10While Jesus was reclining to eat in Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and sinners came and dined with Jesus and his disciples. 11When the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”
12When he heard this, Jesus said, “Those who are healthy do not need a physician, but those who are ill. 13 Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice.’ I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”
Matthew Chapter 9. Text from the study Bible published by Deseret Book.
A striking part of the ministry of Jesus and of the extinct Mormon ethnic group was a widespread effort to provide pastoral care.
Those who know my personal history know that while I admire some with training, I’ve had abominations of pastoral care too.
What else do I call an established pastor in post-graduate chaplain training who, when called upon to help prepare me to receive the news my daughter Jessica was going to die breaks the news to me by asking if he can observe my reaction to receiving the news in order to learn from sitting in?
Later, when I was in the hospital with my daughter Robin and went to the chapel for a moment while Robin was in surgery the head chaplain in charge of the program at Dallas Children’s rushed me out because she was decorating for the liturgical calendar and I was in the way by sitting in a pew.
That said, there used to be a “Mormon” focus on pastoral care, often at great sacrifice in time and effort by the lay ministry.
The story regularly told of President Monson as a bishop ministering to scores of widows and many others as a bishop is impressive but it obscures that it was all he did for many years.
President Monson was able to do what he did as a bishop only because he had inherited wealth and was basically able to do the job full-time without other employment.
When I was young I was raised on stories of Apostles ministering to those who needed care and personal touch. For example, President Kimball as an Apostle visited our branch and met for hours with members, giving them counsel, love and hope.
It has been a while since I met someone with that type of first hand story to tell. But then the Church is larger, which undoubtedly skews things.
Further, the post-ethnic group Church is marked by an administrative focus and an “up or out” approach to leadership which results in local leaders being younger. Without training or life experience front line younger leaders really aren’t prepared for pastoral care.
For more on the extinct ethnic group known as Mormons see Once there were Mormons.
The leaders I know care deeply. But the older leaders I grew up with were more prepared to care and counsel. The younger ones I know now love very much but are more skilled in administration.
In theory home teaching (Mormon) has been replaced by ministering (LDS) which would fill that gap created by focusing on administrative skill and provide front line pastoral care. In reality, that change has led generally to even less care and less contact.
Often when a family moves into a ward the question becomes not “what do they need?” (What care we provide) but instead “what can they offer?”
That results in the “up or out” having a definite “out” focus on a local level.
On the other hand, the up or out model means that at my age I am free to backpack and no one wants me for any callings or service. Guilt free hiking in the window while I am still physically capable and not too old is nice.
But the matter of changes in provision of pastoral care raises the questions:
- Where would you go for pastoral care in the post-Mormon world?
- What training would be appropriate for those who provide pastoral care? What training should individual quorum members receive if we want them to minister?
- Share a story of when you or a family member received pastoral care from an Apostle.
Wheat & Tares 
The Catholic Church is having a similar discussion. Pope Francis is trying to encourage more emphasis on pastoral care and less on clericalism. The Wikipedia article on clericalism is helpful in providing some background.
BYU is known for programs in accounting, business, law, public relations and advertising.
Think about that for a moment. They are not known for any program that involves ministering.
In a religion that is run by a lay ministry, the flagship university requires classes on scripture but provides no training on how to minister or show care. .
Through study of the D & C, early church history is covered but current history is not.
Too often, missionaries learn sales tactics rather than how to minister or build a sense of community in a struggling ward.
While the church takes young parents and throws them into leadership roles, if those ward leaders do not rise up into the small upper circle of church leadership, there is no place for them. After children are raised, what do adults do in a ward? What role do they have? Too often, there is nothing.
You might as well go hike.
One time, for personal reasons, I attended an lds Sunday service at an inpatient mental health facility. By chance, it was a 1st Sunday. The branch leaders followed traditional format, though with a shortened meeting time. The whole time was open for bearing testimonies. No one got up. When one is visiting someone they love in that environment, it is hard to know what to say. The silence felt awkward, as well. Finally, one of the leaders went to the mic and thanked the handful of Young Men who he brought for coming. (Ironically, a short time previously there was a GC talk on the youth needing to see ministering in action, not always be catered to.) He was not ministering to those he was called to minister to.
Some years later I met a woman whose husband was recently called to the stake presidency that covered that very branch. I told her my experience, and suggested they change the meeting format to always have a couple of short talks from Gospel Principles. MAYBE leave a couple of minutes at the end every week for an optional testimony.
I don’t know if any changes were made before or after my discussion with the SP’s wife.
Stephen R has hit the nail squarely on the head. The modern, young leaders are failing the pastoral needs of the members. This is irrefutable fact.
The time was that the local bishop would be an older gentleman with a great deal of life experience. A man who had raised children and knew what that experience was like. A man who had reached the stage in his career that he had time to look after the needs of widows.
Contrast that with the bishop of today. A young man chosen for his ability to play basketball with the youth, rather than offer pastoral aid. A young man with no life experience, other than what he gained playing violent video games and watching Dua Lipa on YouTube. This is a sorry state of things.
Essentially, the Church has placed the members’ pastoral needs in the hands of inexperienced young people who don’t have the time or inclination to perform true pastoral service. Until this changes, widows will continue to look forlornly out of vacant windows for help that never comes.
In a post Mormon world I would join/build another church community.
I think pastoral care is an important focus we are missing as followers of Christ. We ought to train every member to do this with a curriculum focused on learning good boundaries and other helpful mental health principles, supported by scripture.
The Emotional Resilience curriculum is a good program we could ask everyone to take right now. It talks about better ways to talk with those in mourning as well as other things. To me, what’s missing in the church is the focus on building community both in and outside the church. Instead I hear a lot of focus on temple attendance and missionary work in a numbers focused, guilt laden way.
I enjoy the temple, but going too often could be isolating for members and leave us without opportunities to learn from others and share with others.
If we really worked at building inclusive community wherever we are, unpressured natural ministering and missionary work would more naturally occur in a Christ like way.
As far as the church neglecting what older people have to offer, I think they don’t want to hear from us because we are spiritually mature and we do see things in a true/false all or nothing way any more. The younger the leadership the more in experienced they are and the more likely to be black and white in their thinking. It seems our leadership is more comfortable with that kind of thinking than the more seasoned, nuanced faith of older people
Correction: Older people generally don’t (not do) see things in a black and white way. Often experience and suffering helps us see the grey.
JCS is right on the money here. Well, maybe not so much about Dua Lipa.
In my parents ward (my home ward growing up) they recently called a 25-year-old new move in as bishop. He is a newlywed with his first child on the way. On the Sunday he was called both the SP and one of his counsellors got up and warned the ward in advance to basically “Leave the young bishop alone because he has a wife and a kid on the way. He needs time to spend with his family” (paraphrasing of course). So then, why on earth call a newlywed 25 year old with a kid on the way? Just baffling.
When I was growing up, being Mormon was a way of life. Everything revolved around church activities. We had two or three separate meetings on Sundays and at least one meeting during the week. We had church basketball and softball, roadshows, and ward dinners. There was a real sense of community. Bishops and SPs were older and had more life experience to share. It wasn’t perfect, but we did have a sense of community and belonging. I left before a lot of those changes for other reasons, but nowadays Mormons are just another version of Baptists, with even less activities than the Baptists offer.
I’m not sure today’s leaders are less capable of providing pastoral care. I think society has simply changed. Like “JR in AR” said above, being Mormon used to be a way of life. Today that is largely not the case. Membership in all types of civic organizations has declined too. Why? Because we have the Internet and cable / satellite TV at our finger tips. We have what we need at home. Why would I go to the trouble to attend a pro/college football game when I can watch it on my huge big screen and enjoy the comforts of home and avoid the hassle of driving / parking? My kids all participated in competitive sports and this interfered with Church activities constantly. Why does a member family need meals made for them by the Relief Society when they can just Door Dash whatever they want? Why turn to a bishop for help when I can google for the resources that I might need?
I guess the point I’m making is that society has changed and I don’t think a bishop’s pastoral care is needed the way it once was. I’m as hard as anyone here on the Church but honestly I don’t think this is the Church’s fault. Times have changed
I am a victim of the new ministering program. I haven’t seen a home teacher in YEARS. My current one is in the bishopric but I don’t think he could pick me out of a line up.
I disagree that it’s not the church’s fault.
Bishops are now in charge of the adults and the youth. Yes in theory they were always in charge of the priests but they delegated most of those responsibilities to the YM President. Also in theory I hear anecdotally from time to time that Bishops are delegating some responsibilities to EQP/RSP but ultimately the Bishop is still in charge of both groups. The result in my neck of the woods is that everyone is suffering because the bishop is simply spread too thin. It’s an easy fix yet here we are.
I do agree that when there are scheduling conflicts, some youth will prioritize a sub-par youth Wednesday night activity but most kids will prioritize school and extra-curricular activities. Because they are better (both substance wise and financially).
I also agree that we have so many more options for pastoral care than in the past, thanks in part to the church finally de-stigmatizing mental health challenges as well as many of us having better access to mental health professionals through insurance, school counsellors, etc.
My bishop is a great and kind person. But I cannot think of a single instance where I would go to him for pastoral care, given my options. And that’s ok. Let him manage how we interact with each other as a faith community. Let’s leave other concerns to professionals.
I am going to skip to the bottom of the comments to say that I like Damascene’s comment a whole lot. The whole emphasis on leaders moving up through the ranks, combined with bishops being best buddies with the youth, them compounded by putting the bishop in as young men’s leader and getting rid of that as a calling has left the adults abandoned.
I first noticed this about thirty years ago when my children were moving off to college . My oldest dropped out of college, because of an abusive and controlling boy friend and there was zero church support for her. The home ward bishop was totally absorbed in the young men and didn’t even know her name. She was reluctant to talk to me because she knew what I would say. She was scared of professional counseling because she was afraid he would find out. So, she was left on her own because there was no clergy support and sometimes youth need a safe no parental adult. Girls as well as boys. But all our church was interested in was preparing young men for missions. All of the “get married in the temple” lessons she got in young women did not help at all with an abusive boy friend.
The second issue was that I had spiritual issues left from abusive parents. And where does an adult Mormon go when their counselor says “you should talk to you clergy about that.” My Mormon bishops had no time and no experience which they could use to understand what I was dealing with. So they pushed me away, gave me shitty advice, identified with all the pain my abuser was in, failed to understand any of the pain I was in, blamed me for not having answers for questions they had no idea how to answer, and in general were worse than no help. If they could have at least acted like I was worth their time, it would at least not have been as damaging.
Meanwhile, my abuser was seeing his bishop an hour every week and that bishop swore to me he would never give up on my father. Sweet, real sweet that a child molester is loved but not the victim.
Mormon bishop are taught to focus on healing the sinner and have no time for the sinned against. They have no time for adults.
two comments:
1. I agree with josh h, this is bigger than mormonism, we’re undergoing massive societal shift, driven, in large part, by technology, we have dopamine slot machines in our pocket that we can use 24/7, our need for community with other human beings has been drastically reduced. We’ve created a situation in which it’s cognitively easier to just be by yourself with the digital world at your finger tips than having to manage your emotions and behaviour around other people.
People don’t want or feel the need for pastoral care anymore, it’s more rewarding to scream into the void on the internet and have anonymous people sympathize with you, and even more rewarding when internet flame wars are fought over the problems and opinions you are screaming into the void. Many would find this preferable over having to go and talk about their problems face-to-face with another person, let someone like a bishop, who’s very job is to “judge” you.
And, not to put too fine a point on it, but isn’t this basically the unarticulated point of bloggernacle spaces like W&T? We come to here to rant about our frustrations with the Church and get dopamine hits from watching the comments roll in, the thumbs up count rise, and see the handful of dissenters (basically just Jack) get rhetorically punished. I’ll be honest say that’s why I’m here, I don’t have anywhere else to safely complain about the church without fear of IRL social repercussions. Spaces like this are needed, in that sense, but, zooming out beyond mormonism, isn’t it sort of a worrisome that online is basically becoming the only medium we have to deal with our problems on an emotional level? And that we don’t actually benefit that much from beyond the occasional dopamine hits? We all need face-to-face and in person pastoral/community care, but the way our society is currently structured makes it unattractive, awkward, and difficult.
2. I am also not a fan of the “get em young” leadership pipeline. But not because I think younger people are less capable of pastoral care, but more-so because I think we younger people don’t have the time/means to do it, as alluded to in the OP.
My spouse and I are young-ish adults with young children and we have likewise been thrown into various high-maintenance callings over the last several years and it has been pretty flipping miserable the whole time, all while the older adults in the wards we have been in complain about how their needs aren’t getting met and their ministering brothers/sisters don’t come visit them. I’m really losing patience with this attitude and overall expectation.
“I’m so sorry, bro/sis. so-an-so that you feel lonely/bored in your home that you own while being in your retirement/steady job that you have/your spouse has. I’m so sorry that us landless serfs in our 30s with kindergartners, who have to move every 2 years or so just to find nearly-affordable rent, are failing to run the RS/EQ/activities/the whole ward itself to your expectations.”
We’re sooooo tired of this, one of us in the middle of a high level leadership calling in our ward, but after we’re done with this, if me/my spouse is asked to be a bishop/RS president or whatever, we’re going to tell them to go get bent.
Anyway, rant aside, I think I see the motivation of the current approach to leadership pipelines, it stems from the concern over declining membership rates. They don’t want the youth (especially young men) to deactivate, so they want young bishops who can play basketball with them, it’s easier to keep a bishop under your thumb, since they have to be in contact with stake level leadership regularly. I think the purpose is also to suck away the most active/energetic/exploratory years of life (late 20s-early 30s) so you don’t get too adventurous and leave the church, just stay here, have babies, and become part of the church PMC (professional managerial class). They want us to be ‘all in’ so that we’re older we’ll be too attached/beaten down to even think about getting off the covenant path.
In my 20s someone asked me if I’d take a turn visiting a sick sister in the hospital. I said no and nearly broke down in tears because I didn’t know what to do on such a visit. I hadn’t been in hospital since my siblings had been born! I had no experience with the difficulties of old age and illness. I did not go then. I could have used an older sister to go with me, to teach me how to provide pastoral care.
Shortly after I accepted an assignment to visit teach an older (70s) sister, with a woman ten years older than me as a companion. I learned by following her example. I still have relationships with both of them. I still don’t know how to visit someone for more than a few minutes, though. I think that a mentoring model is how to learn. It’s difficult because of the “same 10 people” problem and much greater need than people willing to serve.
Yeah, I think we’ve never been high quality at pastoral care, tbh, Monson’s widows notwithstanding. Maybe people loved those stories so much because we just didn’t really have that in our own lives. My parents have participated in Meals on Wheels for years, which is probably a much better way to provide pastoral care in society at large. When my sister had a major life-threatening surgery, her ward made it clear that they weren’t a gravy train. Their “policy” was they brought in meals for one week, and that’s it. Basically, once that stopped, so did the outreach. Her recovery took two months. It does seem that we want to be sure we aren’t placing too much burden on the members, more than we are concerned about those in need. Having been on both sides of this equation, I do get it. People get burned out. It would take a huge deliberate shift in focus, one that Monson lightly hinted at, but nobody has picked up since he’s been gone.
Josh H’s point about a post-internet model of pastoral care being completely different is also part of it. Society in general has withdrawn. It occurred to me during the pandemic that the difference between my daily life and that of a prisoner was that I could choose my prison and fill it with the entertainment I wanted. But it was still a highly individualized and compartmentalized environment to live in, on some level like a prison. In-person interactions are more unpredictable, and while they are probably more satisfying when they don’t suck, they require a level of effor that it’s difficult to muster when the outcomes are so unsure, and the bad interactions are just so bad. I really appreciated the Church’s service portal that identified service opportunities throughout our communities and were available to everyone. I haven’t heard a lot of talk about it recently, though.
E.M. Forster wrote a book in the early 20th century called The Machine Stops. In the book, all of society has become compartmentalized by technology. Every citizen has his or her own room with all they need in it, and nobody travels or goes “outside,” which they are told is a bad and dangerous place. I’ll leave it at that, but given that it was written over a hundred years ago, it was pretty prescient. Who wouldn’t love to have a discussion on that instead of a regular Gospel Doctrine class? Oh wait, it’s “unapproved” and “not official” church material.
One quibble with the OP.
“President Monson was able to do what he did as a bishop only because he had inherited wealth and was basically able to do the job full-time without other employment”
Monson graduated cum laud from the University of Utah in 1948. He was active with the Naval Reserve between 1948 and 1950, with aspirations of becoming an officer. He also worked at the Deseret News in the advertising department. He was called as a Bishop in 1950 and served until 1955. When he was called as Bishop, he was working at the Deseret News as the classified advertising manager. He was definitely working at the Newspaper Agency Corporation in 1952 and became the sales manager for the Deseret News in 1953, quickly moving to General Manager. He took care of the widows by giving chickens that he had personally raised and raised chickens and pigeons most of his life (that is how I knew him). I’m not so sure what “other employment” means, but I think working in a managerial publishing position is significant employment.
I think the last time I received “pastoral care” I was talking to a member of the stake presidency who wanted me to take on another high demand calling. I told him I didn’t think it was a good idea because I was already struggling. His response was, “I can tell that the Devil is working really hard on you right now.”
So that’s… one approach. I didn’t find it to be helpful.