Dear friends, 

There are a huge number of images for pastoral care, and pastoral ministry more broadly, in the Christian tradition. Shepherd certainly features in the biblical texts, and you maybe have encountered metaphors, like Henri Nouwen’s “wounded healer;” Anton Boisen, the founder of Clinical Pastoral Education wrote of the “living human document,” as the recipient of pastoral care, and Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore later reinterpreted this as a “living human web.”  Many of these imagine care—love, empathy, nurture, healing, reconciliation, and the like—properly as attributes of God before they are attributes of those God calls to ministry.  They place both caregivers and those for whom they care in relationship to God, understanding Christian pastoral care specifically as part of a faithful response to the revelation of God in Jesus. 

Broadly, the shift from Boisen’s “living human document” to Miller-McLemore’s “living human web” is a shift from understanding pastoral care primarily as the work of a pastor responding one-on-one to individuals or small groups (like couples or families) with particular needs, to seeing Christian ministry as embedded in a web of relationships, strengths and needs from the very local level (in our families, households and congregations), to the broader economic and political systems which affect each of us in different ways. Within the web, it isn’t just designated ‘pastors’ or ‘ministers’ who care, but all properly share in the tasks of caring, just as all are embedded in the matrix of relationships. 

Margaret Kornfeld develops one of the images I’ve found most evocative for pastoral care in gathered communities (like congregations and, yes, the college): ministry as gardening, where those engaged in it must attend both to the plants—individuals, groups and families, with their unique characteristics and callings—and the soil—the broader environment in which we all live.  Kornfeld insists—like St Paul (1 Cor 3:6)—that growth comes from God, but asks those engaged in the work of ministry to nurture both individuals and the environment in which they find themselves. 

I find these images reflect some of the ways in which various members of the college community come alongside each other in support and contribute to the flourishing of our common life.  They also point out the ways in which we, as ministers in practice and in formation, are challenged to care for individuals where they are, but also to nurture our shared environments to allow for all to thrive.     

Yours faithfully, 

Jen 
Chaplain

This message was written by Dio Chaplain Jen Bourque for this week’s Wingèd Ox, a weekly news digest distributed to the college community.