Leading a pastoral visit

Where to begin

Start with the posture (sheet 01) — as with funerals, what you are comes before what you do. Then the six purposes (02): the why of every visit. The rest is read as needed.

The visitor's posture →Before all else: what you enter with. You carry a presence, not a solution. Why visit — the six purposes →Seek, acknowledge, confront, restore, promise, call. The heart of it. Preparing a visit →Pray, know why, find out without spying, announce your coming. During the visit →Listen first. The word and prayer after. Know when to leave. Special visits →The sick and anointing, the bereaved, the drifting member, the one who refuses. The ethics of visiting →Confidentiality, the power asymmetry, consent. What everything depends on. The visit and Adventist identity →Sabbath, the state of the dead, anointing, the open home. What is ours. The visitor over the long haul →Your wear, your limits, knowing how to delegate. For you, not for them. The missionary visit →Toward those outside: the interested one, the neighbour, the home Bible study. Winning without pressing. Visiting in a multi-faith land →The Indian Ocean: the shared meal, the neighbour of another faith, Creole and French.

Practise

Reading sets out the principles; here, you practise them. Choose a case, play it, get it wrong, start again — the trainer is the corrected mistake.

Practise the six purposes →Conduct a visit according to each purpose. The delicate cases — confront, restore, promise — play out in depth: your choices have memory, and you can fail. A visit, step by step →The anatomy of a single visit, from the threshold to the way out: the coffee, the listening, the prayer, the follow-up.

Background source. These sheets distill the "Theology of Visitation" — two volumes (35,000 words): the biblical vocabulary of visiting, eight visits by God himself, a comparison of the Adventist and Baptist-Puritan traditions. Kept aside for those who want to dig deeper.