Lessons from hospice for pastoral ministry – Transcript

Jim Latimer
Welcome to Coaching for Interims. We are about empowerment for interim ministers: best practices and quick help from interims for interims – wisdom from the field. I am your host, Reverend Jim Latimer, and today I have the pleasure of having having with me – with us – Reverend Quentin Chin. Quentin is a long-experienced interim with part-time interims, full-time interims, and also settled pastorates. He’s also got a lot of experience as a hospice chaplain. I invited him to put those two together for us. So, Quentin, what would you like to offer here?

Quentin Chin
Well, thanks for having me, Jim. Yeah, so a little background. Actually, a little correction: I’ve not done settled ministry, oddly enough. And that’s okay. I’ve done many, many interims. And basically most of the churches I’ve served have been in decline in some form or fashion. And it’s difficult for our congregations to come to grips with this. So that’s one part of this. And then the other one is that I’ve been doing part-time hospice chaplaincy for the last 10 years. And one of the things I’ve come to see in the last couple of years is this intersection with hospice chaplaincy and pastoral ministry.
Now, I know that for some of our colleagues, they’ll say, “I don’t want my ministry to be a hospice ministry!” thinking, you know, “My church is coming to an end. I don’t want it to die,” and all this. And it’s like, okay, but the reality is that the average life lifespan of congregations is about 70 to 100 years. I’ve been saying the last couple of years that every local congregation will soon die. And if we really think about this, soberly…. Look, if there’s a congregation or congregations, that should still be around historically, they would be the ones founded by Paul. Right? But they’re not here. So why do we think we live forever? And this is hospice.

So for those who are not familiar with hospice, the way it works is that you come onto hospice services when a medical director – your doctor and the medical director – agree that based on the trajectory of your illness, your disease, you have six months or less to live. That doesn’t mean that you will live less than six months. It doesn’t mean that you live more than six months. It’s just that is arbitrarily when hospice benefits and all can kick in. So in my work with hospice patients, what we try to do is help hospice patients live the best they can, for what they’ve got right now. Right? So what is it today that matters for you? What is it that gives meaning for your life? Sure, there was the stuff you used to do, but you can’t do that anymore. And let’s not get so fixated on, “Oh, my gosh, my end is coming!” No, we can deal with right now.

And I see this for our congregations too. For our congregations in decline, let’s be honest: we’re not going to do what we did 20 years ago, right? We don’t have the number of people. Certainly the people who were there 20 years ago are now 20 years older and are not able to do what they used to do 20 years ago. I can tell you that for sure myself. But that’s okay. That’s really okay. What can you do now? I want to say to the congregations, “How can you be the best congregation you can be?”

Jim Latimer
Right now, right now….

Quentin Chin
Yes – given what you can do right now. And I think that becomes an important piece to hold on to, because in your decline it’s not like you will be dead tomorrow. You can still do things. And I don’t know what that’s going to be, because it’s going to be a function of the size of your congregation, the average age of your congregation, and the financial resources you bring to your work. We should not sit and lament and say, “It’s all over,” as we look in our decline that we can’t do X, Y, Z, because we’re so few in numbers. Well maybe you did X, Y, Z 15 years ago, and yeah, you can’t do it now. But you can certainly do maybe A, B, C.

Jim Latimer
So what I’m hearing you saying – and this is really rich and profound – is that, offline, I heard you quote, Heidegger, “We will live fuller lives when we come to grips with our death.” Right? You had quoted Martin Heidegger. So there’s a certain focusedness when we recognize, “Yes, we are mortal. Our end will come.” Ends come for all beings, all organizations. That’s how life is. And when we accept that, there’s an urgency and a focusedness that can bring an entire vitality and life that had been dormant. Right?

Quentin Chin
Yes! If we think about it, what makes something valuable? It’s that it is finite. If it were infinite, it would have no value at all. And so what makes our life valuable in our congregations is when we come to understand that this congregation – this congregation I am in right now – may not be here a generation from now. But that doesn’t mean that I throw in the towel and give everything up. There are things we can do. Again, it may not be what you did 15 or 20 years ago, but there are things we can do. Maybe it would be, we’re going to just take care of each other really well. Imagine coming into a church that really takes its own congregational care seriously. Beyond just, “I will pray for you.” But, you know, Mr. Jones has dementia, and Mrs. Jones is pulling her hair out, because she has to take care of her husband around the clock and it’s so tiring. And so what if some members or volunteers in the congregation, said, “Mrs. Jones, go have lunch. A couple of us are taking you to lunch, and a couple of us will stay with your husband. So you can get out of the house. That’s doesn’t take a lot. But how “Wow!” is that?

Jim Latimer
That’s beautiful. As I’ve heard you say several times here, “Just be the best church you can be right now.” You can honor the past, but don’t live in the past. Actually, you can’t live in the past! You can’t live in the future! Actually, you can only live now. So live now, with what you’ve got now, with your capacities now. And when you commit to doing that, I’m hearing you say, there are all kinds of opportunities that we begin to see that are right in front of us, that we didn’t see if we were thinking about the past, or about what’s going to happen to us in the future, blah, blah, blah. Well, the fact is, nobody really knows. Why worry about it now? So as we wrap this up, is there anything else here? I mean, this is pretty good, right here….

Quentin Chin
I think the one key piece I would say is, even in our decline, it’s not over. We just have to keep that in mind. And you’re right, Jim, don’t live in the past, and you can’t recover that past, either. But we can certainly do well now. I think about the hospice patients I’ve worked with and, you know, dying is a big thing. I say it in a jocular manner. Dying is probably the biggest thing we’re gonna do. Right? It doesn’t get much bigger than that. And what we want to do in hospice is to help people die well. So if they have a really good relationship with family, they’ll want to be surrounded by family. They may not be able to take the grandkids to Disney World, or something like that, but as they’re dying they can be with their grandkids and maybe tell them stories about what it was like when they were their age.

Jim Latimer
Yes. And do it in such a way that you’re living in the right now. And you’re honoring those relationships. Right now. That’s great.

Quentin Chin
And so for the church, it’s like, what can you do for your community – right now – that can make people realize that you matter as the church in this town?

Jim Latimer
That’s a perfect ending! What can you do as a church right now that can help people in the town recognize that you matter for us now? Perfect ending. Quentin, thank you so much. Lots of pearls were tumbling out there. That was great. I was having trouble catching them all. But luckily, we’ve got it on recording!

Quentin Chin
I’m really grateful for that. Thank you.

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