Pastoring People

Self-Sacrificial Service Among Innovative Faith Communities

In 2009 I prayed through the Gospel of Luke, which gave me a new imagination for how evangelism and pastoral care might look.  I was using my dad’s NIV red letter Bible, as he had recently passed.  As I meditated on the words of Jesus in red, I became increasingly convicted that I was a good church member but not a very good disciple of Christ.  This year-long prayer experience led our family into an exciting and arduous journey - following Jesus into sacrificial service among the poor.  We moved from the suburbs into the inner city, a community called North Central Regina, Saskatchewan, in 2011, where we have been living and serving since.  

Perhaps the most striking feature of Jesus’ ministry in Luke is his proximity to the poor.  He did not work from a position of power, based in a temple or a synagogue.  He did not even have his own home!  “Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head” (Luke 9:58).  Rather, Jesus consistently went to third spaces (synagogues, The Temple, roads), and frequently went to others’ first spaces by eating in their homes.  Instead of inviting people to his space where he was more comfortable, he humbly went to the homes of both sinners and religious leaders to eat with them.¹ I began to see this pattern as an extension of the incarnation itself.  Not only did Christ empty himself by leaving heaven and living among us, he even went one step further: he moved into our neighbourhood (John 1:18, The Message)² in a very personal and relational way.

The story of Zacchaeus in Luke 19:1-10 emerges as a prototypical text for God’s mission in Luke.  Here Jesus is walking through the town of Jericho, a third space.  He meets a wealthy but despised tax collector who repents upon meeting Jesus; Christ then invites himself over to his house.  The response of the people is typical: “All the people saw this and began to mutter, ‘He has gone to be the guest of a sinner’” (Luke 19:7).  Jesus takes on the shame and stigma of the outcast so that Zacchaeus might be included in God’s people.  “Jesus said to him, ‘Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham’” (Luke 19:9).  Jesus’ actions were intentional and missional.  He went to the home of a social outcast, bearing the shame, so that Zacchaeus would no longer be an outsider, but an insider in the family of God!  

This is the gospel in its essence.  “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost” (Luke 19:10).  This missional approach of Jesus was an extension of the incarnation, and a necessary proxemic move so that all people – especially the outcasts and the marginalized – might know that salvation is for them.  Because the poor and the disenfranchised often feel excluded and powerless in the world’s systems, Luke goes to great lengths to show that Jesus purposefully sought out these very people, so that they would be certain beyond a shadow of a doubt that his love was for them too.  Luke depicts Jesus intentionally reaching out to five marginalized groups in first-century Judaism: the poor, “sinners”, Samaritans, women, and Gentiles.  This fleshes out the angel’s announcement to the shepherds in Luke 2:10: “I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people” (emphasis added).

What Are The Implications for Pastoral Care and Missional Ministry?  

Physical proximity: The first thing is the physical proximity of the missionary to the people.  In 2011 we moved into the inner city.  We made this move as an expression of Christ’s incarnation.  But also we had spent time listening to the people of North Central Regina.  They viewed those living in their community differently.  Residents of the inner city are considered insiders; there is an emotional identification with them that is unique.  For our family to be welcomed into their hearts and homes, it was necessary to move into their community.  

Further, there was a stigma about the inner city.  Many residents of the city of Regina avoid the North Central community.  They drive around it rather than through it.  In 2007, Canada’s national magazine published an article about our community entitled, “We’re Living in Canada’s Worst Neighbourhood.”³  This sensational title sparked great controversy and anger among the residents of North Central Regina and further stigmatized the community.  In short, many people did not understand why we were moving into the community.  But it was important for the inner city to see us embodying God’s love for them by joining them where they live, so they could emotionally identify with us, and we with them.

Deep listening: Early on in our ministry I went to a soup kitchen with a friend, an Indigenous woman.  For an hour I listened while she shared several life experiences: hiding in the bush as a child on her reserve (at her parent’s direction) to avoid being taken to residential school; enduring beatings from her drunken husband; losing her children to foster care; living on the street for an entire year in the cold Canadian winter.  After an hour, I broke down crying.  Here was a sister in Christ and a dear friend sitting across the table from me, who had endured much more suffering than I ever had or would.  It broke me.

One of the essential skills of pastoral care is good listening, what some call deep listening.  There are many barriers to deep listening: internal thoughts, childhood scripts, moods, objections, previous assumptions, and other distractions that continually interfere with careful listening.  We would do well to apply the admonition of James: “Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry…” (James 1:19, emphasis added).  When entering a pastoral care moment, the first priority is to listen carefully, deeply, and prayerfully to the person before us.  Proverbs 20:5 states: “The purposes of a person’s heart are deep waters, but one who has insight draws them out.”  Every person has many complex things happening in their heart, “deep waters”.  So we listen well to help draw out the needs of the heart for us to minister effectively to the person before us.  This deep listening includes attending not only to their words but also to their body language to discern congruity or dissonance between the two.  Gerald May has described this deep, prayerful listening beautifully, saying “During this time that we are together I give myself, my awareness and attention and hopes and heart to God for you.  I surrender myself to God for your sake.” (emphasis original).⁴  

Advocacy: a woman was seeking custody of one of her young relatives in the care of Social Services.  She reported that in one particular meeting, there were seven social workers opposite her, and she felt intimidated.  Another meeting was coming up quickly, would one of us go with her to offer support?  One of us attended and at the meeting, we found out that they had glossed over her situation twice in their written reporting.  One gloss involved documenting her skin cancer as “a terminal illness.”  In another, they interpreted her difficulty expressing herself as a mental illness.  Neither report was accurate.  However, due to these incorrect notations, she had been denied custody of her relative.  By a minister attending the meeting with her, these misunderstandings were clarified, paving the way for her to get custody.  Advocacy can be a powerful support to people on the margins when they feel overwhelmed or underrepresented in the face of a large government agency or any powerful figure.  

Physical proximity fosters spiritual connection: a young man who had previously been quite involved in our gatherings suddenly quit attending.  I reached out and let him know I missed him, and wondered if something had happened.  He said he would get back to me when the time was right.  A few weeks later I reached out again and we went out for coffee.  He shared a couple of reasons why he had quit attending, including a relapse in his addiction and his shame around that.  This explained the heaviness in his spirit and why he had withdrawn.  I gently pointed him to scripture and read 1 John 1:9: “But if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.”  I spoke to him personally about how I had struggled with an addiction, that the journey to sober living is not a straight line, that we suffer relapses, and that God gently restores us to his path of righteousness.  I re-read the verse from 1 John to him and proclaimed Jesus’ forgiveness over him.  I watched his physical demeanour change as his heaviness lifted and freedom settled over him.  He then said to me, “Thank you for getting together with me.  No one ever sat with me and explained this.”  

Two aspects of this were missional.  I reached out to him twice to get together, and we sat in a coffee shop because this was his preference rather than visiting in his home.  Pastoral care truly can happen anywhere, because it is primarily a spiritual dynamic between a shepherd of God and his people.  However, pastoral care is even more powerful when it is experienced by God’s people on the turf of their choosing.

Agency: The previous account leads to another very important aspect of pastoral care in a missional context: personal agency.  In a study cited in Peter Steinke, residents of a care home who were given choices over extra aspects of care demonstrated measurable health improvements and longer life expectancy, over against a second group that was given no decision-making about the same areas of care.  Personal agency had a direct impact on patient health and longevity.⁵  One of the features of the lives of people on the margins is they have had little control over their own lives.  They may have been apprehended as children, placed in foster care, arrested and incarcerated, and directed what to do as social service clients or patients in health care.  Much of their lives have been managed or controlled by others.  When they are given personal agency over their own lives, it empowers them in rich and significant ways.  They are not just pawns in a huge system; their desires and interests truly matter.   They have the power to influence their world and their future.

Pastoral care in missional contexts is demanding.  By our definition, it entails being involved in people’s lives in deep and sacrificial ways.  One warning: it is difficult and draining over a long period.  Missional hazards of fatigue and burnout may lie ahead.  Healthy boundaries are important.  The wise missional leader will guard their heart and be rooted in prayer, knowing that the sheep ultimately belong to the Good Shepherd and the Overseer of their souls (1 Peter 2:25).  This will keep them from jaded perspectives and judgmentalism, and also ground their ministry in a deep sense of wonder for each person God has created.⁶

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Kevin Vance serves as a minister and church planter in the inner city of Regina, Saskatchewan. He works among youth in Regina and throughout the province to help them find hope and healing in Jesus Christ. He has a special passion for Indigenous youth and the reserves. He and his wife Lisa have been married since 1989 and have three grown children. Together they planted Gentle Road Church of Christ in North Central Regina in 2011, and dream about planting other churches in the toughest communities in Canada.

1. In Luke 15:1-2 and Luke 19:1-10 Jesus ate with tax collectors and went to the home of Zacchaeus.  In Luke 7:36-50 and 14:1 he was the guest in the home of two different Pharisees.

2. Eugene H. Peterson, The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language, Colorado Springs: NavPress, 2018.

3. Jonathan Gatehouse, “We’re Living in Canada’s Worst Neighbourhood,” Maclean’s, vol. 120, no. 1 (15 January 2007): 20–26.

4. Gerald May, Care of Mind, Care of Spirit (New York, NY: Harper, 1982), 99.

5. Peter Steinke, Healthy Congregations: A Systems Approach, (Henderson, VA: The Alban Institute, 2006), 11.

6. May, Care of Mind, 147.