Pastoral Care at Saint Mark's
Taking Care of Each Other
This article first appeared in The Rubric, our quarterly magazine, in Spring 2010.
A vital mark of the Christian community since the earliest days was and is how its members care for each other. "Vide, ut invicem se diligant," wrote Tertullian, the first theologian to write in Latin and who lived in northern Africa in the second century. See how these Christians love one another!
This mark of what it means to be part of a Christian community, caring for each other, forms the bedrock of all our core values at Saint Mark's: welcoming, inspiring, serving, and transforming. Caring for and taking care of each other happens within our community in many ways, some visible and some invisible, some organized and structured and some simply spontaneous and flowing out of the natural affection we have for each other.
First and foremost there is the pastoral care which happens quite naturally and invisibly and is the ministry of all the baptized. Pastoral care is the friendly phone call to someone we've missed seeing in church. It's the agenda-free offer to be a sympathetic listener to someone experiencing a difficult transition. It's the thermos of hot soup for someone homebound by illness. It may even be walking someone's dog or combing someone's hair. In Christian community we grow in affection for one another and friendships unfold in which caring is mutual and shared.
In Reach
There are five ways you can participate in pastoral care at Saint Mark's:
- Eucharistic Visitors take communion to members who are homebound or who cannot attend worship due to illness.
- Healing Rail Ministers pray offer prayers for healing to individuals at the regular Sunday services.
- The Prayer Chain prays for members, family and friends who have requested prayer for various reasons.
- Parish friends bring fellowship and spiritual care to members disconnected from the community, for example those homebound, hospitalized or in long-term care.
- Loaves & fishes ministry provides meals to parishioners during difficult times such as illness or death in the family.
These pastoral care ministries are ministries of In-Reach, reaching into the community and responding to the needs of our sisters and brothers.
As times and circumstances change, so also our organized pastoral care In-Reach. There was a time when pastoral care was seen as the exclusive function of ordained ministry. Although that is still part of what bishops, priests, and deacons are called to do (they too are baptized after all), it is not their task alone. Taking care of each other is part of the Baptismal Covenant which calls us all "to seek and serve Christ in all persons," starting with the person sitting next to us in the pew on Sunday morning or the person working alongside us on a committee.
Pastoral Care Hotline
206.755.2076
If you are in need of urgent pastoral care, please call this number and our on-call chaplain will respond as quickly as they are able.
Other Pastoral Care Contacts:
Lay leader contacts are listed with description of ministries linked from blue box above.
The Rev. Earl Grout
Deacon
Phone: 206.518.2833
egrout@saintmarks.org