Afterward, and Caring for Yourself

The same day

• Write down what you promised and when. Then do it.
• Tell only the people the family said you could tell.
• Pass on the practical needs: meals, rides, childcare, a visit from their small group.
• If anything in Resource 5 came up, make the call today. Do not sleep on it.

What the church does next

"People celebrate with you when life is good, and they show up when life falls apart."

"They would hear about the scandals, but not the hospital room where church members stayed long after visiting hours because they refused to let a family suffer alone."

The pastor's visit is one hour. The church's care is the weeks after it. Decide ahead of time:

• Who organizes meals, and for how long.
• Who the family's one point of contact is, so ten people are not texting them the same question.
• Whether their small group takes the lead on care.
• How a financial need gets handled, and who decides.

The year after

Most support stops about two weeks after a funeral. Grief does not. Keep following up for one year.

• Put follow-up dates on your calendar the day of the loss: one week, one month, three months, six months, one year.
• Remember the hard days: the birthday, the anniversary, the first holidays.
• A text that says "I'm thinking of you today" is enough. It does not need a reply.
• Say the name of the person who died. Families are afraid everyone else has forgotten.
• Decide ahead of time who makes these contacts when it is not you.

When they come back to church

"Someone may walk through these doors carrying grief."

"Someone may simply need another believer to notice them."

"We don't know every story in the room, but God does."

Tell your greeters and leaders, with the family's permission, so someone is looking for them on the first Sunday back.

Caring for yourself

"You're trying to pour into others without first letting God pour into you."

"Take a pause, slow down, journal, and cry out to God."

You walked into that room as a pastor. You walked out as a person who just saw something hard. Both are true.

• After a hard visit, do not go straight to the next thing. Sit in the car for five minutes. Pray. Breathe.
• Tell one trusted person that it was a hard day. You can do that without sharing anything private.
• Decide ahead of time who that person is. A pastor friend, a mentor, an elder.
• Let yourself grieve. You lose people too.
• Keep your day off the week after a death or a crisis. Move it if you have to. Do not skip it.
• Read Mark 6:30-32 (opens the passage on Bible.com) and 1 Kings 19:3-8 (opens the passage on Bible.com). Rest and food came before the next assignment.
• If you are not sleeping, you dread your phone, or you feel nothing in rooms where you used to feel a lot, talk to a counselor or your doctor. That is not weakness. That is what you would tell anyone in your church.

You are not the only one

"Someone will bring a meal to a family that's overwhelmed. Someone will sit quietly beside a hospital bed. Someone will pray with a friend who's ready to give up. Someone will invite a neighbor to church. Someone will share the hope of Jesus. That's the Church."

Train others to do this with you. Take a leader along on the next ordinary hospital visit and talk it through in the car afterward. A church where only the pastor visits will wear out its pastor.