TRENDS IN PASTORAL CARE
How to minister to the cocooned, overextended, and fractured people of the nineties.
Lyle Schaller, Steven L. McKinley, Knute Larson, and Wayne Jacobsen.
January 1, 1990
In 1960, the proportion of children living with a single parent was a mere 10 percent. Now their ranks have risen to 25 percent.
Seventy-seven percent of all middle-level executives spend 50 or more hours per week on their jobs. And 26 percent of executives spend more than 60 hours per week.
Nearly half (46 percent) of all marriages today are remarriages for one or both partners.
Each day pastors read in their newspapers statistics such as these. And in their offices, they see some of the people represented by them. In the midst of such turbulent social change, how can a minister provide pastoral care? What does it mean to shepherd a congregation in the nineties?
To find out, LEADERSHIP went to a well-known church consultant and three pastors from differing regions. Here they offer their thoughts, first, on how the very role of the care-giving pastor has changed, and then on how they have adapted their pastoral care to these changing times.
The Changing Caregiver
by Lyle Schaller
Many changes have made pastoral ministry more difficult than it was a generation ago (despite the widespread increases in pastoral salaries and fringe benefits). Three changes that particularly produce stress come from changes in the minister's role.
From shepherd to leader. The old image of the pastor as a shepherd who knew every sheep by name, who instantly missed any who strayed, who was omnipresent, and who also was an evangelist (John 10:1-17) was widely taught and loyally followed for generations.
Today, however, a growing number of congregations have expanded that list of expectations. Many pastors are asked to be not only a shepherd, but also daily manager of a complex organization, a creative leader who can initiate attractive new ministries, the ...
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