Pastoral Care

Pastoral care might include:

• listening

• comforting

• encouraging

• practically helping

• praying

Pastoral care might involve:

• sustaining others through prolonged difficulty or immediate need

• enabling the journey of healing and wholeness

• considering the process of reconciliation with God, self and others

• offering guidance about other resources and enabling different perspectives

• celebrating life with one another

Christian pastoral care is the activity which erupts from the attitude and commitment to love one another because we ourselves are first loved by God. It is ultimately concerned with developing quality relationships, enabling one another to recognize, follow and become more like Jesus and be reconciled to God. It embraces a wide range of activity in support of one another, in and beyond the Church i.e. in gathered and dispersed church. It is a missional activity which we are ALL called to wherever God places us, as we love and care for one another, which SOME are particularly gifted for, as they are called to specific pastoral care roles and responsibilities and which a FEW are led to resource through specialist skills, training, knowledge and experience, as they enable the ALL and the SOME.