Episcopal Church Foundation Vestry Papers - for leading congregations

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.

Over the years, for over 85 percent of those I visited, no one had ever asked them how their faith was connected to their work. For me that revealed a significant pastoral problem -- that the Church had been “absent” where people spend most of their God-given time and talent. It almost seems that the Church is not concerned about where people live out their daily lives – what a damning statement!

A few of those I visited wanted no connection between their faith and their daily lives. Another few already felt a sense of vocation in their work, a clear calling from God. And the vast majority found the faith/work connection a new idea, needing further discussion and reflection. That teachable moment – that “aha!” moment – led to conversations about their gifts and talents, and about their work relationships. For many, the door was opened to claiming words like ministry, vocation, calling for what they did every day.

Workplace visiting represents a different aspect of pastoral ministry. Most clergy are trained with the CPE (Clinical Pastoral Education) model – where the visitor stands in the “power” position, while those visited are typically ill or imprisoned. Lay pastoral visitors often mirror this same power relationship. Going to visit people in the workplace changes the pastoral dynamic. It affirms the parishioner “on their own turf,” exercising power and efficacy, and puts the visitor in the learner’s chair.

In Richmond, Virginia, the CPE chaplain at a local hospital worked with me in conducting an experiment for two summers. CPE students were assigned not only patients in the hospital, but also people from the local Episcopal church where I was serving, people that I had visited in their workplaces. As with their assigned patients, the students were to visit their assigned parishioners several times over the summer. The evaluations were significant – the students recognized the sharp power shift from patient to parishioner, and affirmed the importance of both modes of pastoral ministry.

As a rector, I have been the beneficiary through these visits with gifted people who have enhanced my life and ministry. Such visits also provide an affirmation that cannot be achieved in any other way. As a corporate attorney emailed me recently:

"Your perspectives and message are so important and so empowering. … I take your message with me, and remind myself regularly that simply using what gifts I have been given is the best way to live and to serve God. Bless you." 

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