Communities
of Praxis

• Groups meet monthly for 6-month seasons. After each 6-month season the group will determine together whether or not to continue for another season.

• Groups meet virtually for 90 minutes each month.

• 6-8 participants per group

• Cost: $30/month (6-month commitment).

  Note: Pastoral Care Groups + SLOW Communities are not professional counseling and are not intended to replace professional counseling services. Pastoral Care Groups + SLOW Communities are peer groups facilitated by a professional guide for the purpose of forming and deepening relationship among shared-space leaders for support, encouragement, and wellbeing.

• Does the facilitator report to anyone’s church or denominational leadership?

  1. Pastoral Care Groups + SLOW Communities are facilitated independently from any church or denomination and are under no obligation to report on anything that is communicated or expressed in the groups. These groups are intended to be safe, confidential spaces to process, not places to look for flaws or problems that need to be reacted to.

  2. Pastoral Care Groups + SLOW Communities were created and are overseen by BrianJames McMahon, a licensed marriage and family therapist in Kansas City (www.brianjamestherapy.com) alongside the Church Well Collective, a community of independent helping professionals. BrianJames works with church and denominational leadership to support and care for pastors. If and when a crisis were to arise that needs a higher level of care, resourcing, or involvement, BrianJames and the group guide will work directly with the PCG + SC participant to identify and access the appropriate next level of care.

• What are we allowed to talk about in the Pastoral Care Groups + SLOW Communities?

  1. Everything. While many of the conversations in Pastoral Care Groups + SLOW Communities orient around the pain that comes with ministry leadership, we also recognize that this pain is rarely completely disconnected from the experiences we have in the rest of our lives. Additionally, our experiences in pastoral leadership can often take a toll on our marriages, parenting, friendships, and other life circumstances. As a result, all of these spaces in our lives are welcome to be shared during Pastoral Care Groups + SLOW Communities, to the level that you are comfortable.

• Are Pastoral Care Groups + SLOW Communities ongoing, or seasonal?

  1. Pastoral Care Groups + SLOW Communities are most helpful when engaged in an ongoing manner. The value of these spaces and the relationships that develop through them increases exponentially over time. However, long-term commitments can be overwhelming or unsustainable. Because of this, an initial 6-month commitment is requested. We hope you will find it useful and supportive enough to continue with the group.

• What happens if I am unable to make one or multiple of the group meetings that I have committed to?

  1. Because Pastoral Care Groups + SLOW Communities are relationally focused and require safety and trust between the participants as well as the facilitator, we request that you miss no more than one (1) meeting per interval. If that is not feasible for you due to your schedule, it is recommended that you wait to join a group until you are able to fully engage.

• Who leads Pastoral Care Groups + SLOW Communities? Each group is led by a guide from the Church Well Collective. There are two primary reasons that each group is led by a guide that distinguish Pastoral Care Groups + SLOW Communities from peer-support groups:

  1. Pastors and leaders are typically the “holder of space” for the congregation, leadership team, and those they serve. Being the person responsible for the well-being of the group changes the experience the community member is able to have. Because of that we create space where each community member can simply show up and not have to be in charge of the group and group dynamics.

  2. The goal of Pastoral Care Groups + SLOW Communities is not the fixing of problem, deepening our theological understanding, or providing guidance (not that those will not be outcomes, but they are not explicitly the point). The intent of Pastoral Care Groups + SLOW Communities is to create space for the processing of pain (which we have found to have profound impact on our capacity to sustain over time in ministry). Because of that, we have found the benefit of utilizing trained facilitators to hold this particular space in the way that is most conducive to this work.

Each Pastoral Care Groups + SLOW Community meeting orients around Church Well Co’s 4 practices of bravery:

• Survey

• Lament

• Own

• Welcome

While celebration and encouragement are certainly welcome in the space of Pastoral Care Groups + SLOW Communities. PCGs/SCs are specifically designed to create and hold space for the elements of ministry and life that often do not have the opportunity to shared and acknowledged with others elsewhere.

• Survey allows us to find ourselves in our own story and acknowledge that place.
  

• Lament opens space for hope in ways that unspoken pain cannot hold. We lament and grieve the weight that is carried, the wounds that have been picked up along the way, and the loss we have encountered.
  

• Ownership is a healing balm for our souls, given to us by God.
  

• Welcome invites a sacred healing in moments when our pain, our failures, our struggles are seen by both God and others, and we are not rejected or less than because of them.

These practices give space for pain to not only be painful, but to become useful and even transformative. We reflect on our experiences, what the Spirit is teaching us and inviting us into, and invite (as appropriate) others’ experiences and perspectives into that space.

And we do this together as the apostle Paul directed the Church in Galatia, “bear[ing] one another’s burdens, and so fulfill[ing] the law of Christ.”

Pastoral Care Groups + SLOW Communities are oriented around two primary and specific passages of Scripture:

• Galatians 6:2, “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.” (ESV)

• James 5:16, “confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed.” (ESV)

Pastors, ministry leaders, and Christian helping professionals are frequently bearing the burdens of those they serve and listening to the pain of their people in a way that allows healing to be experienced, but often are not able to receive of the experience of having their burdens carried by others, or of having safe places to talk about difficulties and their own suffering in a way that allows for their own healing.

Pastoral Care Groups + SLOW Communities are developed to be a place to carry one another’s burdens, and provide space for healing from the pain that we pick up along the way (due to both our own choices and the choices of others).

What pastors, ministry leaders, and helping professionals do is not normal (and for good reason!). Choosing every day to enter into the messiness of the lives of others while carrying the responsibility of calling and leadership is costly. The weight of ministry takes a serious toll on relationships, and on mental and spiritual health.

Over the prior decade in pastoral ministry, church planting, and therapy, BrianJames McMahon experienced and watched others experience the toll that ministry takes on the best of us. He watched far too many pastors and Christian leaders burn out and leave ministry, or suffer alone under the burden of leadership, experiencing far less than the fullness of life that Jesus has for them. He saw and experienced that while many pastors have access to leadership development opportunities and growth, many lack access to space to process the harder elements of ministry – places of disappointment, failure, frustration, pain, and the impact on personal life that ministry can have. In particular, it is almost impossible to find space to process these things that is not directly connected to our place of ministry or those who oversee them.

The first Pastoral Care Groups (PCGs) that Church Well Co provided were formed in 2020 by BrianJames McMahon, licensed marriage and family therapist and pastor. It is through the intersection of what he learned as a therpist and what he experienced as a pastor that Pastoral Care Groups were begun. While Pastoral Care Groups + SLOW Communities are not therapy, there are many components from what BrianJames has learned as a therapist that are incorporated into the way the groups are facilitated.

The wellbeing of pastors matters.
It matters to Church Well Co, to BrianJames, to all of our guides.
And it matters deeply to Jesus.

Dear pastors and leaders,

You matter.
Your calling matters. Your community matters. The work you do matters. And you matter as a human. Your marriage, your family, your relationships, your own soul. It all matters.

Because you matter.

History has demonstrated that pastors who sustain, who lead and finish well, are pastors who are supported. Just as I believe we are never meant to follow Jesus alone, I believe pastors are never meant to pastor alone. However, finding people who can truly understand, care for, and support pastors is frequently a challenging task.

Pastoral ministry can be profoundly challenging, exciting, transformative, and painful. Moments of success, delight, and life are often entangled repeatedly with moments of frustration, failure as leaders, and the inevitable letdown that results from taking on the responsibility to lead communities filled with imperfect people.

The constant tug-and-pull of leading organizations and communities while also caring for the individuals within them takes a toll on the best of pastors. There is a weariness that comes with the weight of responsibility found in pastoring. Isolation and loneliness often develop along the way, even by the most relationally-oriented pastors. Too often, pastors “gut it out” until they burn out, not always because they are determined too, but because it can be difficult for pastors to find spaces in which they are able to be cared for.

You do not need to pastor and lead alone. Please consider joining one of Church Well Co’s Pastoral Care Groups + SLOW Communities and dive bravely into relationship with others who chosen the difficult path of leading and pastoring in the way of Jesus.

Peace,

BrianJames McMahon
Founder of Church Well Co