What is holistic care ministry, and why is it important? Wendy Herrberg, care ministry director at Indian Creek Christian Church, “The Creek,” in Indianapolis, IN (who formerly worked as an RN in an oncology hematology unit), and Susie Howard, assistant care ministry director, explain how their church’s care ministry views each facet of an individual’s life—the physical, … [Read more...]
5 ways to help counselees find friendships
Too often, when self-sacrificial love is required to form friendships, we isolate and hunker down in our own foxholes of safety and security. Over the years, I’ve noticed that a large majority of the people I see for counseling have few to no friendships in their life. Indeed, for many of them, some of the exact conversations we have with them in counseling, they could be … [Read more...]
20 ways to get people involved in care ministry
By equipping your members to counsel one another, you enable them to do the frontline work of ministry. Here are twenty ways to cultivate a culture of counseling and discipleship in your church: Preach the Bible to the church as a whole. In other words, biblical texts should be applied not just to individuals, but to the church as a whole. Help the congregation see what … [Read more...]
How we organize congregational care
We aren’t a model church by any means, but one of the things we’ve worked on a lot over the past five years is how we do congregational care and oversight. Even though we have a lot to learn, I thought a glimpse at how we do things might help other churches. Obviously, I’m not encouraging you to copy everything we do (though feel free). But maybe some of our trellis work can … [Read more...]
Preaching or counseling?
In pastoral ministry, are preaching and counseling complementary ways of proclaiming Christ? Is one more important than the other? Or is one essential and the other less so? Seminary students and pastors are by no means unanimous in their answers. Definitions matter, especially here. Preaching, as I am using it, is public ministry—the public proclamation of Jesus—in which … [Read more...]