Here’s one way I can tell I’m a pastor. Every day throughout this mini-sabbatical month I’ve had these kinds of thoughts:
I sure would like to call [name] and see how their recovery is going
[Name] is having a baby soon. I wonder how they are feeling
I know [name] had been having more frequent falls. I hope they are safe
Another family moved. Another person has a new job. Another person wanted to talk about a name change ceremony. And so on.
It’s impossible to not have such thoughts during a sabbatical, but it has been mostly possible for me to let the thoughts float by and down the river. I invited our church council to make use of the church directory to reach out to and connect with congregation members during this time so I trust them to do that.
This is (I think?) what a pastor in the traditional “shepherding” roll does. They scan the flock, check in on the individual sheep.
My most common method for ensuring I intentionally connect with members of our congregation is a periodic (once a month or so) prayerful page through the church directory. I don’t know how other clergy do it but that’s my way. Then I send a text or a Facebook message or make a call or send a postcard. My goal is to not have anyone who is in the care of the congregation overlooked or forgotten.
I can’t say I’ve ever discovered a systematic way to effectively get the congregation as a whole to play this role for themselves. During the pandemic we tried a few experiments, including asking people to just call or write to the other members of the congregation on their page of the directory.
This had mixed results. Some groups didn’t do it. On the other hand, an older couple on my page of the directory faithfully wrote an e-mail to the whole group each weekend offering a friendly hello and “how are you?”
Pastoring is an enigma to me even though I’ve spent much of my life doing it. It’s not exactly clear what a pastor is supposed to do. Of course we have a job description, a set of tasks: preach and teach in accordance with the Holy Scriptures and Lutheran confessions; preside at the sacraments and lead worship; speak for justice in behalf of the poor and oppressed; equip the church for witness and service; forgive sins; encourage some to prepare for the ministry of the gospel….
And provide pastoral care. Such a nebulous thing, that. Pastoral care. Is that kind of like psychotherapy? Is it simple presence? Is it hearing individual confession and offering absolution? Is it doing what I started out describing in this post, paying attention to people’s lives and checking in?
I think it would be a very worthy goal to have a system in congregations where everyone checked in on everyone else, so the pastoral care of the congregation was conducted by the congregation as a whole.
Such a system couldn’t be left to chance, a general announcement to “just take care of everybody, y’all!” A large group of people just asked to check in on one another will inevitably neglect many. No one person or group knows everyone to conduct the scan and ensure everyone is covered.
Except maybe the pastor in a pastor-sized congregation. There the pastor can be reasonably expected to maintain relationships with everyone—up to 150 people, that is.
Why 150? Well, because of Dunbar. Dunbar’s number deserves an aside, so here’s the quote from an article at the BBC:
According to the theory, the tightest circle has just five people – loved ones. That’s followed by successive layers of 15 (good friends), 50 (friends), 150 (meaningful contacts), 500 (acquaintances) and 1500 (people you can recognise). People migrate in and out of these layers, but the idea is that space has to be carved out for any new entrants.
If I look at my own life and scan it post-pandemic and mid-sabbatical, I’d say these numbers are existentially accurate. Having lived in this town for over a decade, I definitely recognize 1500 people (more actually) but I can tell my brain has hit a limit. I don’t retain as many names of those I recognize.
Similarly I suspect our congregation has remained about the size it has because we’re a pastor-sized church and the pastor can maintain about 150 meaningful contacts (that’s about how many households are connected here, give or take).
Back to the original point about pastoring and shepherding, remember Jesus’ parable about the 100 sheep and the lost sheep. I’d venture to guess shepherds follow Dunbar’s rule. That shepherd had 100 sheep and could notice if one was lost.
In a highly networked age, I do wonder if there are more or less effective methods for getting the flock to care for itself, which I think is what Christians mean when they talk about the “mutual consolation of the saints.” But there are some difficulties, not the least of which is social media, which attempts to convince us we’re scanning the whole flock of our friends when we read our news feed when in fact we’re scanning a carefully curated list of updates the algorithm wants us to see.1
It’s difficult to facilitate people intentionally deciding to care for people who are not their a) family, b) friends, or c) co-workers. And yet that’s precisely what a congregation is, it’s a group larger than the family and not necessarily all friends or colleagues who are intentionally woven together and called to care for each other by rite of their membership in the group and commitment to the way of Jesus.
That’s what you signed up for when you joined a church, actually. To care for one another.
Back to the whole pastor thing, I think post-sabbatical I want to discover together with our congregation more an-archic effective methods for mutually caring for one another. I love people a lot and will probably scurry back into my previous pattern of reaching out to members of the church to check in on them, but I deeply desire that there be others who are also shepherding, and more than anything I’m recognizing some of my very human limits.
Early last week a book appeared on our porch. I don’t know who dropped it off, but thank you. It’s pictured below, Early Lutheran Activities In the Ozarks: The Struggle of the German, English-speaking Lutheran Settlers to Obtain Spiritual Care.
The struggle to obtain spiritual care is also the struggle to provide it.
This is one of my biggest concerns about social media, actually. A lot of people assume if they post something everyone has seen it. That’s simply not how it works.
You have really inspired me to think of others, and ask, “How you doing?” Sometimes, people just need an invitation to open up. I don’t preach, I sometimes mention GSLC. Maybe some will come find the Truth some of us have found there.
Aren’t you supposed to be on Sabbatical? 🤣
Miss you, miss the church, always thankful for all y’all. 😉