Church Health Winter 1983

ARTICLE TOOLS

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"Pastor, as far as I know, you've made only five hospital calls during the three years we've been members of this congregation," Dennis declared as he rode home from the hospital with the pastor of First Church, who had offered the ride upon discovering Dennis was about to be released.

"What do you mean?" protested the minister. "I make at least two hundred hospital calls every year!"

"Maybe so," replied Dennis, "but as far as I know, the only hospital calls you've made during our time here have been the three on my wife a year ago and two during my stay. We appreciate your visits, but you never say anything about hospital calls to the congregation, and your annual reports never mention it either. All I'm suggesting is that you stop keeping it a secret."

Yes, it's true. Much of what a pastor does has low visibility. Preaching, teaching, and attending meetings have comparatively high visibility, but hospital visitation, calling in homes, counseling, and sermon preparation are at the other end of the visibility scale. Some ministers try to balance things by including a series of statistics in their annual reports: number of hospital calls and home visits, number of weddings and funerals, number of sermons, and so on.

But there are many ways a minister might organize that annual report to inform the members and reflect pastoral activities, and this is only one alternative. It may be useful to look at four different possibilities.

Perhaps the most widely used organizing principle in preparing the minister's report is to focus on the activities of the pastor during the past twelve months. In part this is a natural response to the fact this is "The Pastor's Report." In part it is a response to the question ...

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