by Dave Roberts » Sat Nov 09, 2019 7:55 am
Tim, I agree with what you are saying, and in every church there has to be an adaptation to the church. When I pastored an 800-member congregation, it was far different from the 250 member church I served. Staff and designated teams of laypeople did a lot of the follow-up. The key was making clear to people that they would not be dropped when the funeral was over. I never did all those visits after I got to larger situations, but I made it clear that someone would be checking and programmed those efforts to respond to the critical times. Random visitation ended for me by 1980, for all I accomplished was leaving cards in doors while serving an urban-fringe congregation. The key is keeping clear expectations and communicating them, not in running every errand and making every visit myself. I still run into folks in my generation and older who assume that pastors go out and visit every house on a road for the church. My problem in what I was hearing was that there did not seem to be any active care ministry from that church.