At this years commissioning ceremony in May for new lay ministers (which includes readers, parish evangelists and pastoral assistants) the Dean, the very Reverend Charles Taylor, referred to the day's reading from Numbers 11, 14-17, 24-25.  He acknowledged that prior to the time of the writing, the Israelites, having been led by Moses out of Egypt, were not enjoying their time in the wilderness and in fact they were pretty miffed with him because he seemed to them to be spending far too much time either up a mountain or in the tent of meeting talking to God and not spending enough time dancing attendance on them and meeting their needs.  Moses could not be expected to do everything for everyone all the time so to that end the Lord took some of the spirit that was on Moses and put it to rest 70 elders that had been called out.  At this point, the Dean suggested that that has been cited as ‘the triumph of the ecclesiastical institution over the power of the spirit’ – think about it.  Had all God’s people been prophets like Moses himself, that wouldn’t have solved his problem.  Instead, the spirit was not given to the 70 to do the work of charismatic prophet or priest but to get on with the job of enabling and releasing God’s people to be a servant community to practically assist Moses in the practical business of caring for the people and releasing Moses for his ministry of leadership based on walking and talking with God.  That is where pastoral assistants come in.   

Pastoral Assistants are men and women who are called to share the ministry of caring for the people of God by supporting and enabling the pastoral ministry of the Church.  All Christians are called to serve but PA’s develop their pastoral gifts through 2 years of training.  The first year we shared with those training for other ministries (readers, parish evangelists etc).  The aim of this year is to help you to see how the bible and the teachings and traditions of the Church will help you in your future ministry.  The second year builds on the first year helping us to apply practically the skills we have been talking about in the first year.  We talked about such things as listening skills, baptism, marriage and bereavement, divorce and remarriage, issues involving children, addiction, homosexuality and alcohol abuse and much more. So ‘What is a Pastoral Assistant?  There is no firm job description and the list of things that a PA can be involved with is very long but can include taking Holy Communion to the sick and housebound, bereavement support, visiting newcomers, providing a ‘listening ear, working with prayer groups, enabling and supporting others in pastoral ministry, prison visiting, organising lifts to church, crisis support and befriending, baptism, confirmation and marriage preparation and co-ordinating parish policies.  

St Peter’s is very well served by all it’s ministries and the job of a PA is to support and enable these ministries according to the needs of the parish and it’s incumbent so with this letter may I invite any suggestions that may help make this role grow.  

I will finish with this prayer which I feel is particularly suited to PAs

Lord, make us true servants to all those who need,

Filled with compassion in thought, word and deed,

Loving our neighbour whatever the cost,

Feeding the hungry and finding the lost.

Lord, make us healers of body and mind,

Give us Your power to bring sight to the blind,

Love to the loveless and gladness for pain,

Filling all hearts with the joy of Your name.

Erica Grubb
July 2008