Ask a Young Clergywoman: Pastoral Care Inadequacy Edition

Post Author: Cat Connolly

Dear Askie,

I’m in my first few years of ministry, and, while I have always been highly empathic, I feel almost hypocritical when people come to me with their problems and grief. How can I offer good, authentic pastoral care to people who are suffering and going through terrible experiences when I myself have always had a good and happy life? I have had some worries and anxiety in my life, but nothing like much of what I see in the parish. It feels like I have a distinct lack of relatable struggle or accumulated wisdom to offer. What should I do?

Nervously,

Rev. Inadequate

Dear Rev. Inadequate, 

So many of us are tempted to feel inadequate in various realms of ministry. Perhaps kin to imposter syndrome, this inadequacy insists on whispering at us. But ignoring it can be a spiritual practice.

We already practice filtering what we listen to – we make those choices all the time by choosing our friends, our podcasts, our news channel – but it can be much harder when the voice comes from within. Even so, we still have the ability to ignore it, perhaps most helpfully in quite an active way. My first instinct would be to remind myself that inadequacy is not a gift from God, and therefore it is justifiable, even good and proper, to reject it. That sense of not-enough is not of God, for God created you to be just who you are, and called you into this ministry. God is in your voice affirming out loud your strength and gifts. God is in the power stance in the bathroom mirror. God is in your invitational presence that draws others in to share the cracks in their lives that they aren’t sure how to fix. God is there no matter how much inadequacy tries to come out on top, and God knew what God was doing in calling you to where you are now.

And I have found over the years that God has a strange ability to be heard by those who need to hear. It can be amusing, the remarkable variety of things taken from the same sermon by different people, sometimes including things that were certainly not said. God is found both where God is sought, and in unexpected places. Liturgy, scripture, music, sacred space, nature, stillness, art, beauty, each other: each individual finds the divine somehow if they are seeking it, and thankfully our own shortcomings and limitations are never boundaries to God’s presence. God shines through fog, creates life with breath, loves the unlovable, and can even speak through any of us flawed and marvelous humans to stir the embers of another’s soul.

But what is more often needed is stillness. The role of a clergy person is sometimes to give advice or lay down boundaries, but for the most part it is holy listening, a giving of time and focus, a physical, breathing reminder that our purpose is to live into being a child of God. With this perspective, to set aside fear of inadequacy is to embrace that it is not simply ourselves at work. Instead we are another way in which God can be sought and found, and thankfully this does not rely on our own competence alone. To offer good pastoral care requires an element of putting oneself aside, to step out of the way of the power and presence of God. 

Walking the path with God.

For, like a child calling for their grown-up, when grief or loss or loneliness overtake us, our instinct is to reach out for our creator. While we are no oracles or sages, priesthood makes us representatives of faith, even in moments when we least feel like it. So it isn’t really about us at all, and that is the beauty of this vocation. We all are simply there along the way, walking with people as they reach out to touch God.

Blessings,
Askie