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Commentary
WESLEYAN WISDOM: Learn the benefits of ‘old-time’ pastoral calls Donald W. Haynes, Dec 23, 2009
Donald Haynes
By Donald W. Haynes UMR Columnist
In his Georgia parish experience, John Wesley noted that when he visited people, they were more likely to come to worship. From that observation, he wrote into the ordination vows of every Methodist the question from the bishop to the ordinand, “Will you visit from house to house?”
My impression from many pastors in churches both small and large is that home pastoral calls have a much lower priority than in the past. Indeed, some pastors consider them just an “old time” tradition. I disagree.
I became interim pastor in October of a rural church of 120 members. Kallam Grove Christian Church is a theological descendent of James O’Kelly, who left the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1792 after losing a three-day debate over Bishop Asbury’s authoritarianism in making appointments.
O’Kelly asked for a cabinet of Presiding Elders to advise the bishop, and for the right of appeal of one’s appointment to the conference. He retained Wesleyan theology, adopted congregational polity and formed The Christian Church, which never spread beyond counties north and south of the North Carolina-Virginia line.
They became part of the Congregational Christian Church in 1921 and the United Church of Christ in 1957, and later assumed their original name. They have open communion, infant baptism and Quarterly Conference! Its liturgy reminds one of Methodism in the 1950s, including acolytes, robed choir and clergy, and observance of the Christian year.
Its theology is definitely not fundamentalist; no doctrinal questions were raised when they called this United Methodist clergyperson!
Home turf
Surrounded by pastures and tobacco fields, Kallam Grove has a Madison, N.C., address, and within 5 miles we have members in Madison, Stokesdale, Summerfield and Reidsville. Interestingly, the church is in my old high-school district, and several of the members are classmates from the class of ’53, though I have maintained no contact with my home county since high school. I have no “kin” there but have returned to end my ministry with my “kith.”
My immediate goal was to visit each of the church’s 62 families before Dec. 31, even though I am serving only part-time and commute 50 miles from my home to the parish. So I am testing the hypothesis that house-to-house visitation is passé.
Visiting from house-to-house gives me more sensitivity; I can pray with an image in my mind and I can subsequently chat with them about their collections, hobbies, pets and gifts. This gives an entirely different perspective to my ministry among them.
When we greet at the church door, it’s more personal. I can better understand their behavior patterns in church meetings. And to be honest, laity feel much closer to a pastor who has been in their home, and are more likely to follow his leadership in church meetings!
House-to-house visitation is a positive thing in building pastor-parish relationships. Let’s meet some of my parishioners. (I have changed the names of my parishioners, but nothing I record here is confidential in our small church.)
“Jack” was 89. His National Guard unit had been called up three weeks after Pearl Harbor; they were all medics who had been trained by a country doctor. He patched up Brits for four years before hitting Omaha Beach on D-Day in 1944.
Since World War II, he had farmed and been a pillar in Kallam Grove. His wife of 70 years died two years ago. My first pastoral call began with his recalling his long and good life. Then his daughters came to tell their father that winter was coming, and it was time to leave the farm. From his chair we could see Angus cows grazing, wood for his preferred source of heating, quilts and needlepoint from his wife’s sewing skills. Jack smiled and said, “I believe you are right; it’s time to go.”
I visited him twice in the nursing home. Ten days later I had my first funeral and was able to eulogize a life well lived—because I had seen him in his farmstead home and learned his sacred story.
“Patsy” lives in her parents’ homestead, a house probably a century old. I had set up the visit through a niece so Patsy met me in the front yard. As a child, her severe speech impediment caused both family and schoolteachers to treat her as retarded, so her education at Intelligence Grade School was very limited.
The old floors creaked as we walked in. We began with the stories behind her pictures. Her big life event was traveling to the University of Virginia to see a nephew get his college degree and to stay in a motel!
Then she said that she used to go to church, but now has to go frequently to the bathroom. The laywoman who went with me joined me in encouraging her to come back and offered her a ride. The next Sunday, Patsy was there for both Sunday school and worship! When I welcomed her from the pulpit, her faith family applauded and her face was wreathed in smiles. She was home again.
“Richard,” 62, harvested his hay in September, though he had a lot of back and hip pain that had increased during the summer. A visit to his doctor resulted in an MRI, after which he took his children and grandchildren to the beach. The doctor called to say, “Come home now and don’t drive.” Chemo was begun immediately; then radiation.
I go weekly and someone from the church goes daily with food, encouragement and concern. Oh, the congregational care of a small-membership rural church!
“William” has had prostate cancer and seems to be healed. He said, “I hoped you would come to see me.” Both his marriages had ended in divorce, one of them costing him most of his farm, just as his company where he was a draftsman was sold in a buyout that robbed him of his pension. Once he had a nice brick home; now he lives alone in a doublewide.
Sharing grace
I planned to stay my usual 45 minutes; I stayed two hours. He is most grateful for being elected a Deacon by congregational vote two years ago. But he needed to know what I thought about Jesus’ words concerning divorce and whether I was comfortable with his being a Deacon and serving Communion in the pew.
I thanked God for Wesley’s grace theology, which I reviewed with him. The visit ended in the yard, admiring his rockwork around all his azalea beds. When I prayed, the big man cried a few tears.
“Bill” lives alone in the old family farm house a few hundred yards from the large brick home in which his parents reared him and his two brothers. Both of them finished college, but Bill was an alcoholic who married early, had two sons and lost his family as well as job after job.
He told me, a stranger, that he was an alcoholic who had been dry since 1994, and that he was also bi-polar, on disability and in desperate need of prescription medicine he cannot afford. He volunteered that he had not been in his home church in years.
I suggested that our candlelight Christmas Eve service would be a good time for “re-entry.” He asked me to pray with him and his last words were, “I’ll see you Christmas Eve.”
“Cindy” is an outstanding high school student from an affluent home, a drum major at school and a senior with a 1400 S.A.T. score. Upon learning I was a trustee at High Point University, her grandmother asked if I would take Cindy to a “small school” to show her the contrast with North Carolina State University where she plans to go.
The day we went, there were five of us. It was a bonding day with this teenager. She told her mother that I was “cool.” She will play the French horn at our Christmas Eve service and has arranged four Sunday evenings in January for me to talk with the youth about what it means to be a Christian.
They had recently seen a disturbing movie, The Invention of Lying, one of which the movie insisted was religious faith. Sarah and her generation are so precious, but so vulnerable. They need to know their pastor as a friend.
I dropped by the country feed-and-seed store to see “David.” On the wall behind the counter is a picture of a young man in dress Marine uniform. “I won’t be at church Sunday,” David told me, “because Aaron is coming back from the Persian Gulf where he has been for a year.”
I do not know his son, but could sense both a father’s pride and his anxiety. We had a brief prayer for David as we stood among the feed, seeds and hardware.
Even part-time, I spend two afternoons and evenings seeing people either in their workplace or their home or a restaurant. I never knock on a door without having made an appointment.
Sometimes these take weeks to find a mutually convenient time—so does my doctors’ appointments! But I don’t want to meet my doctor during surgery; I want to know her or him a bit more personally before the hour of crisis.
To me, the same is true of one’s pastor.
Dr. Haynes is an instructor in United Methodist studies at Hood Theological Seminary. dhaynes11@triad.rr.com.
Donald Haynes
