The
Rev Lindsay Johnstone, a former hospital chaplain in Sydney, Australia
(Ed: After many years as a chaplain in a major teaching hospital in inner city Sydney, Lindsay has retired to Oxfordshire, U.K.)
(Ed: After many years as a chaplain in a major teaching hospital in inner city Sydney, Lindsay has retired to Oxfordshire, U.K.)
The heart
of chaplaincy ministry.
There is a sacredness to being
welcomed to share the pilgrimage of people who are especially vulnerable.
Jesus, who died to change our lives and those of patients, clients and staff to
eternal hope, has caused the Holy Spirit to live within us. As we cooperate
with him, He loves others through us, sometimes verbally and sometimes through
presence alone.
While
the chaplain is observing, the Word and the Holy Spirit do it all.[i]
There is a powerful opportunity
to witness God working well beyond the obvious input of a chaplain, including patients
being converted through their own reading of gospels they had been given. Getting
to know staff members over a period of time would lead to pastoral discussions
relating to their work, family relationships, and enquiries about belief. A
question I was asked was, “Why could Nebuchadnezzar and Ribbentrop go to heaven
and a nice guy like me go to hell?” Countless patients could ventilate their
health and pastoral needs, with some finding new hope. As a senior chaplain, I
could mentor pastoral care students, and liaise with the hospital executive, and
facilitate health service- based online training.
There
is no place for self-glorification nor the glamorisation of other chaplains.
The protocol of
confidentiality enhances the heart of one-on-one ministry and helps to hedge
out reportable results and public reputation. On one of my long train commutes
to the hospital, I looked up a passage in Deuteronomy 30 to seek to be stroked
by the Lord with affirmation for serving him! Suddenly my mood changed as I
read, “The Lord will circumcise your heart that you may love him.” I went
through an unexpected experience of mortification and self-loathing, being
confronted with the darkness in my heart and my total unworthiness. Sometime
later I was impacted at a deeper level by Galatians 2:20, properly translated –
“I have been crucified with Christ… it is no longer I who live… the life I now
live in the flesh I live in the faith
which comes from the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.” It
is in dying to self that we can serve.
It
is sacred to see and celebrate God working outside our own comfort zones.
I came to cherish working
with chaplains of different backgrounds. Respect grew with chaplains of other
faiths, but without the need to compromise my own convictions. It was a sacred
experience to be a regular presence among medical and administrative staff, and
long-term patients; and to be a support for some patients and ex-patients who
could not find meaningful support in their local church. The power of Christian
love is essential in relating with the unusual. It is a privilege to relate with people who
did not seem to fit a norm in many churches. One long-term Christian patient
preferred to be identified as of the opposite gender.
The
Lord works powerfully while the chaplain seeks to find and fit in with what God
is doing. Midnight call-outs with a one and a half hour drive from my home in the
Blue Mountains west of Sydney to the hospital were a favourite part of my work
and a special privilege. A son requested a visit for his dying mother. When I
explained that I talk and pray aloud, even if it seems the patient cannot hear,
he said emphatically, “She won’t hear anything!” I addressed her by name and
she opened her eyes. Timing is beyond us, and another callout patient died
minutes after my visit. It is important to seek the Holy Spirit’s guidance for
what to do and not do in specific situations. I visited a patient, whom the
doctors said a few days earlier, would soon die. When I visited her, she was
dressed and packed, and was going home. She had been prayed for and anointed
with oil[ii]
to receive healing two days before by a chaplaincy colleague.
I gave another patient a
printout of a special blessing[iii]
I used with him. A couple of days later, he told me that he had made several
photocopies of it and gave it to some of his friends.
Ministry with mothers who
lost their precious babies in the womb or at birth would sometimes be followed
by pastoral support for a nurse or a social worker.
When praying quietly on my
own in a multi-faith prayer room, if a Muslim entered, I would in my heart pray
that God would give this person a saving vision of Jesus. One time, a Muslim
lady in the prayer room asked me to explain the Trinity to her, and then the
Holy Spirit. She accepted a copy of Luke’s Gospel with an article on “Why Jesus
is essential.”[iv] I
do not know what she did with it.
Volunteer
chaplains have a special contribution to make. They can offer a dimension
that complements the role of chaplains who may have spent all or most of their
working life in employed pastoral roles. Some volunteers have come out of
professional and business careers where they have exercised considerable
responsibility. This helps in their understanding of many patients. They also
often have distinct expertise that they can add to the functioning of a
chaplaincy team.
Every
ministry sometimes has to cope with bureaucracy and opposition.
Pro-forma
official reports, often done on line, to prove the effectiveness of chaplaincy
are of themselves devoid of spiritual value. They seem to be necessary because
of the need to satisfy public sector funding bodies of “evidence based”
chaplaincy effectiveness. Content-wise they are meaningless and distract the
energy of chaplains. The only spiritual benefit I can find with them is that
they are another opportunity for a chaplain to die to self![v]
The real work is hidden. Such reports can provide no meaningful guide.
In any
Christian ministry team, there can sometimes be conflict and even opposition. Paul referred to spiritual opposition as a “thorn in the flesh” in 2
Corinthians 12:7.[vi] When
the Lord told Paul, “my grace is sufficient for you”, he was, in effect,
saying, “When you face difficulties, be encouraged and strengthened by the
intimate reality of my presence in the lavish outpouring of favour upon you
that you could not merit if you tried. Bask contentedly in the overflow of my inexpressible
love beyond the comprehension of height, breadth and depth. I am with you to
strengthen and nurture you.”
The key to effective chaplaincy is an unhurried and perpetual
locking-in to intimacy with the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. “Then he picked us up and set us down in the highest heaven in
company with Jesus”. (Message version of
Ephesians 2:5). The longer the commute to work, the greater the opportunity to
bathe the ministry of the day in intimacy with Jesus. A major theme of Paul’s
Epistle to the Ephesians is that though still on earth, by faith we can enter
into the reality that our inner being is “in the heavenly places”. Though still
very much living in the earthly fallen order, where we share not only in
Christ’s resurrection, but also in his ascension.
[vi] The word for thorns is used in
Numbers 33:55, Joshua 23:13 and Judges 2: 4 to refer to human opponents of
God’s people, and is nowhere used in the Bible to refer to illnesses.
So uplifting!
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