Dear Friends,
In order to share other
important information with you; I am interrupting the series on worship that I
began in my column for September.
Pastoral Care
Please know that it is my
desire to be at your service in terms of pastoral care. Many of our members have indicated to me
their reluctance to call upon me, because of the many things that occupy a
pastor’s time. While I have many things which
I need to be doing, I am not “busy” in a real sense of the word. Caring for the souls of our members is my
primary function here, and so I do not want my occupation with secondary things
to supplant my primary work of teaching God’s Word and providing pastoral care
to our members. I encourage you to call
upon me day or night, when you have need of my services. It is likely that I will go to my grave with
items still remaining on my task list, and so I can assure you that the hour or
two that I am pleased to direct your way will not be a determining factor in
whether or not I complete my other work.
I am indeed your servant in Jesus Christ. Additionally, if you are going to be having
surgery or become hospitalized, I would love it if you could give us a call or
drop me an email. Due to the laws
regarding medical privacy, hospitals are not permitted to inform the church
when our members are hospitalized.
However, we believe in the power of God wrought through prayer and the
gifts of medical vocation – and so it is always my desire to visit our members
in the hospital for prayer and the anointing of oil in the name of Christ
Jesus, the great physician.
Snow (doesn’t it make your heart leap for joy to see this
word in print?)
Snowy days and other
inclement weather can present motorists with risks that should be avoided whenever
possible. To that end, we urge our members
to exercise caution when choosing to attend worship and other parish activities
during such conditions. Since we have no
way of alerting everyone, who may be intending to come to worship, of
cancellations, I do not cancel worship services. Of course, exceptions to this policy will be
made when there is a safety concern in the building, itself. However, I do not want worshipers and worship
leaders to “gamble” with their safety, and perhaps their lives, in order to
attend worship when roadway conditions advise against it. This is to say, regardless of the weather, I
will always be present to offer worshipers God’s Word through Scripture reading
and preaching, and the Lord’s Supper.
This does not mean that anyone else is expected to be present when
weather conditions present serious challenges to your safe arrival. In terms of other activities, we will make
every possible effort to inform members of cancellations. Additionally, on days when the Brookfield school
district has cancelled school, there will be no fellowship and Christian
education programs for children and youth.
Communion Cards
While I recognize that
filling out these blue cards before worship does not exactly “set the world on
fire,” it is really the only way that we have for tracking the worship
attendance of our members. Monitoring the
worship attendance of our members helps the pastor and deacons to be alerted to
possible pastoral care needs that have arisen in people’s lives. Failure of churches to respond in times of
need in members’ lives is one of the primary reasons that people give when
asked about membership inactivity. With the
number of people who regularly go “up North,” and those who frequent Florida
and Arizona, it is difficult for me to interpret fluctuations in our members’
worship attendance. Even if you only
complete the date and your name, I implore you to complete a communion card
each week. Certainly, I make every
effort to pay attention to who is in worship, but when someone is absent this
week, I am frequently unable to remember if they attended last week. Thank you
for your help in this.
In Christ Jesus,
Pastor
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