Roosters and Hens

For a long time, I have been thinking about the idea of pastoral care. I’ve heard a few folks say, “God didn’t call me to babysit, he called me to preach,” quickly dismissing the idea of pastoral care as something the less-gifted might do for God. Others seemed to get so engaged in pastoral care – doing all of it, rather than equipping others – that any time preparing to preach is quickly gobbled up by what the other side calls babysitting.

I can’t help but think that neither of these approaches – which seem to be rather common in lots of places I observe – reflect what a missional kingdom outpost ought to be striving for in terms of fruitfulness in the kingdom, a phrase I think reflects kingdom economics more than the common use of success does. 

I’ve talked with a number of people I think are smarter than I am, more experienced than I am, and perhaps even more kingdom-oriented than I am about this topic. I keep saying that I want to put some of my thoughts on paper, but I keep putting it off. However, Scot McKnight’s Substack post this week has pushed me beyond procrastination, so here is “installment number one” of what might be a longer series of posts about pastoral care.

McKnight quotes from Bob Smietana’s new book, Reorganized Religion: The Reshaping of the American Church and Why It Matters (New York: Worthy, Hachette Book Group, 2022). Here is a portion of that quote – which, in my mind and heart, helps me understand why the idea of pastoral care is such an important issue.

“Churches in the United States are facing a series of external pressures – changing demographics, a loss of trust in institutions, a global pandemic, increasing political polarization, evolving social norms, and the weight of America’s unresolved history of racial division – that are reshaping the country.“

Those “external pressures” – and there are more than just these, I suspect – create needs in the lives of the very people we want engaged in the church, becoming kingdom people doing kingdom things. 

Later in the book, Smietana focuses on the impact of COVID-19 on the church. A summary from his work that might help us gain better focus is that attendance has declined both throughout the pandemic and since the worst of the pandemic. McKnight summarizes, “35% of churches experienced a 33% decline; 12% experienced more than a 50% decline. . . the final number seems to be that church attendance has declined 12%.” McKnight, again summarizing Smietana’s work, notes that in 2019, 40% of church members were volunteers, but in 2021, that number had declined to 15%.

Unfortunately, the pandemic really isn’t over, though it is much more manageable. According the CDC, as reported in The Atlanta Journal Constitution (12 February 2023, page B1), the rate of death for unvaccinated COVID-19 patients is 14.1 times higher than for patients who received a bivalent vaccine. The rate of death is 2.6 times higher for people who only received the initial vaccines, compared to those who had the new bivalent vaccine. (Those numbers were measured between September 18 and December 24, 2022.)

Yet the church, at least in some contexts – could this be a part of our challenge? – has been pretty cavalier about the pandemic. Did you know that according to the World Health Organization, more than 6.9 million of our fellow humans have died globally, and more than 1.1 million of them were our fellow citizens in the United States? In Georgia, the number of deaths is 40,653. For the three Georgia counties I spend most of my time in, the numbers are: Fayette, 380; Troup, 424; and Coweta, 525. These numbers mean, if you live in Georgia, where the population is 10.8 million, one in every 265 persons has died of COVID. To make that really personal for me, 75% of those deaths are for people over 65, while the 65+ demographic is only 14% of the total population of our state.

If you’re ready to start an argument about the shut-down – as in, should we have shut down or not? should masks have been worn, or should they still be worn? should an employer be able to force you to get the vaccine? should a school require students to be vaccinated? – or any of those other things we’ve continued to argue about since this all began, then please hold your breath for a moment and read on. This isn’t about any of that.

The fact is, along with a number of other issues (see the quote from Smietana’s book), the church is facing a serious crisis when it comes to credibility about what our missional aims actually are and how we can best be Jesus to the world around us. When we get the reputation for being cavalier, along with that comes the idea that we don’t care.

When we get the reputation for being cavalier, along with that comes the idea that we don’t care.

My guess is that if the one in 265 in our state who has died of COVID-19 is a member of your family, or one of your close friends, or a neighbor just down the street in your neighborhood – you might have a bit of a bad taste in your mouth about how some believers have reacted to this whole dilemma, and how some churches have.

It’s an old cliché and probably gets used too often – but it has a good bit of truth in it: “People don’t care how much we know until they know how much we care.” If you know Jesus, then you know the most important thing there is to know. But if I’m not convinced you care, I’m unlikely to let you tell me what you know. When death has invaded our own circles, I just don’t think all these issues we keep debating about – often beyond our actual ability to know facts – matter. But it does matter if I think you care.

When I first moved to Tyrone, Georgia, in 1992, there was a small-town hardware store called Frank’s. It looked like someone poured a slab, then dumped a few dump truck loads of hardware store stuff on the slab, and put walls and a roof over it. But it seemed to have everything. If you couldn’t find what you were looking for, Frank or one of his employees could. The first time I went in there – I think it was to buy some door stoppers for the front door of our new house – I went to write a check (this was before bank cards were so common) and got out my driver’s license. Frank said, “You don’t need that license in here; I’ve got your address on your check.” I kept going to Frank’s over the years, even though both of the big-box hardware stores were in nearby Newnan and Fayetteville.

I’m not sure what happened; I suspect, to some degree, loss of business to the big boxes. But one day, Frank’s closed. The big boxes had greater variety, most often cheaper prices, and just about anything you could possibly want in the way of building supplies, hardware items, plants, tools, and more.

About ten years ago, a new hardware store – Complete Hardware – opened in Tyrone. We’re still a pretty small town, and by now, one of the big-box stores is in nearby Peachtree City. When I found out who was opening it, I immediately thought something like, “I hope he makes it, but a hardware store in Tyrone? With Home Depot ten minutes away?”

From all I can tell, it seems to be thriving. Last Friday morning, I needed some deer corn. I walked in the front door and someone greeted me and said, “How can I help you?” I said, “I need two bags of deer corn.” He remembered that I drive a black pickup and said, pointing to a guy behind the counter, “I’ll put it in your truck and he’ll check you out.” By the time I got to my truck, the young man was closing the tailgate and said, “Have a nice day; come back.”

Had I needed, for example, a new flap to go in the toilet tank, someone would have taken me to the place where they were instead of saying “It’s on row 12.” I could ask him which was best, and even “How do I install this?”

It may have cost me a little more to shop at Complete, but what pastoral care – I mean, customer service – you get for that little extra!

By the way, this is not an attempt to beat up on the megachurch while granting sainthood to the little church. I’ve been in huge churches where I experienced an incredible sense of care, and more than a few little ones where I felt like an intruder. That’s not the issue.

The issue is – coming up on three years of COVID-19 exposing some gaping holes in our efforts to be Jesus to the world – whether we are the biggest of the church world, or just a little country church trying to be faithful to the gospel in the middle of nowhere – we’ve got to find ways to treat people like my friend at Complete Hardware in Tyrone has figured out.

Have you ever noticed that, even in the midst of His final week, as hell itself was breaking out around Him, Jesus said, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, the way a hen gathers her chicks under the wings, and you were unwilling.” (Matthew 23:37, NASB)

Roosters are prone to be cavalier; hens are more mothering. It’s worth noting that in an incredibly pastoral care-focused moment, Jesus uses the imagery of a mother. How can we learn to make that happen in our own places of service and ministry? 

If I want a voice in “the reshaping the country,” I will need to be more like a mothering hen than a crowing rooster!

I think that means pastoral care.