Pastoral Care & Community Life

I love people, and I love church, and I really deeply love church people. Tending to the life of the community and pastoral care are some of the parts of ministry that give me the most energy and meaning in my calling. I love celebrating with people, I love companioning people in the tender and difficult moments in their lives, I love getting to know people deeply, I love the experience of a pastoral relationship that grows over many years.

I know that most of pastoral care does not happen through appointments, but through sending people notes when major things have happened in their lives, through conversations in the receiving line, and through meeting check ins and navigating church conflicts—and I strive to bring a pastoral lens to all of those moments in congregational life. And, I also love sitting down in my office or in people’s homes or the hospital and connecting about what is going on in their lives in a more focused way.

I take an approach of companionship, witnessing, and holding up a mirror with the people I’m talking to. I bring curiosity and empathy, but few answers. I know from my own experience what a gift it is to be on the receiving end of being companioned in tender and difficult moments, and as a pastoral caregiver, I experience it as a deep privilege to be welcomed in to some of the most transformative, heartbreaking, human moments in the lives of the people I serve.