Pastoral Care at Eltham Park Methodist Church

The letters of John in the New Testament speak about the need for Christians to love one another; in the Methodist church we seek to practise this and being Methodists (methodical people) we organise to do this mutual care and support. We organise the membership into groups and invite a person to be the pastoral visitor to a group. The idea is to express the love and the care of God through the pastoral visitor. This is not to say that the visitor has to be all things to all people but rather is a line of contact on behalf of the local church to the members of the group.

Interestingly, in the face of the potential pandemic flu, the health service was hoping that communities would form such groups for mutual support, should the flu pandemic turn serious. Historically in the Methodist church groups were also of an educational nature where the visitor not only had a pastoral responsibility but also a teaching role. The group was usually described as a class and met to encourage one another in spiritual development. In some instances this group would be intense in encouraging one another in spiritual development and much self examination would go on in the group in which case there were strict rules about confidentiality.

Nothing that was said in group would be repeated outside of the group – this group was sometimes called band meeting. There is still an expression used in Methodism today of a meeting being in band meaning that the strictest confidentiality needs to be observed outside of that meeting. This confidentiality is expected of pastoral visitors though clearly they are encouraged to share information and call upon support for the group member where appropriate. In this respect pastoral visitors work closely with the minister who has responsibility for the whole church membership