4028 Pastoral Care Issues for Congregations of all Sizes
Joseph Priestley District

Pastoral Care Issues for Congregations of All Sizes
Dr. Sylvia Friedman and Rev. Scott Alexander

How can Unitarian Universalist congregations develop effective lay pastoral care programs? At River Road Unitarian Church in Bethesda, Maryland, the Rev. Scott W. Alexander has been working with Dr. Sylvia Friedman, a psychiatrist and a member of the congregation, to build teams of lay pastoral care givers, using what they call a "communal pastoral care paradigm." An overflow crowd of over a hundred people listened as Alexander and Friedman described River Road's pastoral care program.

Friedman described a continuum of lay pastoral care. At one end of the continuum, a lay care giver is trained to be a "caring listening presence, someone trained to just listen, to walk in your shoes with you," but not to offer advice. At the other end of the continuum, said Friedman, "are programs that cover what I call care tasks," offering specific help such as providing meals or rides to the doctor.

"At River Road, we are right down the middle" of the continuum, said Friedman. "We have both. We have a [lay-led] listening ministry, and a whole team of [lay] people to do care tasks." In larger churches, lay caregivers might provide very specific kinds of help, she said. "The bigger the church, the more you can specialize." River Road Unitarian Church has 705 certified members with a total of more than a thousand active adults. The congregation has a team of 23 lay pastoral leaders, all of whom have had relevant training.

"We have a Cadillac program with chrome wheel covers," said Alexander, referring to the scope of River Road's program. "Most of you probably don't have the resources to duplicate what we did. But you can start small, do what you need to do. Do what you do do well. You can have a gem of a [small] program." Both Friedman and Alexander agreed that any size congregation can have a good lay pastoral care program. Friedman pointed out that many hospital chaplaincy departments and hospice programs can provide free training to lay people.

To begin a program, Friedman said, "Look at your congregation and look at your needs -- what kinds of people are present?" The next step is to look at the resources of the congregation. Finally, Friedman said, "The third factor is resources you have in the community. Are there a lot of supports in your community? Do you want to reproduce what's already available in your community?"

With changes in the medical system, and increasing mobility of families, Friedman believes strong pastoral care is essential for congregations. "We had a member of our congregation who was diagnosed with leukemia, and he lived alone," she said. "He had to stay home getting chemotherapy for three weeks and he couldn't leave the house, so obviously he needed help."

The River Road pastoral care model is based in part on the work of the Care Team Network, a non-profit organization based at the University of Alabama in Birmingham. Their model emphasizes going to the person in need and finding out who he or she is connected with in the congregation or wider community. Then the trained lay leader organizes these people into a care team. The Care Team Network offers regular training sessions in Birmingham. More information is available at www.careteam.org.

"People need to work together, and ministry is about relationship," said Friedman, so the team approach is central to what River Road is doing. "It's more fun for the volunteers, too. They have more time flexibility, so they can take time for vacations and not worry that someone isn't being visited. The caregivers support each other, and there are a lot more skills available when you have more than one person."

"If we asked during a worship service for everyone who had done pastoral care that year to raise their hands, nearly every hand would go up," said Alexander. "I didn't believe we could change a congregation quickly but with Sylvia's program we have changed our congregation very quickly."

More information about River Road Unitarian Church's pastoral care program can be found at www.rruc.org/pc_home.htm.

Reporter Dan Harper and Caroline Jondahl; Editor Lisa Presley; Web Designer Julie Albanese.

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