Balancing pastoral care and social outreach in the best interest of rural communities : a practical theological study

Abstract

Socio-economic, spiritual and contextual forces combine to compel the rural church by intent or default to often inevitably assume leading roles in provision of services and care to its congregations and rural community members. As a result, rural pastors are faced with the dilemma of a huge demand for services and a shortage of personnel and material resources. This often results in the situation where they are challenged and tempted to concentrate on pastoral care at the expense of social outreach and vice versa. Rural pastors are however essentially expected to find innovative and creative ways to find a balance between their equally demanding and crucial roles of pastoral care obligations to their congregations and social outreach to communities where they operate and exist. As these two constitute significant aspects of the church’s mission and clergy call and assignment, markers of success would no doubt be examined in terms of how congregants and communities fare with regards to care and services. This study aimed at determining the ideal balance between pastoral care and social outreach in the church to best serve rural communities. The study adopted Osmer’s (2008:24) typology for practical theological research regarding the descriptive-empirical, interpretive, normative and pragmatic task. It utilized the qualitative phenomenological approach to research to explore the perspectives of six pastors/social outreach workers and six church members who were purposively selected regarding finding a balance between pastoral care and social outreach in the church to best serve rural communities. Data was gathered by in-depth individual interviews with the pastors/social outreach workers and a focus group discussion with the church members and analyzed by the thematic method. The findings indicated that pastors were actively engaged in pastoral care and social outreach due to huge demand and need in the rural churches and communities and expectedly made a distinction between the sacred and mundane aspects of their pastoral care roles. The sacred pastoral care roles which were regarded as core and accorded priority attention by the pastors included spiritual nourishment/watch over the congregation, counselling, prayer and training/developing ministers/workers. The mundane roles included church discipline and attending to the physical and social

needs/care of the congregants which they felt could be delegated to the laity and volunteers. Social outreach projects included assistance with provision of basic survival needs, evangelism/spiritual development, community development efforts, health promotion and educational assistance. The findings further suggested that the pastors/social outreach workers encountered immense challenges including insufficient and inadequate training, burnout and stress, a lack of finance, poverty and sickness in rural setting and dishonesty of rural beneficiaries. The study proposed a model for finding a balance between pastoral care and social outreach in the church to best serve rural communities known as P.L.A.N (P=Plan; L=Lump together; A-=Assign; N=Network). The model was gleaned from the themes emanating from the analysis of the qualitative data capturing participants’ perspectives regarding finding a balance between pastoral care and social outreach identified in organization, integration, delegation and cooperation.