Our recent Vestry Papers article "Get the Hell Out of Church" urged church leaders to shift their focus from “inside” to “outside,” and from church-sponsored outreach to individuals understanding themselves as “on mission” in their everyday lives. We’ve already offered ways to Break Out and Take Out. Another one of the ways we Christians can “get the hell out of church” is to Reach Out – to affirm parishioners where they live their daily lives, and to expand the meaning of pastoral presence.
My (Fletcher’s) years of experience being the rector “running” a lively parish has given me an appreciation of what it means to be a CEO of a non-profit organization. In my first parish, I experienced the transformation of the community over nearly five years as 17 northern industries relocated to our rural area of upper South Carolina. With the newly arrived executives moving into the area, I discovered I could best pay a pastoral visit where they worked. That experience opened, for me, a new understanding of “pastoral care.” And my interest in them as working people, and in the connection they made between their faith and what they did at work, opened a new understanding for them as well – that they were empowered and sent out to be the church in their daily lives of home, community, and work.
I set aside Thursday lunch time to visit parishioners across their desk or table or workbench. Two versions of a possible pattern for such workplace visits can be found at the website for Radical Sending. Such visits have allowed me to hear the stories of more than 300 lay folks in their places of work: mortgage managers, bank tellers, investment brokers, ad designers, plumbers, stay at home moms and dads, contract lawyers, nurses, school teachers, university professors to name a few. By listening to their stories and sometimes by challenging their perspectives, my sermons became enriched with real illustrations, my teachings focused on sharing the voices of lay folks, and the dismissal at the end of worship has taken on new meaning – sending people out to be the Church.