A word to ministers. We hear much today, and rightly so, of churches committed to simple means of grace. I suggest that if your ministry does not include systematic family visitation, you are neglecting an important means of grace. I challenge you to rethink your ministerial philosophy. 

Editors’ Note: This is the second of a two-part series on pastoral visitation. The first article may be found here.

My first pastoral visit was the first one I made as a young pastor. By that time, I had been in the church eleven years. My case was not unique then or now. I am certain that many of you identify with my experience. In fact, many readers will not recognize that they are being deprived of something that was an essential part of church experience. In our day, the work of the pastor is greatly neglected. Many would-be pastors fill up their lives with administration or study so that they have little time for the people of the flock. Others have churches so large they cannot begin to pastor the members of their congregations. Increasingly, such men are adopting the Chief Executive Officer approach to congregational oversight. But even in our smaller reformed churches the minister often neglects the important work of pastoring. Many church members only receive a visit when they are ill (if then). We cannot know the condition of our flock or minister effectively to them without carefully doing the work of family visitation. Furthermore, this work is necessary for the cementing of truth and its results in the lives of our people.

Historically, pastoral visitation was part of the expected work of the reformed pastor. Our fathers in the faith took this part of ministerial work very seriously; Calvin, the Puritans, the Scottish ministers, and the American Presbyterians and Baptists all were committed to the work of pastoral visitation. With respect to the Puritans, Packer wrote,

[K]nowing the ways whereby the Spirit brings sinners to faith and new life in Christ, and leads saints, on the one hand, to grow into their Saviour’s image, and, on the other, to learn their total dependence on grace, the great Puritans became superb pastors. The depth and unction of their ‘practical and experimental’ expositions in the pulpit was no more outstanding than was their skill in the study in applying spiritual physic to sick souls. From Scripture they mapped the often bewildering terrain of the life of faith and fellowship with God with great thoroughness (see Pilgrim’s Progressfor a pictorial gazetteer), and their acuteness and wisdom in diagnosing spiritual malaise and setting out the appropriate biblical remedies was outstanding.(1)

They fleshed out their theology of pastoral care in the Westminster Directory of Worship:

It is the duty of the minister not only to teach the people committed to his charge in publick, but privately; and particularly to admonish, exhort, reprove, and comfort them, upon all seasonable occasions, so afar as his time, strength, and personal safety will permit.

He is to admonish them, in time of health, to prepare for death; and, for that purpose, they are often to confer with their minister about the estate of their souls; and, in times of sickness, to desire his advice and help, timely and seasonable, before their strength and understanding fail them.(2)

A more modern proponent of the necessity of pastoral visitation, John R. Stott wrote, “There are four ways in which human beings learn: by listening, discussing, watching and discovering. One might call these audition, conversation, observation and participation. The first is the most direct, mouth to ear, speaker to hearer, and of course includes preaching [which in the context Stott asserted is the primary means of grace]. But is it not by any means always the most effective. ‘Most people find it difficult to understand purely verbal concepts…'”(3) In an earlier book, he fleshed out that pastoral visitation was one of the ways a minister bridged the gap with his congregation and secured the truth they heard in the pulpit: “And we shall let the people talk to us. There is no quicker way of bridging the gulf between preacher and people than meeting them in their homes and in our home. The effective preacher is always a diligent pastor. Only if he makes time each week both for visiting people and for interviewing them, will he be en rapport with them as he preaches.” (4)

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