How to Make a Pastoral Call

Before discussing the dynamics of a pastoral call it is necessary to deal with two questions, Why a pastoral call? and What is a pastoral call? In answering these questions you come squarely up against the concept of what your ministry is all about. The ministry in general is a composite of many roles including these: minister, pastor, preacher, prophet, teacher, educator, counselor, administrator, and general factotum. You may see yourself fulfilling one or more roles in larger or lesser degree, but you will not be serving a congregation very long before you will discover that if your ministry is to have meaning to your people as well as to yourself you will need to be a pastor in the fullest sense of the word. Pastor comes from the Latin pastor, meaning "shepherd." Jesus Himself set the guideline: "'I am the good shepherd; I know my own sheep and my sheep know me'" (John 10:14, N.E.B.).* Jesus also said that " 'he calls his own sheep by name, and leads them out' " (verse 3, N.E.B.).

There may be a better way for establishing this one-to-one relation ship between a pastor and his people, but the way seemingly foreordained is the pastoral call. I have found the pastoral call to be the best way for me to get to know my people, to fix their names indelibly in my mind, to acquire insights regarding their up-againstness with life, and to help them discover me as a human being who cares enough about them to search them out and share with them the good news of Christ. I regard the pastoral call as a sine qua non for understanding the hopes and fears, the quirks and warts, of the people who listen to me preach and whom I want to reach. I generally make my pastoral calls unannounced. This enables me to see my people the way they are, not the way they may wish to appear. Sometimes I am inwardly shocked at the unkemptness of their homes, and although I make every effort to conceal my shock, that unkemptness speaks volumes about the shambles of their lives. Sometimes my appearance at their doors finds them doing things they would rather I never knew about, but things that nevertheless tell me frankly where they "live" and how I can best minister to their souls. More often than not, taking them unawares, I find my people striving for the same high goals, struggling to make ends meet, cherishing the good things, surrounding themselves with the tangibles that give life its meaning, the same as I do, and a closeness in the spirit results which cannot be obtained in any other way. In either case, the pastoral call enables you to know your sheep and them to know you.

Why make pastoral calls?

In answering the question What is a pastoral call? you come squarely to the raison d'etre. In making a pastoral call you are not the insurance man, the bill collector, or the "Mr. Fixit," although I have often been mistaken for one of these persons until I have successfully identified myself as the pastor, the shepherd of my flock. When you enter a home as pastor, whether you fully and always realize it or not, you are entering as a man of God, as an ambassador of the kingdom of heaven, as a spokesman for the Most High. Your presence in that home really means the difference between life and death, good and evil, blessing and curse. It is a presence which, if rightly regarded, leaves a fragrance after your departure and exerts an impact you can never anticipate or comprehend. I have seen lives changed, homes blessed, careers reoriented, not because I, a human being, stopped by to make a call, but because God in Christ through me became real and answered the hungering and thirsting in the lives of those who dwelt there. I have also seen nothing happen in consequence of my call, but that was not because God was not present to make His appeal; it was rather because the people in question rejected His ap peal. This is one of the risks you take in making a pastoral call. It has always been this way, and I suspect it always will be. Your commitment to ministry is not to worry about the calls that fizzle out, but to dare to be God's man in seeking and saving the sheep in your fold.

The mechanics of calling

At this point something needs to be said about the mechanics of calling. You begin with a fixed task, generally speaking, the members and constituents of your congregation. If you serve the only church in your community, your task reaches out to include all the homes thereabout, whether they actually identify in the slightest degree with your congregation or not. I have learned that most people in the so-called secular community are pleased to have the pastor call, even if after wards the call seems to have been fruitless, and frequently they will turn to me for help later on in a time of spiritual need. You may deter mine on a methodical plan for calling on your members and constituents, and there is much to be said for proceeding on this basis. I generally follow the plan of the Holy Spirit, which means following the Spirit's guidance, in making my calls. This often means jumping about, criss crossing the community, to get to the people in question, but it also means that I seem to be spiritually better prepared, perhaps even better attuned, when I enter their homes as God's man. The important thing is to set before you, not the duty, though it is a duty, but the privilege of calling in every home in your congregation and/or community. It will help you to see this as your task, your privilege, your opportunity.

How to call

Now, to the question How to make a pastoral call? The dynamics are geared to being you yourself, without pretense or pomp. The hardest thing is pushing that door bell, not knowing what to expect when the door opens. The next thing is to get inside that door without putting the people inside on the defensive. I usually introduce myself by saying, "I'm the minister at the New Harbor church. May I come in?" I've learned that a smile and a friendly handshake go a long way in negotiating my objective as I move into the open door and seek a convenient chair to sit down. Invariably people welcome a visitor as a good excuse for taking a break, especially if that visitor is the minister. If for any reason I have come at an inauspicious moment, I never hesitate to make a tactful retreat, promising to call another time. Nothing is gained by pushing yourself on people who are themselves pushed by untoward circumstances.

Once, however, you have been welcomed inside, you should ob serve the amenities due a visitor, removing your coat if it is winter time, and endeavoring to convey the idea that you are not there for a "quickie," but are accepting the courtesy of their welcome at its full worth. I try to keep the objective of my call always in mind, engaging in small talk only as the price of moving ahead to learn about the family, the children if any, the interests and hope of those who live there, their ties and background if any, in the local church. In the process it is relatively simple to jot down relevant data, names, telephone number, ages of the children, et cetera. This will be your opportunity to talk about the various dimensions of the life of your church, the minis tries that seem best related to the persons in each given family, the programs that are planned and under way, the concerns of the church for people locally as well as globally.

You may find yourself engaging in a monologue, with little response, and again you may find it difficult to get a word in edgewise, in which case you will need to use your wits to avoid being outtalked and outmaneuvered. There are times when people, especially women, seem impelled to carry the conversation into every nook and cranny of their existence, partly to escape facing the spiritual issues of life, and partly because of a natural bent for talking to hear themselves talk.

You will soon discover in your calling that one consequence of great merit is just at this point: you have released the pent-up feelings of people and have allowed them to unwind, at least to express them selves to someone willing to listen, at the worst, to someone unable without embarrassment to escape from listening. Through it all you are the God-appointed catalyst to take and shape that conversation, as best you can, into channels of blessing. This may prove impossible, it may take time, but you are the servant of the "impossible," and time is at your disposal; otherwise, you should not be making that call.

How long to call?

A pastoral call, to be effective, can be made in a few minutes or only in the span of an hour. Unless the circumstances are extraordinary, you will be able to accomplish your intended mission within twenty minutes to a half hour. This is enough time to provide a two-way exposure without destroying the major purpose of your call, namely, to make God real and to awaken a sensitivity to His plan and will. If not, it is good strategy to call a halt and continue at another time. I try to keep faith with people by holding to the purpose of my call, without trespassing unfairly on their time, and as soon as I feel I have done this, I prepare to leave.

Leaving that home is as important as entering it, if not ten times more so. You will be leaving, even as you entered, as God's man, as the ambassador of the kingdom of heaven, as the spokesman of the Most High. This requires a departure of a different sort than that of the ordinary person. It should be a departure marked unmistakably with a high spiritual accent. This accent is imparted by means of the Bible and of prayer.

Take the Bible first. I had long felt the need to relate the Scriptures to my pastoral calls but lacked the know-how to do this without awkwardness. Then, at one of the evangelism workshops conducted years ago by Harry Denman, of the United Methodist General Board of Evangelism, I learned the skill for giving my departure the kind of spiritual lift desirable. This is how I often go about it, saying, "Well, I must be on my way, but before I go I would like to read some scripture, perhaps your favorite passage, and make a prayer. Do you have your Bible handy?" I have found people responsive to this suggestion, so much so that they quickly go to the table or shelf where their Bible is kept, often unused, and bring it to me. Once, I remember, the lady of the house had difficulty in remembering where her Bible was. She searched through the rooms downstairs, then went upstairs and searched there for many minutes. She finally found her Bible under some clothes in a bureau drawer and, not a little ashamed of the fact that, being hidden away like that, she had not read it for many days, she handed it to me to read from. Taking the Bible as though she had retrieved it from the kitchen table, I read a short passage from the Psalms and closed with a prayer. I know my departure that day tingled with meaning beyond anything I could have imagined, for some months later she told me, with a wry smile, that she was never at a loss thereafter to know where her Bible was, nor had she failed to read it daily.

I have found that it is good to read a favorite passage, at least to offer to do this, for it makes the reading more intimate and effective, and so I ask, "Do you have a favorite pas sage that you would like me to read?" Sometimes they have none, which may indicate that they are strangers to the Scriptures, or they have been caught off-balance and can't recall any scripture, which amounts to much the same thing. In that case I will read a Psalm or a chapter from the Gospels or the Epistles, something that may have been suggested by the conversation prior to that moment. When I have finished reading, I try to go into the closing prayer with as much personal involvement as possible, asking, "As I come to the prayer, is there something or someone you would like me to pray for?" Surprisingly, people frequently respond to this question with requests of all sorts: "Yes, please pray for my son (or daughter, my mother or father, my husband and his job, my health, et cetera).'' I can tell you that when I then pray with these requests in mind, prayer means a thousand times more than mere words.

Praying

I do not always end my pastoral calls by asking for the Scriptures, but invariably I end my calls with prayer. Not a long, sanctimonious prayer, but a prayer of blessing, simple, sincere, short. You will be tempted, as I have, to conjure up every reason under the sun why you should not make this prayer, but if you depart without doing so you will have sabotaged your call and failed in your mission as a shepherd of souls. How you manage this prayer, as with asking for the Bible, is important, as important as your being there in the first place. You will want this prayer to be a natural part of your call, not a point of embarrassment to yourself or the people on whom you are calling. I will often come to this moment by saying, "Well, I must be going, but before I go I would like to offer a prayer for God's blessing on your home. OK?" Or possibly I will say, "Well, this calls for a prayer before I go. All right?" Whatever you say, it must be sincerely expressed in love. You may startle people by your proposal, and this certainly is not bad. Only once did anyone ever protest, in which instance I simply acquiesced, saying, "As you wish, but my prayers are with you all the same." In any case, when you have prayed, it is important that you get up and go, without further ado. To do otherwise would be anticlimactic.

The consequences of such a pastoral call are spelled out in the miracles of redeemed and renewed lives. I have seen people inwardly touched to the point of tears, or moved to the point of changing their life styles, or gradually transformed into being what they potentially were all the time, the children of God. I have seen families encouraged to new loyalties to one another and to God. I have seen people recalled to the acceptance of vows once made and long lapsing in limbo. I have seen the church revitalized in spirit, prayer, service, and giving. The fruits of pastoral calling after this guise are unlimited, unpredictable, and unending.

Making pastoral calls generally means calling on your people in their homes, but sometimes this may not be possible or feasible. It may hap pen that you will find it more propitious to make your call at a man's place of business, or a woman's place of employment, or even on people in the hospital in a time of illness or accident. The point is that it is not important where you go to find them, but that you respond in whatever time or occasion you are given and that in responding you make God available and His will relevant in their times of need.

It is no longer acceptable for you or any minister of the gospel to say, "You can have either my head or my feet," meaning that you will concentrate on one of two alternatives, either to preach sermons or make pastoral calls. Today, if you intend to fulfill your ministry in spirit and truth, you will discover the amazing secret of ministry in this: your pastoral calling will magnify your preaching, because, like the Good Shepherd, you know your sheep and your sheep know you.