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    Clergy Guide to Making Visits
    Clergy Guide to Making Visits
    Clergy Guide to Making Visits
    Ebook44 pages46 minutes

    Clergy Guide to Making Visits

    By John Zehring

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    About this ebook

    The Clergy Guide to Making Visits covers one of the most cherished and enjoyable parts of a pastor’s ministry. Visiting feeds a pastor’s sermons and keeps his or her fingers on the pulse of the congregation. “Our pastor knows us,” is the reaction from a visited congregation. Few will remember your brilliant homilies or the hundreds of meetings you attended, but they will always remember the day you came to visit, especially when they needed you. Clergy may invest a quarter of their ministry on visits and yet this share of their profession is covered less by theological education than any other part. Visiting may be the second most important part of their ministry, after preaching and worship. But who could teach it? Only one who has done it and mastered it. The Clergy Guide to Making Visits is for pastors who desire to make visiting their people a priority. It encourages pastors to show up and, as one church senior leader told of his expectations, “to be among our people.” The Guide deals with the art of showing up. How do you set it up? How do you keep track of it? What do you do when you get there? How do you conduct a home visit? How do you make time for proactive visits when there is so much else to do? Also included is a guide to using business lunches effectively, to making referrals to specialized helping professionals, and suggestions for how to keep records of members visited and to be visited. You already have developed heightened skills and experience in visiting. The Clergy Guide to Making Visits is for pastors who desire to fine-tune, improve, and re-energize this most important part of our vocation.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherJohn Zehring
    Release dateAug 2, 2014
    ISBN9781310121821
    Clergy Guide to Making Visits
    Author

    John Zehring

    John Zehring has served United Church of Christ congregations as Senior Pastor in Massachusetts (Andover), Rhode Island (Kingston), and Maine (Augusta) and as an Interim Pastor in Massachusetts (Arlington, Harvard). Prior to parish ministry, he served in higher education, primarily in development and institutional advancement. He worked as a dean of students, director of career planning and placement, adjunct professor of public speaking and as a vice president at a seminary and at a college. He is the author of more than sixty books and is a regular writer for The Christian Citizen, an American Baptist social justice publication. He has taught Public Speaking, Creative Writing, Educational Psychology and Church Administration. John was the founding editor of the publication Seminary Development News, a publication for seminary presidents, vice presidents and trustees (published by the Association of Theological Schools, funded by a grant from Lilly Endowment). He graduated from Eastern University and holds graduate degrees from Princeton Theological Seminary, Rider University, and the Earlham School of Religion. He is listed in Marquis' WHO'S WHO IN AMERICA and is a recipient of their Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award. John and his wife Donna live in two places, in central Massachusetts and by the sea in Maine.

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      Book preview

      Clergy Guide to Making Visits - John Zehring

      Clergy Guide to Making Visits

      John Zehring

      Smashwords Edition

      Copyright 2014 John Zehring

      Smashwords Edition, License Notes

      Thank you for downloading this eBook. This book remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be redistributed to others for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy from their favorite authorized retailer. Thank you for your support.

      Introduction

      Visiting your people can be one of the most cherished and enjoyable parts of your ministry. Visiting feeds your sermons and keeps your fingers on the pulse of the congregation. Our pastor knows us, is the reaction from a visited congregation. Later, when you look back upon your ministry, it will be your visits and the relationships you formed that you will remember most – not the endless meetings in which you sat or the bazillion emails you read and wrote.

      A friend of mine who served as a college president and later as president of a foundation shared his observation that If you preach well, you can fail at every other part of your job and still succeed. If you preach well, you can get away with murder. I believed that for a long time. Now, after decades of serving as Senior Pastor to three congregations, I must add visiting to that observation. If you visit well, you will be doing your job, doing it well, and responding to the needs of your people. If you do nothing else in ministry, preach and visit. Few will remember your brilliant homilies, but they will always remember the day you came to visit, especially when they needed you.

      The #1 compliment visiting clergy receive (one of many): You are the first minister to be in my home.

      The #1 complaint about clergy who rarely visit: She wasn’t there when I needed her… He never came to see me.

      I was fortunate to have worked in college development work before entering ministry. When I entered the parish, a former colleague asked how I spent my time as a pastor. I told her how I would call people up, talk with them, and set up a visit. They would tell all their friends and family that the pastor was coming to visit. They would bake cookies or pies, clean their homes for hours, go to the hairdresser, and on the day of the visit they would dress up. Then, during the visit, for sixty to ninety minutes we would get to know each other well and I would learn about their interests, loves, family, experiences, and needs. After I left, they would call their friends or family to tell them about the visit. My colleague from our days of fund-raising asked, Did you ask them for money? No, I replied. I just visited. She quipped That’s not a job!

      Well, it is a job. Your people expect their pastor to visit, to know them, and to be there for them. When I started my first pastorate after a couple decades in higher education, I asked the senior lay leader what was expected of the pastor. His answer guided all the days of my ministry when he answered We expect you to be among our people. I cannot imagine a better way to say it. It is not just visiting, but "being among" your people. Ever since, I have

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