At Blackburn Baptist Church whenever someone wanted a ‘catch up’ talk rather than in-depth counselling, I would often invite them to come with me to do a hospital/shut-in visit. We would talk as we drove, they’d come in with me to the visit (I’d use my judgment about whether anything highly confidential would come up there – in which case I’d ask my companion to wait outside for a while) and in passing we would talk about ‘How was that visit?’ which is a way to train people to visit in hospitals etc. (Don’t stand between patients and the window/light etc. etc.)
About 70% of pastoral counselling is not necessarily highly confidential and if I ascertained that beforehand and got the person’s permission for me to bring someone with me – often an elder or deaconess – I had no problems, and it provided a training opportunity.
The other 30% – two thirds of those people didn’t mind having another person there in the interview (again, ascertained beforehand): the other 10% I saw on my own…
In other words ‘on-the-job-training’ in pastoral care/visitation spreads the ministry around – and people actually get excited about being involved.
Not to mention the creation of new friendship/prayer networks all over the place…
Now:
1. Anything wrong with that approach?
2. Why do fewer than 1 in 250 pastors (I’ve done the research) ever think about that and practise something like that?
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I believe the initiative for inviting people to join a ministry-team should come from the pastoral elders/leaders. (Otherwise you sometimes get crazies wanting power in the church for the wrong reasons if you ask for volunteers).
Again, pardon my quoting Blackburn Baptist again (but some things actually worked there 🙂 I encouraged the leadership to invite four people who had significant administrative/financial gifts, to join the leadership team or be involved in a carefully-defined ministry.
Two of these were working at the time and promptly retired, they were so excited to leave a stressful job (one discovered that his superannuation was 2 or 3 dollars a week less than his current working-salary – ‘why didn’t I think of doing this earlier? he asked).
Those four people did a brilliant job for many years: Bert Waddell did it until he died late last year – about 30+ years of brilliant ministry.
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So the question arises: Rowland, you don’t generally ask for volunteers?
No, I *never* or *hardly ever* asked for volunteers – for anything.
The apostolic way (it actually works!) is for Jesus/Paul/Barnabas etc. to choose their mentorees/disciples…
See this article for the rationale behind this: http://jmm.org.au/articles/8109.htm
Discussion
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