There is a wonderfully frustrating insecurity that is woven into the fabric of pastoral theology and pastoral care.[1] I hear it in the tentative comments of newer chaplains who struggle to describe what they do. I hear it in the attempts to define what makes the practices of pastoral care distinct from those of other recognized disciplines. I see it in the uneasiness of ministers who are unsure where their role and authority fit in everyday life.[2] Sadly, I observe it in the territorial mindsets that can arise within chaplaincy. I occasionally see insecurity under the surface of questions around ministerial calling, personal narrative, and approaches to pastoral care. In these concerns, we lift a common refrain: “Do I have a place? Where is it?” Finally, I know it well from my own experience. 

These struggles unfold commonly within chaplaincy, but the experience is shared by church ministers as well (I remember feeling it when I was preaching). Frustration and insecurity are difficult vocational experiences. However, I believe invaluable growth can result from embracing insecurity. This article is about embracing the wonderfully frustrating place that pastoral care occupies. My hope is that the act of embracing this aspect of vocational identity will uncover paths to deeper ministry and mission. A secondary goal is that this hopeful model will encourage ministers in their vocations as well.    

Robert C. Dykstra wisely explains that all of us must start afresh in this endeavor of entering pastoral care and pastoral theology.[3] There is no short-circuiting the process and no allowing others to do the work for us. We each take up the mantle of discipleship generally and our vocational calling specifically. We each wrestle with the details of our location in the landscape. To resolve these questions, we may plumb the depths of scripture or turn to the insights of the social sciences, but inevitably we must face our own life story as well. Our story interacts with scripture and our church heritage, among other sources, and out of this conversation develops deeper awareness and practice. However, this process is almost never neat and linear, and we can immediately sense the possibility of unexpected turns and roadblocks. Pastoral growth and identity are hard earned; every path looks a little different. Even after this investment, we can still sense a lingering feeling that we exist at the boundaries. Have you experienced this? I believe this insecurity is where the opportunity lies. 

Many of us have walked through the refinery of insecurity and uneasiness in the service to our calling. One response is to search for a definitive resting place among other forms of ministry, professions, or theological disciplines. However, perhaps not quite fitting is precisely where pastoral care fits. Many of us in pastoral care are drawn to people who are hurting and are called to serve from an acceptance of our own painful experiences. We are drawn to the margins of experience, and we occupy secondary roles. In hospitals, it is the doctors who take the center stage, not the minister. In clinical settings, we offer our contributions from a position of “alongside-ness.” Our practice often does not occur at the center of church life, either. Instead, it is offered in people’s homes, around tables, in the common areas of a living facility, by hospital beds, in the halls of an emergency department, in interdisciplinary meetings, in informal conversations, and more.[4] We serve on the terms of others and often outside the walls of church gatherings. Put simply, we learn to follow God to places often occupied by uneasy vocational marginality. 

I believe the experiences of pastoral care, pastoral theologians, and chaplains are shared by those in other forms of ministry. Frustration and insecurity are relatable experiences for all of us who answer a ministerial call. In some ways, we find ourselves living with unsettled boundaries, in the “in-between,” and our begrudged non-places end up being the places we belong. My simple point is this: there are unique and wonderful opportunities that come from these vocational insecurities. As we learn to embrace our uneasiness and displacement, we become deeply aware of the pain of others, and we discover paths to richer forms of ministry and connection. 

Fortunately for us, there are many others who exist in these marginal non-places! However, this journey is never easy or clean-cut, so I would like to offer two questions for further reflection and conversation: 

1. What is your reaction to the paradox of “confident insecurities”?  

2. What might embracing vocational insecurity mean in your ministry?    

[1] See the following for a fuller discussion of the topic in this paragraph: Robert C. Dykstra, Images of Pastoral Care: Classic Readings (St. Louis, MO: Chalice Press, 2005).
[2] Andrew Root, The Pastor in a Secular Age: Ministry to People Who No Longer Need a God (Baker Academic, 2019), provides more on the uneasiness experienced by ministers.
[3] Dykstra, Images of Pastoral Care, 5. 
[4] Healthcare chaplaincy is my default reference, but I am also trying to write broadly. I acknowledge that pastoral care can and should organically arise within a faith community.