Pastoral Care is Fellowship with Christ

David Pettett
July, 2015

In her book on revitalising pastoral care, Deborah van Deusen Hunsinger says that Christ’s presence determines the pastoral conversation.[1] If this is true, Christian pastoral care is never carer focused. Yet the surprising conclusion is that it is also never client focussed. In Christian pastoral care it is not the chaplain who brings an agenda of their own. And yet it is also not the client who sets the direction which the chaplain responds to. It is Christ who sets the agenda and to whom both the chaplain and the client respond.

Consider three scenarios:

1.       The chaplain who brings their own agenda.

Most pastoral care practitioners agree that this is the worst form of pastoral care. This chaplain will approach the unsuspecting client with a clear purpose such as evangelism at one extreme. This chaplain does not feel they have done a good days ‘chaplaining’ unless they have told someone about the wonderful saving work of Christ. At another extreme, and equally inappropriate, is the desire within the chaplain to ‘make the patient feel calm’. This assumes the patient wants to be calm. What if she wants to ball her eyes out in grief or scream at God in anger?

Bringing your own agenda as a chaplain or pastoral carer says more about your own needs than it does about the work of pastoral care. It is something to be avoided but too often observed even in people who have been acting as chaplains for a number of years.

2.       The chaplain who is determined to respond to the patient’s agenda.

Too often in pastoral care this approach is promoted as the proper way for a chaplain to act. This approach encourages the chaplain to listen and reflect. Not a bad idea, and often very helpful for the patient especially when this chaplain is the first person who has bothered to hear and to be a fellow human being who is present. But this style of pastoral care most often stops at this point when it should go further. Click through to this YouTube video to see how frustrating for the patient this approach can be.

3.       The chaplain who follows Christ’s agenda.

This does not mean simply being biblically correct. Yet, again, being biblically correct is not a bad idea. Neither does it mean waiting for a personal, audible voice from Jesus to know what to do next. As Hunsinger styles it, Christ’s mediation reconfigures every human encounter, desire and aspiration. His mediation is effective because Christ himself is present in the pastoral encounter. His presence will be apparent primarily to the chaplain because he or she has entered the pastoral space in prayer, asking that Christ himself be present, asking that Christ will mediate between the chaplain and the patient. Asking that Christ’s wisdom will be to the fore when human wisdom fails. Believing that Christ’s strength will be present when human strength is inadequate. Knowing that Christ’s suffering stands between suffering and the sufferer themselves. In prayer the chaplain entrusts the pastoral encounter to Christ. In this style of pastoral encounter the client will also ultimately become aware of the presence of Christ.

The ministry of Christian pastoral care is a difficult privilege. It goes beyond compassion and empathy. It does more than listen and reflect. It is more than drawing alongside a fellow human being with empathy. It is more than two people in conversation. In Christian pastoral care three people are always present. Three human beings. One of them is truly human in a way the other two have never been and can only ever aspire to be.

If the chaplain tries to be the well trained expert who moves to their own agenda, they will fail. If the chaplain tries to be the empathic listener, responding to the patient’s agenda they, and sometimes the patient, will feel good. But neither of these approaches has deliberately invited Christ into the encounter. In both, there is human interaction and there may be some level of pastoral care, one for the other. It is hard, however, to see how these methodologies can be truly called Christian pastoral care because Christ is not acknowledged.

Hunsinger believes that because psychotherapy has so dominated pastoral care many practitioners see themselves as agents of change. The pastoral care encounter is thought to be part of the treatment plan. Contra this Hunsinger makes the bold statement that ‘Koinonia is the central purpose of Christian pastoral care.’ She believes that being present, listening with care and praying are ends in themselves. They are not a means to see the patient made well.

Christian pastoral care will see the chaplain enter into koinonia firstly with Christ and then with the patient. Christian pastoral care will take place when all three acknowledge each other’s presence. Christian pastoral care will take place when two of the three recognise that the one true human ‘stands between’ themselves and their human experience. This is why the major activity of the chaplain in pastoral care is prayer; to invite, to experience, to respond to and to encounter the fellowship of Christ in the fellowship of human life.

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[1] Deborah van Deusen Hunsinger. Pray without ceasing: Revitalising Pastoral Care. Grand Rapids. Eerdmans. 2006