Finding True North #26: Hospital Visits and Pastoral Care

One of the many wonderful things about interning at a church the size of North UMC is that they don't really need an intern. That sounds bad, but what it means is that I have a lot of flexibility. There's a lot to do, and I can get involved in whatever I want. Discipline is required to do the things I don't necessarily want to do but need to do, of course, but I figure that's a good thing to learn.

That having been said, I hate hospitals and nursing homes. So I made sure early on that I expressed a desire to go on hospital and other pastoral care visits. Yesterday, I got to tag along with Rick Pickering, North's Pastor for Care and Nurture. Rick has a wonderful pastoral presence, which I think was part of the reason that even when we walked into Indy's ginormous Methodist Hospital, I wasn't uncomfortable. We visited two church members at Methodist, and I was able not only to meet and speak with them but also to observe Rick's bedside manner, for lack of a better phrase. He has an attentive, non-anxious presence that seemed to me to make the patients feel cared for but not fretted over, their pain acknowledged but not given power.

We also went to a retirement community to visit a 93-year-old woman who Rick says is the closest thing North has to a matriarch. She has been involved in just about every aspect of the church for decades. It was incredible to talk to her because her memory is still razor sharp—better than mine, and at her age she would have an excuse to let things slip. We ate lunch with her and Rick asked questions about the history and present of North, what she thought about certain things going on, etc., and each answer led to a story complete with details like names and dates, even if the narrative was from 30 years ago. I hope to catch up with her again before the end of the summer. People like her are the true keepers of what my old worship professor would call the "sacred bundle," those things most important to the history and identity of a congregation.

Rick and I are going to meet sometime soon to debrief on those visits, and I should get at least one more opportunity to go along on some other ones. He said he'd like to get me to see a variety of different situations so I can get an idea of the breadth of pastoral care. I'll probably also do some hospital visits with Kevin at some point (I was going to a week or so ago, but scheduling and early discharges caused that not to work out), so that will be good as well. Hooray for doing things you don't really want to do and enjoying it.