Pastoral Care

Pastoral care is more than visiting someone in the hospital. Pastoral care requires deep listening to not only the words someone may share, but also the tone, inflections and body language that accompany those words.

Effective pastoral care requires a minister to create spaces in which one is able to be with another through whatever need is presented without taking the burden on as the minister’s own. Compassionate care works in tandem with clear boundaries and it cannot end with the minister.

As Unitarian Universalists, we are called to be a covenantal people – a people of promise making and promise keeping and of returning to those promises when they are broken. It is our task to minister to one another. As your minister, I would work with a team of lay people who are interested in providing such care to give them the training and support needed to be successful.

My work in social services has given me the opportunity to be with people dealing with mental health concerns, trauma and intellectual disabilities – to name a few. While it is clear to me that ministry and social work are different, I have become a better social worker by bringing a ministerial presence into that work and I think I am a better minister by having seen a wide range of challenging life issues and knowing how and when to access services that may be useful to someone in need.