Canadian Mennonite
Volume 11, No. 16
August 20, 2007
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It was an inflated sense of self-importance as a chaplaincy student several years ago that led me to a necessary discovery about spiritual care. Spiritual care comes in many forms and from unexpected places—and we, as the church, must allow that to happen.
You see, during this time of intense hospital training, I unconsciously developed a sort of “superhero” mentality that said I (or one of the other chaplains) were the only ones who could offer the emotional and spiritual caregiving and support that patients needed.
Now, as a congregational pastor, I recognize that we can fall into that way of thinking as well. I hadn’t identified that self-perception until one day I was not able to be all things to all people. In one groggy early morning on-call shift, I had to decide between an ongoing situation in the emergency room that I had been called to, and a relatively healthy woman in her late 70s who, about to go in for a routine hip replacement, asked her nurse to page a chaplain.
Without much deliberation, I chose the crisis in the ER. I recall thinking, “If I can’t get to ‘Marjorie’ to pray with her before surgery, then I’ll see her once she’s out of recovery.” And so I dismissed the situation.
Several hours later, I was paged to the operating room to minister to the medical team that had unexpectedly and unexplainably “lost” a woman during a hip surgery. They were in shock and needing support, while I felt utterly sick at the idea that I had not prayed with Marjorie nor listened to her reservations about this surgery—that I had failed her in the moments before her unexpected death. I was devastated!
It was only later, as I went back to Rehab to visit her roommate, that I was able to forgive myself, because I caught a glimpse of God’s mysterious grace in this difficult situation. This roommate told me how Marjorie had been very anxious about this surgery, and really wanted some prayer before she went in.
Since the on-call chaplain did not arrive, the roommate prayed with her instead, and they talked a long time about her anxieties. In the end, Marjorie was able to go into the surgery with a sense of peace. God had placed an unofficial chaplain in her room with her, to minister to her in her dark moment. Instead of thinking that I had failed, I saw that God, in fact, had been faithful.
Avoiding the ‘superhero’ complex
As the pastor of caregiving in a large Mennonite church with an ever-increasing senior population, I have, out of necessity, also had to avoid the “superhero” complex. A small pastoral team in a context of 600 members is simply not able to fulfill all of the caregiving needs that arise.
This is the case for many congregations. So, in order to offer personal Christian care to those who are experiencing brokenness, we develop visitation teams, we train deacons and elders, and some churches adopt models such as the well-known “Stephen Ministry” that began in the U.S. in the mid-1970s.
The practical and often desperate need is frequently what urges churches to develop various models of congregational visitation. But I believe how effectively and powerfully we embody and embrace this ministry depends more on the theological reasons supporting congregational visitation.
Looking back at the confessions and articles of faith of early Anabaptists and Mennonites, it is clear that, for many generations, caregiving within the congregation has been shared among more than just the pastors. Such caregiving is also part of the documents our denomination uses today.
The Mennonite Polity Document of 1996 describes the functions of the deacon, elder or lay minister as doing “pastoral care with the pastor…providing spiritual oversight of the congregation…. They may do pastoral care,” and “look after the needy….”
But what, beyond practical need, is it that compels us to develop ministries in our congregations that involve members ministering to members in the area of caregiving? Is it a simple modelling of what we read in Acts 6 or James 5, as the New Testament community exemplifies various forms of reaching out to one another in times of need, even commissioning individuals for the task? This certainly is included in our understanding of the biblical mandate that calls us to walk with one another in the faith community on our individual and communal life journeys.
In another vein, is it what Marva Dawn, in her book Truly the Community, describes as the nature of our “belonging to one another,” from her reading of Romans 12? She beautifully articulates how the Christian community can be the place where God’s enfolding love is expressed “in the persons that God gives us to meet our needs.”
Both of these explanations offer significance to our discussion. We sense a biblical call to mutually care for one another, and we—as members belonging together to the Christian community—are connected to one another as we represent God’s love to each other. In other words, we live out love to one another with an incarnational theology as our motivating reason.
An empowering strength
Placing congregational caregiving and visitation in the framework of incarnational theology lends it an empowering strength that we might typically not recognize.
When considering engaging in the spiritual and emotional caregiving ministries of the church, many are held back by feelings of insecurity, incapability and “smallness.” I often hear expressions of self-doubt, comments such as, “I wouldn’t know what to do or say. I’d probably do more harm than good.” We get trapped in our sense of nothingness or ordinariness, rather than seeing the mystery of incarnation at work in our lives.
But it was in mere humanness that God chose to become known to humanity, placing ordinary humanness alongside the divine in one person, Jesus. And that Jesus, being the embodiment of God, is also the source of our embodiment of God as we live as followers of Jesus. God’s choice of Jesus’ humanness leads us to celebrate the fact that God also chooses to use our mundaneness, our ordinariness, our “nothingness,” in this broken world that needs God’s presence.
And it is in the mundaneness of our engaging with one another as Jesus’ representatives, that we see the spark of the mysterious divine. Just as God ministered to Marjorie through the ordinary person beside her (without the fancy prepared prayers), so God shows up to those needing care through the ordinary people of our congregations.
It can be a humbling concept for those of us who sometimes feel a bit more important than we are, but it is a vitally empowering concept for those who struggle to see themselves as embodiments of God’s love for the building up of the faith community!
Characteristics of the incarnation
As we involve ourselves in congregational visitation ministries, I encourage us to reflect on characteristics of the ultimate incarnation that we participate in as the presence of Christ to one another. God entered the world through a human in these ways, and continues to enter the world through us in similar ways:
• First, God entered the world through Jesus in a specific context. Jesus lived with a particular people, addressed their distinct needs, offered teaching and healing and comfort in the places where they were. As members care for one another, God is addressing particular circumstances unique to our settings and lives.
• Second, God entered the world through Jesus, who was wholly human and divine, in an undivided way. He was fully involved in the human world of his time, while also being the divine Son of God. In a unifying way, God was involved in the world—becoming flesh and dwelling in the person of Jesus. Similarly, we who are so utterly human are graced with the Holy Spirit’s indwelling, in order to be reflections of that Spirit to others.
• Third, God could only be made known through the incarnation by way of active participation. The only way that meaning and truth exist in God’s self-revelation is by Jesus’ participation in life and death. When members of the Christian community reflect Jesus to each other in significant moments of life and death, then God is present and already beginning to transform the darkness into light, the Good Friday into Easter Sunday.
My prayer for the church is that, as members belonging to one another, we might each embrace a sense of conviction, responsibility and joy as we seek to be a healing, Jesus-like presence to one another on the journeys of our lives. God has gifted us all with the ability to care for others, and it is in activating that gift at congregational levels that God becomes flesh, time and time again.
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Visiting at Bethania...becomes a time of intergenerational fellowship
“For many people visiting a personal care home is not on their list of favourite things to do. It is such a painful ordeal that it causes them to stop visiting altogether,” says Susan (Martens) Froese. But for others, it can become an opportunity for thankfulness and intergenerational fellowship, as it did for Froese and her family over the last two decades. She tells her story with the hope that it can offer practical and creative tips for others who face similar challenges. Ed.
The Martens family is well-acquainted with suffering and visiting the sick. It began with our father, Jacob Martens, who, in 1985, spent two years and four months in Deer Lodge Hospital in Winnipeg after suffering a stroke, unable to speak with a feeding tube down his nose.
We talked to him, read to him, sang to him, knowing that he probably understood not a word. After two years and four months, death mercifully freed him.
His last words to me prior to his stroke were, “I so wish that I won’t suffer a long, slow death.”
During this time, my sister Anne and I also took turns spending the nights with our mother, Anna Martens, who was suffering from macular degeneration and congestive heart failure. We were grateful when she was admitted to Bethania Mennonite Personal Care Home. Now, both parents were looked after.
There she sat in her dark little room. Anne and I each visited twice a week, while our brothers Peter and John came on weekends. Other people came too, but for the most part Mother sat alone with her thoughts in her dim little room.
We read to her. She waited for Der Bote and the Mennonite Mirror. Many books were read cover to cover. She, in turn, told us many stories of times long ago. When a birthday card arrived from her niece Liesel in Chicago, she said, “Not just a card. She wrote me a letter!” That was very special.
A year-and-a-half later, she died one morning, alone in her room.
Ruth Martens, Peter’s wife, was admitted to Bethania in 1997, and my brother Bill, two years later, both suffering from Parkinson’s disease. They were unhappy there in the beginning.
Ruth wanted to go home. Peter visited her three times a week at least during those nine years—travelling 56 kilometres. Son James and Bev and family also made visiting a family outing.
Ruth’s room was beautifully decorated with family pictures and Peter’s art. She suffered severe tremors, which could make the visits painful for herself and her visitors. Gradually, visits lessened, then some stopped altogether. Over the years, it became difficult to communicate with her. She eventually retreated into herself.
And Bill often couldn’t get his words out, although he tried hard.
My late husband Dave and I, and my sister Anne and her husband Erni, began to visit together. We wheeled Ruth and Bill out of their small rooms into a pleasant sunny spot and got a pot of coffee from the kitchen. We offered delicacies such as strawberries, blueberries, chocolates and platz (Mennonite fruit cake). They smiled and ate eagerly. In summer, we moved into the beautiful gardens, enjoying the flowers, the brook and the sunlight.
Our cousins began to join us. Bill lit up when he saw them come. We read letters from relatives in Germany, showed the latest family pictures and told stories. The times when Ruth and Bill were uncommunicative, we still enjoyed the fellowship.
Bill still wished to come to family celebrations, even when transporting him became difficult, so we began to come to him. On his birthday, the whole Martens clan came, including children and grandchildren, to gather in Bethania’s Oak Room for a potluck, presents, flowers and candles. Bill and Ruth could see all the family and watch the little ones play.
The Martens family Christmas was now celebrated in the tea room. The celebration—including a potluck and visiting with out-of-province nieces and nephews, together with Bill and Ruth—became a special annual event.
When our sister Helen moved back to Winnipeg from Waterloo, Ont., three years ago, she joined our group, but also visited on her own, to have one-on-one communication. She read to them from the New Testament.
This past December, Ruth began to fail. The family kept vigil around her bed for 10 days and nights. She slipped away peacefully one morning, her family at her side. Free at last. The sun shone brightly all that day.
A few weeks later, Bill also stopped eating. For two weeks, his children Andrew and Lisa sat by his bedside. On Dec. 26, the Martens family gathered for our annual Christmas celebration. One by one, we slipped out to spend time at Bill’s bedside. The next day at dusk Bill, too, peacefully drew his last breath.
Thinking back on those times, the hardest were when the ailing were still in their own homes. Once in Bethania, they were taken care of. We could go home after a visit and look after our own families.
Often when leaving Bethania, walking past all those wheelchairs and those seemingly vacant faces, we remarked how fortunate we were to be able to walk out and go home. These experiences have caused us to be profoundly grateful for personal care homes and their staff and volunteers. How could we have possibly managed alone?
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