Recently Susan and I visited a member of the congregation who does not live nearby. We surprised him and enjoyed a delightful visit. In our conversation he spoke about a sense of “taking more than his fair share of our time.” Fairness is an important concept for all of us, beginning sometime in early childhood. But caring, listening, and getting to know the community of Our Savior, and its individual members and friends, is not about “fairness”, but about time well spent. It’s important pastoral work for the good of the community. And it’s work that is compelling, often moving, and very helpful to me as I seek to care for this community. I once read that the primary task of an abbot in a monastery is to be always listening to the community; to listen to what is said in conversation and prayer and to what is communicated between words. This has always struck me as good advice for the pastor as well.

I’m setting out on the goal of making pastoral visits to the entire congregation in the coming year. So what is it exactly that I am doing? What I am trying to do is to listen well and with discernment to what is said in conversation as it touches on our life and practice of faith. It is pastoral listening as opposed to social or therapeutic conversation. I would like to hear of God’s presence–or felt absence–in your lives. Where has your journey in faith led you? What sustains you in faith? How can the community better support your spiritual life? It is disarmingly simple conversation; no preparation is necessary. No one need panic: “I never talk about God and me! I don’t know how to talk about this journey of faith….” Believe me, the words will just be there.

I feel privileged to be one of the people that you have called as a shepherd at Our Savior. My sense of who you are as a child of God, marked with the cross of Christ forever… claimed, gathered, and sent for the sake of the world will, I know, be deepened by taking on this year-long discipline of visitation. This conversation of the soul is well worth having. It does take time, for both of us, but it is time fairly spent for the sake of our mission here — and the deepening of our discipleship.

In Christ,
Pr. Michael

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