Last week, we posted about online resources for vestry members and lectors. Today, we will go into online resources for helping  Eucharistic visitors and pastoral care ministers practice their callings.

We encourage you to forward this post or resources in it that you find particularly helpful on to the people at your church who are in charge of these ministries. Also, if you know of any particular online resources on these subjects that people might find helpful, please comment!

Eucharistic Visitation

1.We offer a course on Eucharistic Visitation in which Tim Spannaus trains people for this ministry. It is, as are all of our classes, available For Groups as well as for individual learning.

2. The Episcopal Diocese of Western Massachusetts has written an excellent guide on Eucharistic Visitor Training  that gives detailed history of the ministry and guides visitors in this practice.

3.The Episcopal Diocese of Albany has published a Handbook of Lay Eucharistic Ministry and Eucharistic Visitation  that offers detailed guidance on how to pursue each of these ministries.

Pastoral Care

1. One of the first ChurchNext classes we ever produced was How to Help a Sick Friend with Joyce Mercer. Joyce has terrific suggestions about how to approach people who are ill, how to listen to them, how to support their families, and other subjects.

2. Vestry Papers and Vital Practices has a whole section on pastoral care. It’s not formal training — as with most of the vestry papers, it’s more thoughts on the process than a series of steps — but then, pastoral visits don’t usually follow step-by-step guidelines. It’s a great place to browse around and read about the experiences of people who have made pastoral visits and who have received them. They have some excellent tips.

3. The Anglican Fellowship of Prayer has produced a short pamphlet called Pastoral Prayer and Care with suggestions for how to prepare for and make a pastoral visit. In addition to reading it online, pastoral visitors might find it a useful “cheat sheet” to help them prepare for their first visits.

4. Ministry Magazine’s article Visiting the Sick is really intended for clergy, but it offers in-depth guidance that will profit lay visitors as well.

We hope that you have found these online resources helpful.

Coming soon: Online resources for the altar guild and flower teams.