Lay Pastors Ministry (LPM)
This is the system of congregational care by lay people. This concept is in the Melvin’s PACE Training Manual. At introduction part, it says like that.
It means this is not the program but kind of a system. What is that mean? Once we say system, we may recall a few things, but easily we might think computer system. When we talk about computer, we know how it works. Once we push the start button, our computer is on. That is the SYSTEM. This ministry is just like that. What and who does, and when and how it works. Church ministry should be like that.
Pastor alone, laypeople alone could not do that. If we look at Bible it says that we are one body, one church, also one God which means the leader has to think how his act, his talk will be effective to the lay people. If they have caring heart, it goes to them directly; if they don’t have the mindset, then laypeople know that. Lay people also need to know their church is the system, which their act will be effective to their peers directly. So the Bible says each one is the part of whole body; hands, eyes, so on. As we see computer, every single part of our body, that is, every single of our members are connected directly and indirectly. That’s why Professor Paul Stevens stressed that to see the Pastor as a system leader. In his book, The Equipping Pastor, he explained more in detail. Lay Pastors Ministry is also the brand of this ministry.
First they, LPMI USA, put the name in the beginning, ‘Lay Pastoral Care Ministry’ which means this ministry is done by lay people and it is on the pastoral care, but later on they changed the name to Lay Pastors Ministry (called LPM), which means Lay Pastors are doing this Ministry, its core ministry is PACE; Prayer, Available, Contact, and Example. They focused on the person Lay Pastors.
PACE
PACE is the Ministry Description of a Lay Pastor. When a lay person joins the Lay Pastors Ministry in a local church, he/she makes a commitment to PACE. P=Prayer A=Availability C=Contact E=Example.
Dr. Melvin J. Steinbron introduced the Lay Pastors Ministry to College Hill Presbyterian Church in Cincinnati in 1978. It has since expanded to churches of many denominations across the United States and around the world. The four elements in the acrostic PACE became the basis for what a Lay Pastor would have to do to adequately care for the families in his/her flock.
If you read Dr. Steinbron’s book, Can The Pastor Do It Alone?, you will find a fully outlined Equipping Seminar for Lay Pastors. PACE is an essential part of that Seminar.
PACE Training Manual (by Dr. Melvin)
1. CONCEPT AND THEOLOGY
2. WHO NEEDS IT?
3. COMMITMENTS
4. THE CAL
5. BUILDING A RELATIONSHIP
6. ABOUT LISTENING
7. “BEING” PRECEDES “DOING”
8. KEEPING SPIRITUALITY FIT
9. ANATOMY OF A VISIT
10. BEING PROFESSIONAL
11. CONFIDENTIALITY
12. DIFFICULTIES INTO POSSIBILITIES
PACE Training Manual
Supporting Paper
Answering Paper
PACE Effects
Just like Butterfly effects, Domino effects…so PACE is as well. There are many bad effects in the word. One terrible behavior make the word up side down.
Care for others are effects. Caring is the abstract, it doesn’t see clearly to our eyes, but people feel it just like air. For instance, you know the word, “consideration”, in other word “thoughtfulness” at job place, to personal relationships, so on..couldn’t see but feel it. That’s is very trivial things but it effects to people’s daily life and sometimes it’s memories goes very long, in longevity. That’s PACE. Just like bad and terrible things effects to the many people, caring with consideration and thoughtfulness are also effects to the people.
Mostly great things take place from very small things. Every great effects happens from small place, one person’s idea, from insights, dream, even from behaviors. Lets say Mother Teresa. She started with merciful mind seeing the dying people in the street. Small beginnings. Small consideration..but its effect was enormous.
It’s depend on how we see people. Shouldn’t try to change them, as we know it we are going to change them but they become more protected attitudes, then it makes their habits and later it might be their bad life’s philosophy. As good as small consideration effects good to their life journey, small bad effects goes far longer their memories.
PACE-ing is surely giving effects. Even never tried it intentionally but it comes out from ourselves naturally. That’s it. So we need to sharpen our inner being endlessly.
PACE is Core value
Core value is important to any ministries. It’s kind of spiritual center of it and people to whom those are committed in that ministry.
I remember the books “Built to Last” or Good to Great, Jim Collins says, if we want to do lasting the ministry, we need both Core Value and Stimulate Progress which he, , got diagram of Yin-Yang, Chinese philosophy.
Yes, we have to keep on going but..it should be based on Value…eg., core value.
Core Value of Lay Pastors Ministry is P.A.C.E which is no question of it. It calls ministry description as known to us from Dr.Melvin. But it’s also core value of the ministry.
Core value is not changeable. Others are changeable.
It keeps us to stay in the right track.
It keeps us to getting more deeper.
It keeps us to use it with our bone and flesh.
It keeps us to think of the ministry continually.
It keeps us to go keep on going because we are confidence on this truth.
PACE is NOT from learning
but what is practiced and accumulation! Once we get feedback on P.AC.E. ministry from pastors of LPM Network churches, a couple of them were saying “PACE is the just Life Style.”
How can we become some model of life style?: from leading? Yes, In the beginning stage we need to learn, the basic meaning and concept of it, but soon we are learning from our own experiences.
Through the trial & error, e.g., field experiences, we taste P.A.C.E slowly, so we become experts of it slowly, we might call them practitioner. (Rev. Sangbok Kim, the formal pastor of Hallelujah Church, said “Lay Pastors are specialists on this ministry”). We are learning shorter, but its practice longer (it takes 8-10 hours to complete the coursework/equipping seminar, but takes many years to practice).
Through our practice we realize more depth of its concept: Prayer. Available. Concept. Example. We are becoming more and more quality person, integrated person, because those four ministry (P.A.C.E) makes us to that kind of person naturally and also automatically.
Eventually, it becomes the philosophy of our own life, more accumulating with those qualifications, and in the end we might be the fullness of the image of Christ.
So, practice of it please!
I have studied, taught, and practiced PACE many years, even though not enough yet, but it made me where and what I am now.
CPE & PACE
Clinical pastoral education (CPE) is education to teach pastoral care to clergy and others. CPE is the primary method of training hospital and hospice chaplains in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. CPE is both a multicultural and interfaith experience that uses real-life ministry encounters of students to improve the ministry and pastoral care provided by caregivers.
When I was at M.Div student in Canada, he took two units of Clinical Pastoral Education (called C.P.E). One was Oxford Regional Center (ORC, Wookstock), another was Whitby Psychiatric Hospital (WPH, Whitby). He has learned a lot from those Training.
When we talk together each other, both the vice chancellor Pastor Ogillah and I, CPE and PACE has wonderful strength by itself, but when we get together, we are sure that more synergy will be made.
(by Dr. Byeong, President)