Pastoral Care, Control & Covid-19

I remember going away on a silent retreat three years ago. A friend had put the weekend together, so I recruited half a dozen young adults from our community and took them along. Each of them came with different spiritual and emotional baggage. One was in the trenches of a mental health crisis, another in the aftermath of a relationship breakdown, another carrying the pain of a missing parent most of their life.

As we entered into two days of silence, these pastoral concerns were amplified in my mind. I knew it would be tough for some of them. What would the silence offer them as they sat with these places of pain, and how would they process it? As a leader, I found my favourite tool - my voice - would no longer be there to comfort or counsel. I had to enter into a deeper place of trust with God, knowing that in the silence he would have to catch them where my words or arms could not. 

Lockdown took me back to this place again. As a shepherd, I found my flock dispersed across the hills of Wellington, with no crook to draw them back together. They would have to remain alone in the pastures, perhaps hearing me call occasionally in the distance over zoom or an email. 

One of the hardest people not to see was a young woman who was in acute mental health distress as we entered level 4. Her housing situation was volatile, and substance abuse had become her way of anaesthetising a series of powerful and painful internal challenges. All many of us could do was call from a distance, and commit her into the grace of God. I felt helpless to comfort her and control this volatile situation.

And yet I shouldn’t have been surprised when God was adequate to the task. Where we could not speak, Jesus spoke. Where we could not hold, Jesus held. Where we could not reach her, Jesus reached her deeply. It turned out we were all much less essential than we thought we were. 

For many of us, Covid-19 created an interesting set of dilemmas for how best to care for people. But the greatest challenge to me was to realise I had spent too much time occupying the place of Christ. Rescuing people so eagerly and so often that I failed to allow the arms of God to be their greatest and most satisfying place of rest, refuge and sanctuary. 

I can be a good friend to people, but I make a lousy Jesus.

And as we all examine the many ways we do congregational worship differently post-lockdown, perhaps it is time for an honest reassessment of how we care for our communities of faith.

Are we caring for those around us because they need it, or is it because we need it? Are we pastoring in such a way as to lead our people into the arms of Christ, or is there some part of us which has mistaken our own hands for the hands of God? Was there a gift of lockdown that allows us to care even more wholeheartedly, but somehow to also hold more loosely so that Christ may do the true holding?

Not all caring actions are grounded in the care of Christ, and not all apparent acts of kindness are inherently loving. My prayer is that, as the People of God, we will grow ever softer towards God and our neighbours, and yet always yield the place of true salvation back to our Saviour.

By Scottie Reeve