Visitation: Pastoral Care Delivered! – Rev. Tyler C. Arnold

Transcript (edited for readability).

I get the time spot right after lunch, which means it's either my job to put you to sleep so that you can be all refreshed for the next session, or to try to keep you awake. We'll just see how it goes to determine how that's going to work out. But you have that outline in front of you, and I'll be referring to it quite often.

Something happened whenever I started preparing for this, for the collegium in regards to pastoral visitation. Originally this was called "Paul's Work and Wisdom for the Church Today." That's the actual name for the book — well, the article that is written for the journal, for the Seelsorger Journal. But I thought more appropriately, as far as practical purposes go, "Pastoral Care Delivered," because it takes feet, it takes voice, and it comes to the places that we serve in a very practical way. And for that reason, that's why I want this conversation to be very practical in that way. I also want to have conversation, so there's going to be a little time at the end for question and answer — probably more questions than good answers, but at least we can come together and maybe make some really good answers to some of those questions, some thought-provoking things as we go along.

And mostly, brothers and sisters, this is for encouragement for all of you as well. Tim Pauls is always saying, "You're always hitting me over the head with that law stuff. You're telling me to go visit people all the time." What I want to do is to encourage you in this endeavor, because it really does define who we are. I think a lot of times we think of visitation as one of the functions of being a pastor. I think it's more than that. Visitation is not just a function of what a pastor does, but visitation actually defines what a pastor is.

In this world today, where the definition of a pastor is being defined and redefined all the time — pastor as CEO, pastor as chief administrator, and all sorts of different ways that we're learning from culture, pop culture, on what it means to be a pastor — I really do believe we're losing this identifying mark of who God has made us to be. We know whose we are. We talk about that all the time. But who we are as pastors, I think, is being lost, in the sense that we're not talking about it enough — about who we are. And so I would like, with our conversation today, to start talking about regaining our true identity, of who we are, and an understanding of what a pastor is.

Let's go back to the Scriptures for what it is to be a pastor. The God who visits His people are the pastors who visit. First Timothy chapter 3, verses one and two, shows us what a pastor is. We hear in that First Timothy 3 passage: "If anyone desires the office of an overseer" — episkopēs, it's in the feminine, because the office is referred to in the feminine there — "they are desiring a noble task." Episkopē, from that word episkopos that you guys know and have heard so many times, that word translated "overseer." Oftentimes — and I think we just get this misperception, or we give others this misperception, and unfortunately I think we kind of fall into this misperception as well — is that, you know, we're overseers. We're kind of managing the people below, kind of putting the chess pieces where they need to be, and, you know, this is our task as an overseer.

But where this word comes from is the verb form, episkopeō, or episkopos, or episkeptomai, which is the deponent form — if you like deponent forms, which I don't, because they scare me a little bit and they're hard to say. But episkeptomai is the verb that means "to visit." It's defining who we are, not just a function of the ministry. You know, what else do you do as the ministry? Well, I preach, I teach — all those combined are defining who a pastor is. And wives, this is what your husbands are. They are episkopoi. They are visitors. That's the strict definition of what we're talking about here.

And so whenever we visit, we're not just bringing some sort of haphazard message. We're actually bringing Christ, and we have a full delivery of Christ, a blessed opportunity to give. So every visitation that we have is a house blessing. Christ desires to come into the house of our parishioners. And guess who's bringing it — you are. You are, maybe with your communion sets, but definitely with your words, with your comfort.

Dr. Kleinig's — effective ministry type of language that he shared with us — what happens whenever you're in proximity with people? You get a chance to touch them. You have the opportunity to see the expressions on their face, whenever they say something that, well, you know, you just couldn't translate quite well enough on the phone or through an email or a text message and all those other ways that people communicate nowadays.

Just recently — well, it's been a couple of years ago now, I guess, since Dr. Kleinig graduated from the seminary five years ago — but just recently, I guess, one of the ladies in our parish family — I've been there for like an hour already, and she's one of these ladies that, you know, you're going to go and visit her, and when you go and visit her, you're going to spend a lot of time with her, because she really doesn't have anyone else to talk to. And guess what — these people, especially your shut-ins, even if they're in assisted living or if they're in a nursing home, you are the most important person in their life. And so take some time and share with them a little bit.

But as I was leaving, visiting this woman in our parish who's now — she's now in heaven — I asked her, I said, oh, this was around Christmas time, "Are you going to Cheryl's house for Christmas?" And immediately her smile went, like that, and she started looking over her glasses, you know, one of those things. And I knew I'd said something wrong, and my visit just got an hour longer too — not quite that long, but it's almost like, "Well, let's go back in and sit down, and we're going to have a little bit more conversation about this."

But these are sacred places that you're going into. They're very sacred for them, because their home is their castle. We have the sacred space in our sanctuaries. We have that sacred space around our altars, and we have the communion rail, which is a sacred space. But whenever you enter into the house, and you're bringing a blessing and a prayer, the Word of God, the hope and comfort that comes even through just a message that would bring hope and comfort to a broken-hearted person, you are making that place a blessed house. And you have the opportunity to bless that house. The kitchen table can be just as sacred as that communion table. The full delivery of Christ — a blessed opportunity to receive, a blessed opportunity to deliver, a blessed opportunity to listen. That's at the end of that Roman numeral number one: listening. I'm going to mention that again. Listening is such a blessed opportunity for us, as pastors, to have a very valuable, very personal word to say.

If you guys are involved in Doxology — and all of you are, because obviously you're here — you've heard Hal mention many times Eugene Peterson. Hal thinks a lot of Eugene Peterson, and I've picked him up and started reading him, especially his words on pastoral care, and it just amazes me. You know, it's just dripping with such great words and encouragement and hope and comfort.

Have any of you read The Pastor, his memoir? There's a story in The Pastor about him in his first week at the seminary in New York. He had a Pentecostal background at first, but then he was going into a setting where he was becoming more and more in tune with, and alongside of, the Presbyterian church, and he took kind of a part-time position — I guess it could be like us being field workers whenever we were at the seminary. He and about six other seminary students were assigned, or got hired onto, this place called Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church. There was a pastor there — he was a great preacher. His name was George Arthur Buttrick. Eugene Peterson didn't know it at the time, but he was considered one of the great preachers, and he soon found out why, because he would listen to this guy and just be absolutely amazed at the wonderful way that he would share the gospel of Jesus Christ.

On Sunday afternoons, he and a couple of the other guys — those guys that were, I guess you could say, kind of doing their field work at that particular church — would have an opportunity to sit at the feet of George Arthur Buttrick in the evening, at his home, and just have conversation, like you guys have been doing for Doxology. Maybe that's where Peterson learned how real, true pastoral conversation and education, in that way of soul care, really comes about.

One of the seminarians asked Eugene Peterson this question: "What is the most important thing that you do to prepare for one of your sermons?" And the answer surprised each and every one of those seminarians. The answer was: "On Tuesdays and Thursdays, for two and a half, three hours in the afternoon, I walk the neighborhood of the people that I will preach to that Sunday. And I will talk to them, and I will learn their hurts and their needs and their desires. I will learn what they are talking about. I will look at the expressions on their face and know what needs to be delivered from the pulpit on Sunday."

And so the reason why I tell you all this is because listening, and being actively involved in a dialogue, a conversation face to face, can make you guys better preachers. It will make you better preachers. And how much more practical, of something that is of use for us as pastors, can that possibly be? Pastors are really good at talking. I'm great at talking — maybe not, you're listening to me — but I like to think I'm good at talking, or I like to talk. Maybe that's the best way to put it. I'm really bad at listening sometimes, and sometimes pastors aren't real good at listening. And if we are better listeners than talkers, I think it can inform our sermons to be extremely effective from the pulpit. And so that's one of my encouragements for visitation.

Now I'll say a little bit more about that later, if I have the time. But I'd like to look at Roman numeral number two: the structure and the purpose. You guys remember what happened in Acts chapter 14, right around verses 21 through 23? Remember, Paul was in Lystra. What happened to Paul? He almost got stoned to death, right? I mean, actually, they thought he was dead, and they kind of dragged him out of the city. And then guess what Paul did — he went back. I mean, how many of you would go back to the city that you almost got stoned to death in? But Paul did.

Now, some of these struggles — Paul had struggles, people were throwing rocks at him, large rocks. We may not have to have those kinds of struggles in our visitation, but they will come in different ways for sure. But what are some of the struggles that we have? Look at this Bonhoeffer quote here — struggles: "Every unsuccessful pastoral visit is a difficult judgment against us, because it will display our lack of spiritual experience and power." We like to quantify our visitations. Guess who is the harshest judge of visitation? You are. Pastors, have you ever come out of visiting with somebody and just went like this — you know, "Why didn't I say this? Why didn't I do that?" Or even think that, that night, while you're laying in bed — "Why didn't I say this? Why didn't I tell them that?" And then, of course, again, it gets put back on you, right? Because if you were to say the magic words, everything's going to be all better with them. Because it's all about you — and it's all about me, of course. And then we just start even beating ourselves up, and then we don't even want to put ourselves in those kinds of situations anymore. So what do we do? Well, we'll just stay away. "I'm just not going to even approach that kind of situation again." And then that becomes a path that we don't want to go down either.

Look at numbers one through eight there — I think it's eight, number eight — I have some things that inhibit us, that maybe prohibit us from being the visitors that we want to be. Unreasonable demands of some to be compulsively cared for. Remember, I'm going to tell you, for many of these people that we visit — and I didn't get this from me, this is from Bev — many of these people that we care for, in that age category, you're probably the most important person in their entire life. They look forward to that visit. And I have those, and maybe you guys do too, where, "Oh, I was wondering when you were going to call and come and visit me, Pastor." Yeah, you know, they're looking forward to it. Others, maybe not so much, but there are some that do have an unreasonable demand of needing compulsive care. You have those people in your parish family.

Time management — maybe we're not so good at managing our time. Two years ago in this room, Brian Wolfmueller did a time management module, and he referred to a book — I think you got a lot of that stuff out of that book — from David Allen, is that correct, Getting Things Done? Have you guys ever read that book? Okay, yeah, that's right — that is what I was going to say, you stole my joke. All right, I have not read it, I haven't had the time. Sorry, remember — he's "dying to live," Alice, dying to live. All right. So time management may be something that encumbers us, and we can't quite get our handle around everything that needs to be done during the week, because you have a lot of different things that come up, a lot of different things that pop up that you didn't realize were going to pop up. And so time management also is an issue sometimes.

Geography — how many have a real long way to go between calls? You guys have a long way to go between calls, yeah? So I have some here in Kansas — we're in Missouri, about 25 minutes away. I have a number of people — actually one of those girls at the concierge's desk, she lives still west of here, about 20 minutes away. And so, you know, whenever I set up a visitation with her, I'm going to make sure that she's there, right? I just visited a family that lives an hour north of St. Joseph, Missouri. We live eight miles south of the airport. It took us an hour and a half to get there. They come to church every Sunday. So guess what — I'm not complaining to them, because whenever I see them in church every Sunday… but geography can be something that really hurts our ability to make as many calls as we want. Or it's just, you know, the gas prices are too high, I just don't have the time to get all the way out there, or whatever it is.

You know, my encouragement for you guys too would be, if you do have multiple calls in one area — if I come to Kansas, I'm not going to just hit one person. I've got four or five families out here, I'll see if any of them are home. Or if I have a shut-in that's down in Johnson County, Kansas — we have one family, it's in Johnson County, Missouri, where are all these people coming from — but we try to schedule calls that usually are going to be back-to-back, in close proximity to one another.

What also encumbers our visitation? Less time spent at home. We hate that. We want our time with our wives, our husbands, we want time with our children. Too many church meetings for the pastor — how many of you have a meeting, let's say, every week? You have a meeting every week, okay. How many of these meetings last more than two hours? I can't stand meetings that last more than an hour and a half, I start getting very antsy. But at the same time, there are those meetings that happen like that. What are some ways that we can consolidate the amount of meetings that we have to go to at one time? We have a centralized committee meeting night, where all of our committees meet on one night, and I just float to the committee meetings — I'll just pop in for ten or fifteen minutes and then go to the next one. We have twelve different committees, so if we had a committee meeting per month for each one of those twelve, it would be really hard for me to manage my time in an appropriate way, to be home with my family, and also to take care of the sheep, to be present among them, all at once. There's just too many demands on our time.

Too many church meetings — already said that one. "The intense inner resistance pastors face towards risk-laden encounters with parishioners on their own home turf." How many of you are scared to go and visit a particular person? Yeah, okay, I thank you for your honesty, because there are some of those — "What will they say to me? I haven't been over to see them in a long time." Or they're one of the people who really say a lot of mean, nasty things against you behind your back. Yeah, so all of those kinds of things.

How about no one answers the doorbell or the phone anymore, or you can't even get them to reply to an email? You know, even fifteen years ago, whenever I would be making calls, I would find people answering doorbells a lot more than they do now, even if I were just to make a cold call on someone. The phone is also something that you can, obviously, with all the technology that we have, be able to see who in the world is calling. I don't have to answer that — if it says "Christ Lutheran Church," I ain't answering it, you know, or the parsonage or whatever it may say — I ain't answering it. There are a lot of encumbrances to overcome whenever we're trying to plan visitation.

One of my elders is planning an acolytes-and-elders evening at the T-Bones — that's actually just right over here at the Legends, our independent minor league baseball team here in town — and he's trying, he called all the acolytes on our acolyte list, and I think he talked to one person, you know. He left a message, and then sometimes they don't even have the answering machine set to where it's actually receiving messages, because, you know, you even ask the kids nowadays, "I left you a voice message" — "I don't check voicemail, who checks voicemail messages, right?" So, you know, even when you're leaving them a text — our son is at Okoboji in northwest Iowa, he's a camp staffer there, he's in general staff, and Andrea, my wife, will text him. I just don't even try, I just let Andrea be the parent. And so she'll text, and Jacob just won't even text back, or he'll text back "fine good," and if he tries to write a coherent sentence that actually makes sense, we can't even decipher what it means in the first place. So, you know, communication — it's just not there anymore. And I really think that that's affected effective ministry. I really do.

So personal communication contact is so few and far between, but we need to have it, brothers and sisters. We need to have that communication, even if it's just that emotional communication that Dr. Kleinig was talking about earlier.

Let her be — the purpose. This quote from Thomas Oden is helpful to me. He says: "The pastor's very title and vocational identity stems from the shepherding metaphor, which assumes visitation. The flock is dispersed and scattered vulnerably about its hazardous world. They will be shielded from thieves and led to fresh water only if the pastor is in the same field with them." There are many wolves out there in sheep's clothing, ready to tear at your sheep, or the sheep of the Good Shepherd. Whatever kind of visual that you get on that, whether it's the shepherd motif, or if it's the sheepdog that you've been hearing about at Doxology — one eye on the Good Shepherd, one eye on the sheep, type of thing — it's hard to be a good sheepdog, hard to be a good shepherd, whenever you're not in the same field as your sheep.

And so having that constant commitment, that constant communication with them, to be where they are, is so fundamentally important, because there are ravenous wolves running around all the time. Now, I know that you cannot keep your eye on your parish family twenty-four seven, right? I mean, sometimes they just have to take care of themselves — it's just logistically impossible. But there's so much out there just tearing at our kids. There's so much out there that is just ripping at them from every direction — on social media, on TV, just even being told to them by people who have no idea what they're talking about — that it makes our efforts to be intentionally with them, to be in their presence, all the more important. It really is extremely important, to bring God's love, to win confidence — that's an important thing — to bring the truth to bear, especially when those wolves continue to attack, to give aim and directness to prayer. I love that one too. How many of you guys, you pastors, whenever you visit someone, you're going to end, or maybe even begin, with the word of prayer? I think all of you probably do. How do you know what to pray for? You listen to them, right? You listen to hear what their needs are. You hear and see what it is that needs to be prayed for, and then you pray.

To get to know the flock better — we listen, and that's the key. "The pastoral act of listening, which is the pastor's major contribution and the creation of stories, takes place ordinarily during a range of acts of counseling or visitation." That's from Peterson's Five Smooth Stones for Pastoral Work. Listening is the key. And again, pastors, we're just not as good at this as we think that we are. I'm really convinced of that. And as a father, I know I'm not as good at it as I should be.

Our son went to camp this summer, and he's working for the first time away from home, five and a half, six hours away, and the first week was miserable for him. He either had just a really bad case of homesickness, or he went psychotic or something, I don't know. He's like, "Dad, I got to come home, I'm just going out of my mind here." I mean, I got so upset about it that I had to call back, and Bev — Bev very kindly and graciously helped guide me a little bit in this area, some things that I've never experienced before, because, you know, those kids just don't come out with a handy-dandy booklet, do they? So anyway, whenever Jacob called me and said these things, Jacob just stopped talking to me for just a minute, and let me tell you something — I spent the next half an hour talking, while he just sat there and listened, because I was ready to fix every single one of his problems really quick, if he just listened to me. Sometimes the best tool that we have is a listening ear, so that we can formulate our prayers, we can formulate our words of encouragement, that we can formulate our ministry and our proclamation and preaching as well. Strengthen preaching.

And then number seven is: though visitation might be individual, I want you to know that it should not be individualistic. What do I mean by that? Visitation, at least the way that I see it — we're always connecting each other as a church at large, and maybe even most specifically to the divine service, to the divine service, connecting to the body of Christ. And I'm going to talk maybe just a little bit more about that, the kind of liturgical-ness of home visitation, in just a minute, if we have a little bit of time to do that.

Look at Roman numeral number three: the how of visitation. Acts chapter 15 — like I said, the original title of my paper was "The Wisdom and Work of Paul in the Church Today" — "Let us go back, let us return, and see how they are doing," or maybe even "see how they have it," however that translation may go. What did Paul do? He didn't mess with theories, he didn't mess with just mincing words. What he did is he went and did it. He got up on his feet, he made the move toward them, and he brought Christ. He brought Christ on his lips, and that's what you are — you are Christ-bringers. And that is a very important thing — that is the gift of forgiveness of sins, that is the gift of life, that is the most important thing that you can do for your sheep, is to bring them Christ, to bring it to where they are at, whatever the circumstance may be that surrounds your particular visitation at that particular time.

So it's not learned in books. We can't learn a bunch of theories about visitation. I can stand up here and talk to you about it till I'm blue in the face, and you're not going to learn how to visit. You're not going to learn from Doxology modules about how to visit. We're not going to be able to understand how to keep in touch with people by managing through a bunch of theories — people never get in touch with other human beings by talking theoretically.

Oswald Chambers wrote this book — it's pretty old, there's a couple of nuggets of interesting information in it — it's called Workmen of God: The Cure of Souls. And one of the things that he talks about — he talks about the importance of visitation, and he says the thing that you're never going to learn about visitation is how to do it from just reading books. And he tells this story about a fisherman who wrote a book on fishing. He studied everything that there was to know about fish, about how to fish, about nets, about poles, rods, and reels, and everything. And then he got on a boat with a real, actual fisherman that was catching fish, and the whole thing he could do for two and a half, three hours was throw up overboard, because he didn't have his sea legs, you know — he didn't know how to fish. And that only comes with experience. That only comes with going out and doing it.

So, you know, we can talk till we're blue in the face about how to do these kinds of things, and they may be even a little scary at first, but you get better at it — you really do. And I know that this is not coming as any surprise to any of you — you've been taught these things, you have put these things into practice. My encouragement for you, with all of this, is to continue all of these things that you already know, and put them into practice, and see how that will make your ministry flourish all the more, as the deliverance of the gospel becomes all that much more significant to the specific situations that you will deal with each and every day in your parish.

Make it one of your first duties — it is really important. Remember, I'm not just talking to you about visitation as a function of the office. I like to think of visitation as function and essence together. It is the bringing of Christ. So what we have to do, or what we need to keep in mind to do, is to know that visitation is who we are — visitors. And so that is a part of our first duty, for the sake of those that we care for. God's mouthpieces, not salesmen — we're not sophists, for we are not like those who peddle God's word for money or something like that, but as men so sincerely need it, as commissioned by God, in the sight of God, to speak in Christ, as Paul puts it in 2nd Corinthians chapter 2. So we don't have a condescending visit of a superior to an inferior, from one who has it to one who does not have it.

Do you have parishioners that would be scared to get a visit from their pastor? Why would they be scared to get a visit from their pastor? For the same reason we could be scared of them? Yeah, okay, very same thing — "What are you going to say to me? What did I do wrong?" All right, so that's the first thing. You know, you open the door and, "Hey, it's Pastor." "Hey, how are you, what did I do?" But I really think that if visitation is a regular routine, you can kind of start dispelling that idea that goes around — that, you know, "Pastor only comes to me when something's wrong," or "he needs something," you know, those stewardship visitation calls that you've heard about, or whatever they are — that's something else.

If you're coming to see them because they may not be able to get to church for medical reasons — yes, they're on the shut-in list — uh-oh, "Are you saying I'm never coming back to church? That means I'm just about dead" — yes, "I've got one foot in the grave already" — yes. And you've got that tenuous line to walk. Those people that you do go see and visit, that might be kind of on that line of shut-in, then all of a sudden — guess what — you're "shut-in" now. We have a shut-in list, and I have ladies on my shut-in list, a couple of men too, that will not want to be on that shut-in list. "Take me off the shut-in list, Pastor." All right, you know why — "I'm not a shut-in." "Are you a delinquent? What are you? Who knows?" So just give me what you are — "I'm just a sheep, I don't know." So we just kind of work that in. Yeah, that's exactly right, yeah, very good.

They're worried about their hair not being done, the house isn't right — yeah. Have you ever been over to the house and then you see the vacuum marks on the carpet? Yeah, because they made sure that they had to get the vacuum going before you come over. Remove all the inappropriate things that pastors shouldn't see, right? Yeah, remove the inappropriate things that the pastor shouldn't see, yeah.

My brother is a pastor of West Portal Lutheran Church in San Francisco, California, and that's a challenge in and of itself, as you might imagine, for those of you who are in those kinds of areas. But one of the things that he does — he does visitation on families of the school. The school is huge, mostly Asian, mostly nonmembers who go to the school — very good school, people want to go to it. He makes visitations on the kids in the school, on the families, and he'll go in, and it's not uncommon for him, obviously, to see a cross, and then a Buddha sitting right next to it, right? And, you know, it's interesting, the conversations that he can get involved with, with the Buddha and the Jesus — "Oh, you know, Jesus had a lot of early great teachings, just like Buddha, right?" And so that's usually the response that he hears, or maybe even the first words out of their mouth, if that kind of thing were to come up. Yeah, inappropriate things — maybe not even just false gods, but other kinds of false gods other than Buddha.

So anything else? Yeah, that's very good, yeah — our society today just doesn't come and visit. Yes, so they don't know what to do. We're going against the culture, we're countercultural by doing visitation. You're right, because people don't do that anymore. That's an excellent point. One of the things that people don't do is communicate by face-to-face contact any longer. You know, and Dr. Kleinig was just so intent on making sure that this point was made — whenever you are face to face, what can you do that you can't do by email or text message or even by the phone? Yeah, you can touch them, or you can see the expression on their face. And guess what — they can also see the expression on your face. You have an expression of concern whenever you look them in the eye and they're telling you about Johnny, their son's cancer diagnosis, something along those lines, and you can express care, even beyond just, "Oh, that's too bad," on the phone. So if you do hear that kind of news on the phone, brothers, I implore you, I encourage you — go visit.

Wives, what can you do in a supporting role in that way? What do you do — is there anything that you do in those situations? Because I'd like to know too, and I think Andrew would like to know. I'm sorry? Absolutely, that's right. Oh, man — you want to see our older people and our parish families brighten up and smile? Bring your kids. Now, whenever I bring my seventeen-year-old kid, they don't really care much anymore — you know, there's like, "Hey, you brought Jacob, he can do my lawn," you know, which is really good, that part is really good, but yeah, that part is gone. But that's exactly right, you know, we have an extended family into our parish extended family together — those are very important and valuable things for us.

Well, another thing is to actually tell your husband, "Yes, go visit them." There you go, there you go, because — okay, very good — give them permission to visit. Again, we were talking about the demands on our time — we sometimes, as pastors even, get worried about that, spreading ourselves between our family, our parish family, our parish administration, our getting to that meeting, community work, whatever it might be that we're involved with. Boy, we can be supporters of one another — you wives to your husbands, in that way, by coming alongside in that regard. That's a really important thing, thank you for that.

Oh, I'm sorry, Laura — yeah, there was a lady that we used to visit at the nursing home regularly, and I just told her one day when we came to visit, "You know, if you want to just talk to Pastor, I can take a walk" — you know, that sort of idea, that well, maybe she doesn't want to say things around me that she would say to him. Yeah, yeah, I guess that is kind of a situation too, where we would want to make sure that we're respecting the right kind of boundaries, if that were to need to take place as well. Yeah, so there are definitely situations — I'm kind of going in and out, maybe it's time to wrap it up — where your pastoral visit may actually involve things like confession and absolution, something like that, so that would be something that you and that person are talking to each other individually, specifically, individually. But we're never really individualistic — there might be an individual type of visitation, but we're all part of the church of Christ. So we connect each other in very important ways to the body of Christ, and so we're always making that connection liturgically. Of course, when we're having communion, with the angels and archangels and all the company of heaven, we're having communion together — remind your people of that, because they want to be involved in the community, and we involve them in the community also by being present with them and talking in those kinds of terms as well.

Let me see here — it's about, okay, got a few minutes here, let me think here, where do I want to go. Anybody got anything else along the way? Look down a little bit further to the encouragement one — kind of look at, this is Roman numeral number four, Acts chapter 20, verses 17 through 38. This is where Paul warns the Ephesian elders of visitation persecution. "And now I commend you to God, and to the word of His grace, which is able to build you up, and to give you the inheritance among all those who are sanctified."

You guys read the book Hammer of God? Okay, pastors, you probably all have — how many wives have read it? A few of the wives, awesome, I'm glad to see how many have. There's that story about Pastor Torvik and Shinstead, and then Shinstead's sister. Pastor Torvik makes a visit on Shinstead, and he hadn't been there in a while, and Shinstead's sister kind of pokes in front whenever the pastor comes and visits. I'm going to read to you just a little segment of that. It says: "Before lifting the heavy knocker" — that's Torvik — "he mumbled a prayer. He was greatly excited and aware of the rapid beating of his heart." I've felt that way before. "Here, Shinstead's sister made her appearance. 'Well, well, is our pastor honoring us with a visit?' There was just a hint of reproach in her friendliness." And you've gotten that before — a hint of reproach in her friendliness. "And Torvik felt that he blushed, and it was really true that he had neglected to visit Salleby. Could that perhaps be the first reason for Shinstead's animosity?"

So, you know, those kinds of situations are ones that we find ourselves thrust into every once in a while. We have about 900 parishioners, and Brandon Freulen and I — we admit it sometimes, we forget about certain situations, we didn't write it down, we didn't get it right. And then we get a call two or three months down the line — "How come you never checked on me? How come you didn't tell me, or come and make a follow-up visit, Pastor?" And you feel like crud. But at the same time, you know, who are pastors? Humans, with human forgetfulness, with all sorts of different things that are pulling us in a hundred different directions — human beings trying to address human needs, with something more on our lips and in our hands oftentimes, something that gives life. But unfortunately, at times, we do forget.

So number three there says: however, we are never alone. The Lord delivers the goods through you. "So shall My word be that goes out from My mouth — it shall not return to Me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it." We build on what is preached in the sanctuary through our conversations at home. We can have the opportunity, in pastoral visitation — another great reason to do this is to clarify things that are not clear, to instruct in times of need, personally, about a specific situation, especially if you're addressing a particular sin, to instruct personally about that specific situation. And we can't always do that in the general context of a Bible class, or in a church sermon on Sunday. We have an opportunity to clarify and to instruct.

Pastor Jeremiah Johnson at Gloria Christi in Plymouth, Minnesota — it was the church that Klemet Preus was pastor of up there, and Jeremiah Johnson was his associate for just a real brief time, and he was kind of mad at the Lord a little bit, because — he took Klemet, he says, "You take Klemet, but just give him to me for a couple of years." So Jeremiah told me, "Give me Klemet for a couple of years, just don't take him away too fast," because what Jeremiah really wanted to do — he has this program, and if you ever wanted to write him an email and learn more about it, he's got this program that he sort of devised, he calls it "Parents as Shepherds." And he goes into the homes of families, and he teaches parents, along with children, how to parent, especially how to teach their children the catechism. And he goes and sings a hymn with them, he has a lesson with them, and then he gives them material for the rest of the month. And he would visit his families every month.

Now, he visited his families every month whenever he was at Faith in Richmond, and he had about 40, 45 people in church on Sunday, all right? Now that's not happening — and we know why, there's no time — that you can't do that for every… it's just, you could try, maybe make your family miserable, or bring them great joy, I don't know which one it is. But it would be very hard for you.

I told Jeremiah, whenever he was leaving to go take the call to Gloria Christi — I was a circuit visitor, so actually one of the stipulations for me as a circuit visitor was, I said, "I will take the job if nobody takes a call, ever." That was my stipulation for being circuit visitor, because I didn't want to have to try to find, you know, a vacancy pastor and all that kind of stuff — I'll be circuit visitor only if you make my job really easy. So Jeremiah is telling me, "Well, I'm thinking about taking this call." I said, "No, you can't, you know our deal." Well, he did — he did, he took the call.

And one of the things that I told Jeremiah, and I just — just as counsel for a fellow brother, didn't have any major insight on this, I don't have any special kind of wisdom in this particular area, other than what all of you already have — as I said, "If you try to do your Parents as Shepherds thing with as many young families as you have at Gloria Christi, you're going to kill yourself." And he said, "I realize that." And I said, "So what are you going to do?" "Well, I guess I need to train people." I said, "That's a good idea — train your elders, and have them make visits on these young families." If they made them once a month, how awesome would that be? How awesome would it be that we could make a visit on all of our parishioners once a month? That's not happening. But yet, how important a thing that he put together, that had been a really important thing at Faith in Richmond — and he's trying to get the ball rolling in order for that to happen at Gloria Christi, but it's harder. Depends on your context, right — how many are around.

So Gregory of Nazianzus said this: "It is difficult to deal intimately with people in personal relations." Yes, I would much rather answer that one from the pulpit, you know — give me an opportunity to tell you the law without actually getting a response from anybody. So yes, it is more difficult to deal with people one on one.

So what do you need from me? I want to give you encouragement to do that. I want to come alongside of you, to show you, to encourage you to do this — say, hey, you know, we're doing it, Christ Platte Woods, the people next to you in your circuit, your brothers and sisters at your table — we're making these difficult home situations into visitations together. We're of concern with them, we're able to touch them and hold their hand when they need to have their hand held, or put your hand on their head and give them a blessing. Oh, I love giving blessings.

I got a chance two days ago to go to the hospital and visit two little, just teeny-tiny, five-pound little girls. They almost looked identical to each other, and they were almost born at the same time, two different mothers and fathers, but they were very much — they were just so cute, they were so cute. And guess what I got a chance to do — put my hand on them, and put that sign of the cross on their forehead, and I said, "Man, I look forward to your baptism, and I know Jesus does too." And one of the parents was like, "Hey, yeah, okay," and the other parent was just crying, you know, just crying, sobbing, and says, "Oh, I can't wait, I can't wait." "Well, we don't have to…" "No, let's wait, Pastor." All right, all right, so that's how that went.

So anyway, real quick here, I'll kind of finish it up, and maybe we can open it up for just a minute or two for more comments or questions. Bonhoeffer says: "Regular visits are good for the pastor. He should be present with the sick often. Among the sick, we learn more about the world and come closer to the pangs of Jesus' cross than we do among the well." That's pretty true, that's pretty true. We understand suffering in the midst of people who are suffering a lot more, or even in the midst of our own sufferings, we can relate, we can understand, and we can come alongside with a listening ear and a word from Christ, and a blessing that comes from our hands and our lips, and with the Word combined with the bread and wine, for the forgiveness of sins in Holy Communion.

I do, in the paper — I kind of skipped over this part a little bit in the paper that's going to come out in the journal, the Seelsorger Journal — I have an excursus on how I do visits. It's about four pages or so long, it's not very long, but I thought that I would just give a little bit of a summary on how I do visitation, just so that you would kind of see that — not as a demand that you do it this way, but, hey, how does another guy do it? And that is in your outline, it is under number three. I skipped over that part, but I spell it out in greater detail in the journal article, in the Seelsorger Journal.

I'd like to conclude with this — it's number five, this is on the last page of my outline: words of wisdom from George Henry Gerberding. He's got a great read, The Lutheran Pastor. How many have read this before? Gerberding's The Lutheran Pastor. So, do you have a copy of it? Because — okay, you have a copy because you're really old, right? Yeah, that's right. So they don't have this thing in print anymore, I don't think, so you can actually go to Google Books and download it for free or whatever, but I read it online because, you know — yeah, I'm not old enough to have a copy of that.

So this is what Gerberding says. He says: "Why should not a Lutheran pastor be as diligent, as heart-warmed, and as attentive to the families and the children and individuals in his reach as these others are" — referring to other churches and other church bodies. "There is absolutely no ground and no excuse for the difference in zeal for the individual. It is high time that all our theological seminaries lay more stress on biblical Seelsorge, adapted to our land and our mixed and endangered people. We repeat what we have said before: give us a generation of ministers as apt, earnest, and zealous and active in private soul care as they are sound in faith and orthodox in the pulpit, and nothing will be able to stand against our church. No church needs such active Seelsorger so much as the church that has such a large diaspora. Take Jesus to your people. Visit them, show that you care for them, show that you love them."

How wonderful it is — and by the way, you know, if I come to one of those doors that oftentimes give me a little bit of a frown whenever I knock on the door, one of the things that I do is say, "Hey, I'm here because I'm concerned about you, which means I love you." It's really hard to stay mad at your pastor when you tell them that you love them. And you know what, here's another thing for you too — show them great concern for their kids, because you show them that you love their children, they will love you. That's something that's very important too.

So there is a lot of hard work that goes into all this, and it's not always happy work, but it is joyful work, because it's joy in the midst of weakness, it is joy in the midst of our failures as visitors — you know, joy in the times that we come out of one of these after we make one of our visitations. But we have God with us each and every time, and that's what we can always count on. So may God bless you and keep you in that, and I'll just open it up.