The Fiction of Pastoral Care

Care is a complicated thing.

Idiomatically, we talk about taking care of people—and it means meeting their particular needs. Taking care of someone physically means doing for them the things that they cannot do for themselves—whether that means bringing them chicken soup, changing their diapers, or anything in between. Emotionally or spiritually taking care of people is a little more complicated, but in general it's the same concept.

But by the definition of the word, care implies attitude as well as action. Even with physical care, it's worth asking whether care is really always the right word to use. Changing someone's bed dressings if you aren't fond of and/or concerned about them might not actually be care. Spiritually, the question seems to me even more pointed.

I don't know if you can care for someone just because it's your job. Is it actually possible to care for someone you don't know? Is it possible to provide pastoral care for someone you don't actually care about? It seems to me that genuine care requires trust that can only be built up over time—and that the attempt in many churches of institutionalising care is, in practice, a denial of care.

I have been on both the giving and the receiving end of pastoral care. In the 15 months I have worked with youth ministry, I have attempted to care for people I'd never met before. I have felt their distrust in the face of past abandonment. One former member of our youth group no longer attends because he is frustrated with getting to know new leaders every year—with new leaders who claim to care about him but who don't actually know him, didn't care for him before they were on the payroll and stop caring for him when the payroll stops. He feels that this care is insincere—that it is false. And he is right.

I don't say this to impugn the work of my predecessors. I am sure that each of them did truly try to care for the youth while they were working with them. But I know from my own experience that it isn't easy and it isn't automatic. I've often said—because I believe it is true—that last year with St. Margaret's youth was mostly prep-work, that now I'm ready to actually begin, because now I actually know them well enough that I can genuinely care about them.

And now the challenge for me is not to let them down, not to disappoint the trust I've built. Now that I can care about them, I need act out that care.

And care is a complicated thing.