Pastoral Care

Care

The apostle Paul once prayed three times that the Lord would remove a thorn in his flesh. His ailment and adversity wasn’t a physical puncture but a weakening wound. When we share our injury or ailment with others, the spiritual gifts of care come out.

Primary Care

Small groups including households, Bible studies, morning prayer, compline, Evensong and Sunday school are primary care places. Often the need for care is disclosed and discovered when friends perceive and people join together in primary attentive Christ-centred care.

Secondary Care

These secondary places take pastoring to the next level. Sometimes we want our difficult or despairing thoughts, feelings, behaviors and beliefs held by others more deeply and confidentially. This continues to take place with equipped leaders on staff, in prayer teams at Sunday services, by prayer triplets in Bible studies, home-administrated Communion, and sometimes in private with a trusted professional confidant who holds your story.

Tertiary Care

This kind of pastoral care is more durative, specialized and frequent. At SJV we address this care need with the ministries of baptism, pre-marriage, marriage, divorce, unwanted sexual behaviors, aging, funerals, and grief.

Highlights of the past year

Highlights this past year included teaching for our aging with Maxine Hancock and Paul Stevens, midweek Holy Communion for the vulnerable, and a renewed Expecting Emmanuel service. We also give thanks to Manya Egerton for 10+ years of leading the Sunday service prayer teams, and welcome David Avren the new ministry coordinator. Prayer is the most distinctively Christian pastoral care ministry that no professional advisor, physician or counselor can deliver. Therefore, prayer ministry will be a special focus in 2023 as we grow in the sufficiency of God’s grace.