TWO ON LAY PASTORAL CARE

BOOK REVIEW: Stone, The Caring Church and Farabaugh, Lay Pastoral Care Giving

Recently, as background for writing a proposal for a local church's efforts at launching a new lay pastoral care ministry, I was offered these two books to read. They are both helpful, in different ways, though not evenly so.

Howard W. Stone's 1991 book is apparently a bit of a classic; and while it is dated in its approach to communicating (for instance) and lacks an awareness of some of the modern pitfalls of caring ministry, such as navigating in the waters currently infested with the sharks of fears of litigation and the shadow of various kinds of misconduct.

Stone offers a general, and fairly comprehensive, approach to a simple yet potentially robust ministry. His method can be adapted to various circumstances and needs; yet, like all such guides, stresses the imperatives of solid training and supervision, and support by pastoral leadership that is moreover willing to give more than mere lip service to standing aside enough, or delegating enough, to permit the laity to exercise ministry as called and spiritually equipped by God. There are some helpful and well-presented case studies, as well as topically-arranged discussions of relationships, listening skills, hospital visitation, and grief. Stone's approach leaves lots of latitude for local variations.

Especially nice in this work was the emphasis on spiritual gifts -- too often missing from considerations of lay ministry of all kinds. The commissioning service is also good: simple in design, not too long, but lifting the appropriate themes before the congregation.

Farabaugh's book is titled "Lay Pastoral Care Giving", but should be titled "Lay Pastoral Care Giving for Seniors (Mostly)". The author's expertise is clearly and explicitly with the elder set; however, it seems that almost every chapter and topic continually comes back around to this demographic, and in the end to the neglect of some other key considerations (issues of youth and families, to name two -- though there is some attention given to children, almost parenthetically). The book is also badly edited, embarrassingly so. On the other hand, the chart on pages 63 ff. is helpful in its laying out of developmental issues and needs, as is the discussion of stages of grief -- though there lacks sufficient development of context for this information to be truly useful to the average reader.

One of the most disappointing parts of the book is the dialogue on pp. 85-86, which is extremely unhelpful: the model shows only the caregiver's concerns and agenda being important in the conversation!

Both of these works can provide information that will be useful to those setting up training and execution of a lay pastoral care ministry. However, the Farabaugh book requires some serious adaptation and rounding out (not to mention tolerance for all the usage errors), while the Stone book merely needs some updating for more contemporary concerns and issues.

(With thanks to Cal Colvin and Rev. David Graves for making the works available for my review.)

Stone, Howard W. The Caring Church: A Guide for Lay Pastoral Care. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991. 128 pp.

Farabaugh, Timothy M. Lay Pastoral Care Giving. Nashville: Discipleship Resources, 2009. 154 pp.


Prince Frederick, Maryland (Providence)