Holding Hope: When Waiting is Tinged with Loss

shutterstock_87899782

Each month, we post a series of blogs around a common topic. This December, Anna Pinckney Straight is curating a month of reflections on pastoral care in the 21st century. Join the conversation here or on Facebook. Today we re-visit this excerpt from Holding Hope as a reminder of the complex (and often silent) suffering that goes on in the lives of our congregants.

By Ashley-Anne Masters

The following is an excerpt from the introduction to Ashley-Anne’s Advent devotionals, “Holding Hope: Grieving Pregnancy Loss during Advent.”

Advent, which means “coming,” is the Christian Season of waiting and preparing for the birth of Jesus Christ. In the season of Advent:

we wait…

for Emmanuel, God with us, to be born.

we wait…

for the shepherds to hear the angels singing.

we wait…

for Mary and Joseph to start their journey to Bethlehem.

we wait…

for Mary to give birth.

we wait…

for Jesus to make his entrance into the world.

Waiting for the birth of Jesus is similar to waiting for any other baby’s birth. We hear the announcement from the mother that she is pregnant, and from then on, everything changes. We are able to watch and see physical changes in the mother as the baby grows in her womb. We celebrate milestones of trimesters. We hear updates and see pictures of the baby’s new nursery, crib, clothes, and rocking chair. We plan for how we will take care of the baby. We wait for the mother to give birth and to find out the baby’s name. We wait to see who the baby looks like. We wait to see hope, light, joy, and love in the purest human form wrapped in brushed cotton with the smell of perfection that only babies possess.

But, what if that is not the way things happen? What if the mother begins to have cramping and bleeding before she even hears her baby’s heartbeat? What if the mother’s water breaks when she is only 20 weeks pregnant and there is no choice but to induce labor? What if the baby is born at 38 weeks, looks perfect, smells perfect, but the doctor brings the news that something does not sound right in the baby’s heart? What if we wait and there is no beautiful human gift to hold? What do we do? What do we say? In these situations,

we weep…

with the parents and grandparents.

we weep…

with the aunts, uncles, and godparents.

we weep…

because the night is too silent.

we weep…

because there are no adequate words.

we weep…

because there is no other response.

Yet in the midst of our weeping, we dare to hope that in the pages of this guide you may find hope to hold. While we hold on to our feelings of grief, we also reach out to the hope of Christ in the world in which we live. We hold on to hope in the midst of confusion, grief and loss.

Why Holding Hope?

While infertility, miscarriage and stillbirths are unfortunately common, the details and grief processes surrounding such losses are something we do not often discuss. Too many parents suffer in silence or solitude and feel that there is no appropriate way for them to talk about their grief. Yet these experiences are not uncommon and do not happen in isolation. Therefore, Holding Hope is intended to provide a safe opportunity for us to share our experiences of pregnancy loss. By sharing the stories of our lives with each other, we can help each other through the darkness and carry some of the pain for one another.

Moreover, the grief of losing a baby, like any other grief, is often more intense or resurfaces during the holiday season. Perhaps the most significant reasons are that the Advent and Christmas seasons celebrate the birth of a child, and there is something magical about celebrating the Christmas season with children. Thus, Holding Hope is intentionally designed to speak to our grief in the midst of the hopeful expectance of Advent.

The purpose of Holding Hope is to provide a faith-based resource for all those suffering from pregnancy loss. It is not to serve as medical advice or to replace a counselor, spiritual advisor or support group. Holding Hope is intended to be used by anyone – mother, father, partner, friend, sibling, family member, caregiver, clergy, medical staff, counselor – who is grieving the loss of a child or children due to miscarriage, stillbirth, or other complications of premature births. The hope is that you will find this devotional comforting as you grieve or as you care for someone who is grieving.

How to Use Holding Hope

The four devotionals are written in light of the four Sundays of the Christian Season of Advent: Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love. Each devotional offers a helpful perspective on a reading from scripture and questions for further discussion. We also provide a “prayer template” that helps you write your own prayers, and prayer examples from the perspective of a mother, father, child or sibling, and grandparent.

Depending on your need, there are many different ways to use the devotionals and supplementary materials. Individuals and couples may wish to light a candle each Sunday and read the devotional together at home. Friends and family members may meet weekly and discuss the questions in “Further Thoughts,” or use the prayers as a way of praying for someone who is affected by the loss. Congregational leaders and pastors may use the ideas throughout the guide to plan community worship services during Advent. There is no “correct” way to use Holding Hope, just as there is no “correct” way to respond to the loss of a pregnancy.

Holding Hope is published by The Church Health Center and includes an exhaustive resource list to provide ongoing support for families and caregivers. It is available in printed and Kindle format.

——–

AAM HeadshotAshley-Anne Masters is a freelance writer and pediatric chaplain in Chicago, IL. She is the author of Holding Hope: Grieving Pregnancy Loss During Advent and co-authored Bless Her Heart: Life as a Young Clergywoman with Stacy Smith. She blogs at revaam.org. 

 

Pastoral Visit or Social Call?

Each month, we post a series of blogs around a common topic. This December, Anna Pinckney Straight is curating a month of reflections on pastoral care in the 21st century. Join the conversation here or on Facebook.

By Anna Pinckney Straight

And so it was said of one of the beloved predecessors at a church I served, “He always knew when a pie was coming out of the oven.”

It was, most certainly, a compliment. The congregation loved that he stopped by without any reason – just to sit at table with them catch up with the family on the goings on in their lives.

Listening to people’s stories is important. It helps you know who they are and from whence they have come. I’ve been fortunate to serve congregations with people I have genuinely wanted to get to know and be intentional about doing so.

sailboatIn doing so, I’m a big practitioner of tacking. When sailing, you can’t go directly into the wind. And so, if your destination is in the direction from which the wind is coming you must set out in diagonals in order to reach your point. Sail a bit to starboard, then a bit to port, each time making a little bit of headway towards your goal. Tacking, it’s called.

Frequently, that’s the way I’ve approached pastoral care in non-crisis situations. I ask lots of indirect questions in order to learn more about the person – who they are and what makes them who they are. Then, based on the relationship that is built out of those encounters, theological depth can be inferred and added to the equation.

Only, I’ve been wondering: In my “tacking” approach to non-crisis pastoral care, have I missed out on what I am really supposed to be doing? What distinguishes a pastoral visit from a social visit?

When we welcome new members at University Presbyterian Church I’ve frequently used this quote from the Ekklesia project’s pamphlet “Church Membership: An Introduction to the Journey,” by John McFadden and David McCarthy.

“Becoming part of a church is a wonderful and frightening idea. If you look around you on any given Sunday, you are not likely to see prominent and influential people. Gathering for worship is not like going to the Oscars, or even the local businesspersons’ luncheon…..Moreover, we Christians are not all likely to share the same interests in sports, politics, or fashion. This lack of prestige and common ‘lifestyle’ is precisely the point of gathering in God’s name. We have been called by God to a shared life, in God’s name and not our own. When we gather in God’s name, we are not perfect people. Aware of our imperfections, we are called to be open to God. We are called to live faithfully to the way of God in Jesus Christ.

We are called to depend upon one another.”[1]

So. What’s the difference between a social visit and a pastoral visit?

Since moving to Chapel Hill I’ve frequently joked that this a place where politics and religion are perfectly acceptable dinner table conversations – the topics you have to avoid are basketball and barbeque.

I’m not so sure this is true anymore. We’re comfortable proclaiming our belief, but less so articulating exactly what that belief is. And that’s exactly what we need to get better at doing. Along the way to this goal, however, it’s important to find ways to establish a common language of faith. No assumptions about a common understanding of salvation or gospel or heaven. It’s a pathway that has to be remade with each conversation.

In asking myself this question I’ve changed (maybe more like shifted) the questions asked during a visit, or when talking with potential church members. I still want to know their stories, but now I ask them about their beliefs and their doubts, too.

It can be awkward, and it can generate some silence, but for the most part I’ve found people to be open and receptive to the shifting questions. For the most part, they don’t want to be a part of a church that is like a club or any other organization – they want to be a part of a place where faith and forgiveness, belief and baptism are the bonds that hold us together.

A pastoral care visit may still involve homemade pie, but it’s not the same thing as a social call.

What questions would you want someone to ask you, to help them understand who you are and what you believe?

[1] https://www.ekklesiaproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Ekklesia_5.pdf

APSAnna Pinckney Straight is an Associate Pastor at University Presbyterian Church in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Wife of Ben. Mom of Sarah Allan. She serves on the NEXT Church Advisory Team.

Pastoral Care for College Students Over Break

By John Rogers

As I type this, students are sitting in our campus ministry center studying away for finals. Some are seasoned veterans who know just where to find the exam blue books, free snacks, and know who has swipes left on their meal plan cards. But many are just starting, and the stress levels are through the roof. Most of our students have rarely seen anything other than an A, and most of them are coming in to college with over a semester’s worth of credits from their high school AP courses.

So, the pressure of doing well (mostly assumed on their own) creates a level anxiety—even among those who are involved in one of our campus ministries. Hope, Joy, Love, Peace… Yes, anticipation is in the air, but not always one wrapped up in an eschatological hope. Rather, it is anticipation of the grade they will learn of sometime over break.

PCM Thanksgiving

Campus Ministry Thanksgiving Dinner

Granted, some are pretty laid back, doing well, and surviving the trauma of a changed major or two. But within all of this — all of them — we need to remember are young adults who are maturing into a theological approach to their life. They are all facing challenges and are beginning to newly understand what it means to discern what they are “called” to do in life. They do so within the context of choosing a major or a career path in this new day in which most adults go through at least one if not two career changes in their professional life.

What many of them need to hear from their pastors and church members at home is more than, “how is college life?” They need someone to ask them, “how are you hearing God’s voice in your midst?” Far too often, we fall into the easy misperception that the undergraduate years are little more than a hoop to jump through. When we do this, we miss out on the wonderful opportunities during these years to encourage and spiritual development and maturation. Using language of “gift” rather than “privilege” goes a long way in assuring that the conversation will go beneath the surface. Asking your college student about their understanding of call and vocation is a wonderful way to start.

Yes, most will be catching up on their sleep that they forwent during the exam period (and it is not because they were cramming and did not study throughout the semester — most of them did. When you set high expectations for yourself, the work is never done.) But, amidst the busyness of this season with all the responsibilities and opportunities of Advent and Christmas, reaching out to your students is one thing not to miss. This is a big time in their lives. A lot is going on. New things they are learning along with an abundance of new people and new ideas. Take them to lunch or coffee, and ask them about it. The college years won’t last forever, and if you don’t seize the opportunity now, it will be gone before you know it, and you will have missed the chance to engage with them at a critical time in their lives. Now is when and where they are laying claim on the land of who they are and want to be. From my desk in the campus ministry center and my interactions, I can tell you that if you think their time of confirmation was important, multiply that by a factor of 10. The world is opening up to them in new ways — what a difference it can make for them to hear that their church, their pastors, are interested in hearing about it.  I’ll be praying for them while they are on break — and for you, too.

I’d also invite you to keep in your prayers the 1000+ who will be gathering at Montreat for their annual college conference January 2-5. It is a powerful time for conversation, worship, and engagement with students from all over the country. These students are expressing a collective thanks for the freedom of a break where tests and exams are in the rearview mirror and new classes and spring break mission experiences are on the horizon for the spring. AND if you find that they are hungering for something that is missing in their college experience where they have not connected to a campus ministry — get them plugged in. Call or email someone on their campus and help them identify a ministry that will minister to them as they discern how God will use them.

RogersJohn Rogers it the Associate Pastor for Campus Ministry at University Presbyterian Church, Chapel Hill.   As the campus minister John works with a congregation of students that ranges from about 70 – 90 students each year. Students at PCM come by for Thursday night dinner, fellowship, and program, and throughout the week for other activities and worship at UPC. Also John staffs the outreach committees at UPC. He’s husband to Trina and dad to Liza and Cate. Before all of that he coached golf and was a scratch golfer.

Prayer Resources for Visits

In her piece in December 2014, Anna Pinckney Straight mentioned that her pastoral care visits are always accompanied with a piece of card stock now….stacks of prayer cards and psalm cards that contain helpful/comforting/challenging words. “Good for that 2:00 A.M. blood pressure check that leaves them wondering (aka: not sleeping),” she writes. She shares those Prayer cards for pastoral visits with all of us. And a bonus: Hospital Scriptures, booklet. Thanks, Anna!  

Prayers for 2am

Hippo copyIn her piece last week, Anna Pinckney Straight mentioned that her pastoral care visits are always accompanied with a piece of card stock now….stacks of prayer cards and psalm cards that contain helpful/comforting/challenging words. “Good for that 2:00 A.M. blood pressure check that leaves them wondering (aka: not sleeping),” she writes.

Click here for the Prayer cards for pastoral visits.

And here for the Hospital Scriptures, booklet.

 

Thanks, Anna!

What are you going to do about it?

GT_Lockup_alt1

By Andrew Foster Connors

Well, what are you going to do about it? 

The question continues to stop me in my tracks. Honestly, I can’t remember who asked it or what prompted it. It was probably in response to some comment that I, or another church leader, stated on more than one occasion. Something like:

“Presbytery stinks.”

“My congregation likes to talk about living the Gospel but doesn’t want to live it.”

“I’m tired of rearranging the chairs on the decks of a sinking ship.”

As a pastor, I know that people who critique without investing themselves in community for change are some of the most frustrating people in a church. Even so, I had become one of them. So partly out of guilt, I joined NEXT Church several years ago. I felt guilty that I had all kinds of criticism about the atrophied, distrustful, bureaucratic culture of our Presbyterian Church, but truth be told, I wasn’t doing anything to change it.

Guilt led me to get involved in NEXT, but it’s not what keeps me here.

What keeps me here is rediscovering a culture of connection rooted in real relationships.

What keeps me here is lifting up people all across our church who are reinventing possibilities for church today and are already leading us toward the church of tomorrow.

What keeps me here is the hope that I experience when church folk get together and articulate the new things that God is doing in and through the cracks and fissures of the broken body that is the church:

  • The 1600 people who’ve gathered to be inspired at the last four national gatherings and the 2000 more who’ve watched online,
  • The participants in the sixteen regional gatherings across the country,
  • The creative ideas for the practice of ministry shared each month in the online Church Leaders’ Roundtables,
  • The thoughtful, provocative blog posts that engage me in fresh thinking about ministry, and
  • NEXT’s participation in conversations with theologically diverse leaders across our denomination as we seek ways to be Presbyterian together in a time of denominational fracturing.

 

What are you going to do about it? 

I’ve now answered that question in several ways – serving on the NEXT Strategy team, attending regional and national gatherings, and making a personal contribution toward the incredibly lean budget of NEXT. My medium-sized church has answered it with a multi-year financial commitment toward the difficult organizing work that drawing diverse people together around a common vision entails. Complaint gets transformed into action and leads to new life for everybody involved.

But the truth is that to continue to be a midwife to the church that is becoming, we all have to answer that question in concrete ways that are consistent with our particular callings. I’m not naive to think that NEXT Church is the only community of people doing transformative work in the church. I can only testify to how transformative it has been and continues to be for me and for others I’ve listened to who believe that God is at work in the church.

If you share that conviction and that hope, I hope you will help us to spread the word about what NEXT is doing and partner with us to invest in the church that is becoming. You can make a financial gift online or by sending a check to:

Village Presbyterian Church (memo: NEXT Church)

6641 Mission Road

Prairie Village, KS, 66208

 

Together we can do something about it. Thanks.


 

Andrew Foster Connors is the pastor of Brown Memorial Park Avenue Presbyterian Church in Baltimore, MD and the co-chair of the NEXT Church Strategy Team. 

Advent: Worship Planning and Sermon Themes

Starting from scratch this Advent?

  • Mark Davis put together this presentation to help guide worship planners to develop themes for Advent.
    • Here’s a sneak peek of the process
      sneakpeek

Need some theme suggestions that are little more concrete?

  • LeAnn Hodges connected Advent to adaptive leadership for a sermon series:
    • “Living in a Time of Adaptive Challenges”
      • Pay Attention
      • Wilderness (We Can’t Support Ourselves…)
      • Joy in the midst of Uncertainty
      • Let it be with me…
  • Fairfax Presbyterian Church (of Fairfax, VA) presented Advent as an antidote to the exhaustive and escapist behaviors that so often accompany the Holidays:
    • During Advent and Christmas we often turn to exhausting, escapist behavior, however, the season offers us an invitation to wait, to prepare, to hope… At Christmas we remember the birth of Jesus only insofar as it reminds us that he implanted a new vision on our hearts and has promised to return. This promise to return is what we base our hope upon.
      • …ever watching for Christ to break in
        • Bonhoeffer said it is easy to look around and to see the ruins to which Christ must come again. Given a season of holidays in which the lonely are lonelier and the broken have wounds open again, we are tempted to ignore the season completely or to turn to exhausting, escapist behavior…to escape the depression of unfulfilled watching. Advent challenges us to keep watching and keep hoping because Jesus coming again is not a fantasy but a reality ever-available to our imaginations as we live in the already and not-yet.
      • Opening ourselves to the transforming moments of conversion
        • Turn around. Repent. Perceive a new way. These are the invitations of the second week of Advent. We need to be converted over and over again in our lives because we keep losing the vision of God’s kingdom and determination to live toward it. “Conversions proceed layer by layer, relationship by relationship, a little here and a little there, until the whole personality is re-created by God.
      • Letting Go
        • We are in the last week of pregnancy in the Advent season. Our desire and anticipation are at a high. The time for Christ is come feels urgent to us in our watching. But, as with all new parents, we have no idea how drastically this new life will change us. We have not concept of how little control we actually have in the human journey. If we did, we might not be as eager. But the journey of the pregnancy has given us new eyes to see, a new practice of conversion. Perhaps we are ready. The invitation of this week is to let go of control, to learn not to do all the things we think we must do to save ourselves (like the illustration of floating), but to trust that God is still coming to create, redeem and sustain our living.

No time? Here are some liturgies that are ready to go:

How about adding some music?

  • To accompany candle lighting, some congregations write a song based on the year’s theme; others add new verses to familiar seasonal songs. If the muse has abandoned your resident aspiring songwriter, try these hymns from the Glory to God hymnal:
    • #467: “Give Us Light”
    • #103: “Come Now, Prince of Peace”
    • #85: “Light One Candle to Watch for the Messiah”
  • If you are trying to looking to get away from the Christmas favorite that over-saturate the airways between October and New Year’s, incorporating jazz standards to express the moods of Advent can be an unexpected variation of your theme.
  • For alternative arrangements to carols, check out the You Call that Church Music? archives.
  • If you are struggling with arguments for and against singing Christmas Carols during Advent (“But the children will never learn these songs if we don’t take time to teach them!” and many others), check out this NEXT Blog post by MaryAnn McKibben Dana that works through some excellent points.