Pastoral Visitation

In the 1970’s a church was planted. When the time came to hire a pastor they chose an inexperienced but energetic young man with a simple Bible college diploma.
I researched the early history of the church and came across an interesting document.
Those early church leaders wrote out a list of expectations, they were very specific.
They defined how often he was to preach, the hours he was to work, and how many homes he was to visit each week (among many other things).

The time for routine pastoral home visits has passed.

• Modern society practices have killed it: busy schedules.
• Cell phone and e-mail killed it: alternative forms of communication.
• Covid killed it: social distancing.

Personally, my schedule to so atypical that a pastor would have a hard time connecting with me. An unscheduled pastoral visit would be intrusive.

Rob

 

I’m from a busy suburban community along the I-95 corridor (north-east of Philly) in a congregation of middle to high income workers with either a college or advanced degree education.

It is far removed from such a setting as you have in rural Appalachia. Life runs at a slower pace in some parts.

My elderly mother recently moved to a rural area in northern Florida.
She remarks that the preacher is not very good but the people are quite friendly.

I remind her again and again that her previous church (Presbyterian USA) often drew pastoral candidates from the prestigious Princeton Theological Seminary that was nearby.

Rob

 

I live in a big city. My Pastor's actually get irritated when I push them to make home visits. They claim they are too busy with Bible study, teaching, phone, email and people coming to church. They also claim that people don't want them coming to their house. We have four full time persons for a church of under 200, but apparently the 3 official pastors are too busy to call on people. Since they don't call on people, I don't call them pastors (shepherds care for sheep and check on them) I call them administrators and preachers, but not pastor's. I wonder if pastor's actually exist except in hills and hollows. I say this with sadness as I observe sheep with no shepherds living in the urban jungle. I have taken on the task of visiting members to check on them.

 

At the 1st church I pastored, I was told that I had ventured into Liberty Baptists Church field and abandoned my own church field (liberty was 2? Miles from the church I pastored).

crazy eh?