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    Visit the Sick: Ministering God’s Grace in Times of Illness
    Visit the Sick: Ministering God’s Grace in Times of Illness
    Visit the Sick: Ministering God’s Grace in Times of Illness
    Ebook96 pages1 hour

    Visit the Sick: Ministering God’s Grace in Times of Illness

    By Brian Croft and Mark Dever

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    About this ebook

    How Do You Care for the Sick?

    Here’s How.

    One of the marks of the ministry of Jesus is his compassionate care for the sick. Jesus brought healing and hope to individuals struggling with life-debilitating illnesses. Ministry to the sick should also be a mark of his followers, but in many churches today it is neglected or pushed to the periphery of ministry concerns.

    To counter our modern tendency to minimize or ignore sickness, pastor Brian Croft looks to paradigms of the past and examines historical models of care that honor God, obey the teachings of Scripture, and communicate loving care to those who are struggling with sickness and disease.

    Part of the Practical Shepherding series of resources, Visit the Sick provides pastors and ministry leaders with real-world help to do the work of pastoral ministry in a local church.

    Visit the Sick gives pastors, church leaders, and caregivers the biblical, theological, pastoral, and practical tools they need to navigate through both the spiritual and physical care of the sick and dying.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherZondervan
    Release dateJun 3, 2014
    ISBN9780310517153
    Visit the Sick: Ministering God’s Grace in Times of Illness
    Author

    Brian Croft

    Brian Croft is Senior Pastor of Auburndale Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky. Brian is the founder of Practical Shepherding, a non-profit organization committed to equipping pastors all over the world in the practical matters of pastoral ministry.

    Read more from Brian Croft

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    • 3/5
      I ordered this book per recommendation from one of the deacons at my church. I'd volunteered recently to be part of the visitation program for shut-ins, and so this is the book the volunteers were reading. It's a short book, easy to finish in one reading. I didn't much like the beginning of it, as it was full of things to do, Scriptures to memorize, much like a to-do list. The rest of it was far more practical and realistic. I liked the simple suggestions, of keeping visits short and being sensitive to family members and roommates (in a hospital setting). There were several appendices at the end which I found helpful too. My favorite appendix was the 4th one, an abridged paper written by J.C. Ryle on sickness. Overall this book was somewhat useful, but the other book I'm reading, Just Show Up, written by the late Kara Tippetts and her friend Jill Lynn Buteyn, is far more helpful in terms of giving helpers/visitors some advice on how to walk along side those who are hurting and how to help them without any agendas.
    • 4/5
      Succinct, thoughtful, and practical. It encourages us to the task at hand rather than guilts us to it. I especially liked J.C. Ryle's paper included at the end for its clear-headed instruction on the place of sickness in the world: to ask us if we're ready to meet our Maker. Wonderful book.

    Book preview

    Visit the Sick - Brian Croft

    FOREWORD

    I REMEMBER THE FIRST TIME I did hospital visitation. I was twenty-one or twenty-two. I had just begun to work in a church, and the senior pastor asked me to visit some older members in the hospital. And let me make it clear. These were older members. I mean, as in born in the previous century older! I didn’t know any of them. They certainly wouldn’t know me. What would I have to give them? What could I contribute to them? The deep and self-conscious awkwardness of feeling useless came over me.

    God was very kind to me in that first day of visitation. And over the weeks and months to come, I made many more visits to that hospital and others on the north shore of Boston. Oh, how I wish then that this little book had existed! What frustration it might have saved me! What embarrassment it might have saved me! How it would have served those I was trying to encourage.

    Brian Croft is well qualified to help the pastor in this way. He is a faithful pastor, himself accustomed to visiting the sick in the hospital. I’ve known Brian for a number of years now. His father, Bill Croft, is a physician and a wonderful Christian man. So Brian has grown up around those who show concern for the sick. His brother, Scott Croft, has served on staff with me at the Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, DC, and for years served as the chairman of our elders. Scott has been an encouragement to, instructor to, and student of Brian. Brian’s sister, Beth Spraul, is a member of our congregation and has served in hospital chaplaincies. So, from many angles, Brian is a man well suited to advise us in these matters.

    In this little volume, Brian helps us to think straight-forwardly and faithfully about God’s truth and God’s people. His advice is as sound as it is simple. Some parts of this may be about matters you’ve already figured out. But isn’t it better to be told something twice than not at all? Let Brian’s be that reinforcing voice. And don’t be surprised if you read some things that you hadn’t thought of before. Read this book, and let Brian help you in helping others.

    Mark Dever, senior pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church, Washington, DC

    INTRODUCTION

    WE ARE VICTIMS OF OUR OWN CULTURE. The twenty-first century has brought with it demands, pressures, and deadlines that have left us feeling as if our lives are often spinning out of control. We have all felt the tension of time with God, work, family, church, school, social occasions, house repairs, personal errands, and sleep, all of which need our daily attention. Unfortunately, we often come to the end of the day — and we’re exhausted, and we wonder where the time went. Our day becomes reminiscent of the hamster running in his wheel — busy, but going nowhere. It is this tension that leads to the neglect of certain essential responsibilities in the life of a Christian. One of those essential tasks is the visiting and care of the sick within our own churches.

    My goal for this book is to instruct and motivate us to recapture this God-honoring practice, and to do so by reaching for a standard that, frankly, is foreign to us today. This means we must be taught by those who lived at a different time within a different culture. We must learn from those who modeled an astounding dedication to this call. We must learn from their accounts and convictions. We must be instructed by our heroes from church history.

    Maybe the greatest historical example of visiting the afflicted was the seventeenth-century Puritan pastor Richard Baxter. Baxter had an amazing strategy to visit not just the sick but everyone in his congregation throughout the English town of Kidderminster regularly and faithfully. In the midst of his highly disciplined routine, Baxter developed a certain sensitivity to those in his congregation who were sick and homebound. He writes in The Reformed Pastor, We must be diligent in visiting the sick, and helping them to prepare either for a fruitful life, or a happy death.¹

    Many others in Baxter’s time and beyond were found to be diligent in this task; yet as America made its turn into the twentieth century, the local church and its priorities began to change. As the United States grew into an industrialized nation, this led to changes in the church, and sadly, pastoral care for the sick became more of an afterthought in many churches. Healthy models of pastors who are known for their care for the sick are few and far between today. To aid us in recapturing this lost and forgotten practice, we will look beyond the twentieth century at historical models that will help us to care for the sick in a way that glorifies God in our day.

    There are, of course, several challenges in taking this approach. Our culture has changed, and our lives today are quite different from the lives of the Puritans whom Baxter pastored. Instead of simply copying his model, we will look at some of the key principles underlying his practice and try to paint a picture of what these principles look like when applied today. Pastors like Baxter and Spurgeon would have had no categories to relate to the hypersensitive, self-consumed privacy mind-set we find rampant in our twenty-first-century culture. So some adjustments need to be made with regard to the practicality of visiting hospitals, nursing homes, rehabilitation centers, and homes.

    Before considering the practical details of visiting the sick, you may need to be convinced that this task is important for pastors, as well as for the members of a local church. We will begin by taking a moment to consider why care for the sick should be a priority in our lives.

    First of all, it is biblical. James exhorts those who are sick to call for the elders of the church to pray over them (James 5:14). Even non-elders were encouraged to pray in a similar manner (James 5:16). And it was Jesus who taught and modeled this practice of caring for the sick. He indicated that it was a primary way to show love to him and our brother (Matthew 25:36, 40). Jesus led by example (Mark 1:31). The apostles also followed this pattern of caring for the sick (Acts 3:7; 28:8). Widows, especially, were to be cared for (1 Timothy 5:3 – 10). Caring for the sick was one aspect of caring for souls, something for which leaders will give an account (Hebrews 13:17). Though this is a quick listing of some passages, it is clear that Jesus and the apostles cared about the sick and afflicted, and they exhorted others to do so as well.

    Visiting the sick is also a tremendous opportunity to

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