proficiency against a list of people you have lost.

The question a newly-hired Care Manager needs to ask is, "Who used to attend this church and where'd they go?"

Care Manager

Your editor was in Vancouver, Canada, for several months in 2001 and, as is his way of life, became involved in some difficult pastoral situations. Two situations involved families in quite desperate need. The situations and the people involved need not be identified or described since they are not the essential issue. What is the issue is the clear absence of adequate pastoral care in two churches.

In one of the churches the problem is pretty clear: it is a place for the pastor to give speeches and little else. The other, however, is in rebuilding mode and doing excellent work in many areas. The first church is in the process of self-destruction, so is not expected to effect any changes. The second is not lacking in commitment or compassion but failed utterly because they did not know how to go about pastoral care.

That got us thinking and then discussing with the two main pastors of the second church. They both liked the ideas and encouraged me to put them on the website for greater exposure and feedback that will enhance the ideas.

The essential point is that pastoral care needs to be managed. The management component is beginning to be recognized in churches but still not sufficiently. Some larger churches now have executive pastors. These pastors manage the church administration, which allows the pastor to get on with what s/he does best. Besides, there is precious little administrative training given in seminaries and even where training is given, it is not a lot of use without practical experience in the business world. Management systems need to migrate from admin to pastoral care.

Our thinking is to establish a pastoral care manager for each pastoral care situation so that the situation can reach a conclusion or, where this is not possible, be continually overseen without interruption and without being forgotten.

There need not be only one care manager in a church, although it is worth considering this as a staff position - if the church is large enough and has enough savvy to do it right. Care managers could as well be church members who have taken a training program and achieved certification. All care managers would report through upward systems to the senior pastor/minister and the church's governing body.

Care manager training could be done co-operatively by several churches to share the load.  Training should lead to local certification with regular renewals and upgrades.  We suggest that if such a training program is considered then it would be worthwhile to contact Christians for Biblical Equality for their list of egalitarian counselors.  And we would appreciate some feedback for this website if such training courses are constructed.

We are suggesting that care manager files might be of some use and these will be introduced in the Care Files page. It may not always be advantageous (or legal in some places) to maintain files on those who receive pastoral care. However, there should be a managed body of information that can be accessed by care managers. This will be different depending on your location and it will need to be managed with care and attention to detail. This will be a database of support that can be drawn upon. It will include information on services offered by and in the community such as housing, medical and legal assistance as well as those services available from Christians. We suggest making clear which Christian services are provided without charge and which are charged for. For our part we feel strongly that the proliferation of Christian businesses associated with pastoral care (such as the various counseling organizations as well as individual counselors) gives Christianity a bad name and introduces yet another self-organizing system eddying off from the main stream.