The hospice pastor with a church on life support

"I feel like a hospice nurse," I sighed as I arrived home and set down my bags. I had so many funerals in my small congregation, that I had little time for anything other than caring for the dying. Please don't misunderstand me. I appreciated every holy moment at the bedside of the members. But I also realized there was something missing in our church's ministry, and the answer was so clear when I looked at Jesus' ministry. 

We've read the gospels so many times that we can forget how amazing it was for Jesus to be walking from town to town, village to village, ministering to people. While people went to the synagogue to read Scriptures and pray, Jesus took the message out into the dusty roads. In the streets there were few barriers to the Gentiles, women, "unclean," or poor, so Jesus was able to touch the skin of the leper or heal the woman with the issue of blood, because he was outside of the walls for so much of his ministry. Going out was a liberating act.

In this time of ministry, pastors have so much to do. For many pastors, staffs have been cut but expectations haven’t. Over half of our congregations are above the age of sixty, and many members are retired. Let's be honest. They are often the people who have been faithfully paying our salaries and keeping the church running for decades. So it's really easy to become absorbed in the lives, demands and health of those who are gathered. Often congregations resist having the pastor focus attention outside of the doors and complain that we're not taking care of the members when we spend too much time in the community.