How to Make a Pastoral Check-in (and What to Write Down After)

By Jacob Gerber — a pastor and the founder of Shepherding Tools.

An up-front summary of this article:

• Perfect can be the enemy of the good in pastoral care. A quick check-in call is better than procrastinating the "perfect" visit.
• Check-in calls are especially effective to triage which people most need a full pastoral visit.
• "How can I pray for you?" can transition an ordinary conversation into a pastoral conversation.
• A pastoral check-in is not complete until good notes are written down and shared with the appropriate people.

And here is the longer version:

How do you do a pastoral check-in call?

I think we sometimes make pastoral check-ins too complicated. When I was in seminary, I read Richard Baxter's The Reformed Pastor, and his detailed system of regular home visits and detailed, catechetical examinations of each member of the family is still the gold standard for pastoral care. But, Baxter's exact methods don't easily translate into the challenges and opportunities of the modern world. More, if Baxter's standard looms as the only model for pastoral care, then we will make the perfect into the enemy of the good.

When I check in with people, I try to keep a simple focus by reaching out to people with the specific goal of asking how I can pray for them. A conversation might start in any number of ways and range through any number of subjects. Small-talk is a great way to get into pastoral subjects, but there has to be a transition somewhere.

In my experience, the simple question, "How can I pray for you?" does a lot of heavy lifting to move the conversation toward spiritual matters. Without it, I think a lot of pastors (especially me!) might have had extended conversations with people, but never realize that they haven't actually discussed anything of spiritual significance.

Indeed, I have had a number of conversations where I was shocked at what someone told me when I asked that simple question. The preliminary small talk gave no impression at all that someone was carrying a significant burden. Yet, when I asked about what I could pray for, a heavy burden came tumbling off his shoulders into the middle of our conversation.

It seems to me that many people have things they want to share with a pastor or elder, but that they almost need to be encouraged or prompted to share those things. There may be other, better questions that can also give permission to people to share those things, but "How can I pray for you?" is a simple, effective question that seems to cut through surface-level conversations to get to the things that people are struggling with in their lives.

When should pastors schedule a longer visit with people?

When a pastoral check-in turns up something genuinely significant, I ask to schedule a longer pastoral visit or a pastoral counseling session. Whether this is in their home, in my office, over lunch or coffee, or on a planned, extended phone call, it's often helpful to set a specific time and place to unpack the deeper questions that their disclosure has raised. I want to set aside some time to pray more about the issue, especially as the issues become more significant.

During that visit, I'm doing more than checking in. Instead, I want to be prepared to work through the wider implications of what they have disclosed—and what I have been praying about. In those conversations, listen carefully. Take them to the Scriptures. Love them well throughout.

What should you write down after a pastoral visit?

After a call or a visit, it is imperative that we write down in our notes any burdens people share with us. The primary reason for writing down these pastoral notes is that it is simply too easy for us to forget what someone else shares. Then, if someone tells me about an important appointment coming up in a few weeks, but that day comes and goes as though the conversation never happened, I will burn significant trust with that individual. I may not remember that conversation, but, in my experience, they almost always do.

Here's an example where I learned this principle the hard way. In the aftermath of a very young man's death, one of our elders told the family that we would make some specific arrangements for all the transitional things they needed to do in the coming days. I didn't write those promises down, and, in the grief of the moment, they vanished from my mind before I had left the hospital waiting room. Then, when the time came for them to need what we had promised, they asked, and I had nothing prepared for them.

The fact that I was dealing with my own grief in that moment didn't make them sympathetic to my error. Rather, their grief made my failure all the more painful to them in the midst of everything they were dealing with. The lesson was forever etched on my heart from my shame in that moment: you cannot trust your memory with people's grief or anything else of significance.

How do pastoral records help the whole session?

Writing these things down takes discipline, of course. But if you have ever sat with someone for an extended period of time in the hospital, you'll notice that every single person who walks into the room checks the patient's chart before doing anything. In the chart (formerly a physical chart hanging off the foot of the bed, but now digitized), doctors and nurses see diagnoses, surgical histories, allergies, times when medications were given, x-rays, etc.

In these contacts, because of the significance of what is on the line, every health care professional makes care decisions based on the record of what has already happened. In turn, all of them are disciplined to write down their own actions for the benefit of the next medical professional who will come into the room.

Shouldn't we be similarly disciplined as we seek to be soul physicians?

Thinking about how a whole hospital works to care for a patient provides a helpful analogy for how a whole session can coordinate communication if each elder is taking good, written notes about pastoral contacts that he has made. I will write about that more in the next article about sharing the pastoral record.

What should you write down after a pastoral counseling session?

We pastors simply have so many conversations in a week that it's hard to keep in our minds all of the details people share with us. This is especially true in counseling conversations. When I think back to counseling sessions with people, I can remember a lot of the details of the conversation, but not everything. So, I make it a practice of writing down significant disclosures, helpful concepts or insights, homework that I assign, and whether there was a clear plan for where to start in the next session. It is so helpful to review those notes before the next session starts rather than trying to remember in the meeting itself.

FAQ

How often should elders visit or contact the members of their district?

In our church, elders and deacons aim to contact their districts quarterly at minimum, but many try to stay in monthly or every-other-month contact with the households in their district. That will vary based on the size of the church and the number of elders.

How do you shift a conversation away from small-talk and toward spiritual matters?

There may be a number of ways to shift the conversation, but one of the simplest I have discovered is the question, "How can I pray for you?" It allows someone to shift gears to talk about what is really important, rather than sports, politics, or the weather. Sometimes people are burdened to share important things but need a nudge, and that question can be a helpful nudge.

How can my notes about pastoral visits help others on the session?

In any number of ways. The information you write down can help the next man to follow up with needs that may arise. Or, you may flag issues that the Session as a whole needs to know about in order to shepherd well. Be careful, though, about conversations where details should stay private, such as a pastoral counseling session.

I use Shepherding Tracker every day in my own pastoral ministry to keep track of the pastoral check-ins, phone calls, and visits I make. You can test out a free demo of the software today (demo credentials at bottom of the login page) or learn more about pricing (free forever for up to five users).