Ministers' Visitation Secretary

A new venture in care ministry for Camrose United Church, cultivating a closer partnership between lay and pastoral leadership.

At our request, as the ministers of Camrose United Church, the Board approved the establishment of a new volunteer position called the Ministers' Visitation Secretary. The purpose of this position is to make more effective use of the portion of the ministers' time that is given to general visitation, to generate broad ownership by the congregation of this part of the ministers' work, to integrate the ministers' general visitation with lay pastoral care activity, both specialized and general, and to provide assistance in the administrative aspect of visitation.

There was a time when ministers regularly visited all of their parishioners. These were mostly home visits which took place on a drop-in basis. Over the years, there has been a move away from this kind of pastoral care for several reasons. (1) Other areas of ministry have made increasing demands on the minister's time; these include administration, education, social action, duties to the larger church, and other areas of pastoral care (e.g., counseling). (2) People are generally less available for home visits, because of more scheduled activities, both at home and away. (3) Not everybody feels the need for a home visit or is always receptive. (4) In some situations, the sheer number of parishioners is prohibitive. (5) The philosophy of lay ministry has been interpreted by some to mean that the laity should take over this role from the ministers.

Ministers have generally continued to be more or less thorough in responding to emergent pastoral needs (e.g., hospital visiting, crisis counseling, bereavement, newcomers, baptisms, and weddings). These are needs which come to us and demand attention. However, the kind of contact from which we have moved away, which I will call general visitation usually requires more intentional initiative from the minister and does not have any particular time associated with it when it needs to happen.

More recently, there is an emerging recognition that some important needs are going unmet and the pendulum has begun swinging back. It is not a return to the old way of drop-in visits and covering the whole congregation. Rather it is a selective visitation; and it involves scheduling the visits. This proposal is based on the assumption that a limited amount of the ministers' time can be given to general visitation (i.e., not zero, but not much) and that this limited time will best be spent doing actual visits. Therefore a volunteer is needed to give a few hours a week to the two new tasks: selection and scheduling.

Doris Hirsch has been our Ministers' Visitation Secretary since 2002. This means that some of you receive a phone call from Doris from time to time, to ask whether you would like to have a visit from one of the ministers. If so, Doris schedules a time for either of us -- Mary Ann or Jim -- to visit you.

It also means that the congregation as a whole is invited to help us identify those people for whom a visit from the minister would be especially appreciated. So you are welcome and encouraged at any time to talk to one of the ministers or directly to Doris, herself, to pass on suggestions or requests.