Starting a Care Ministry
- The Church Cares
- Jun 29
- 4 min read
How One Retired Teacher Helped Her Church Take the First Step
by Jennifer Ripley, Ph.D., Co-Director of The Church Cares and Hughes Professor of Integration at Regent University
Here at The Church Cares, we aim to nurture the congregational care helpers. That’s why we’re proud to offer free high-quality support to those who want to pray, care, and engage more effectively with the hurting world around them.
You see the need. You feel the burden. You know people in your church want help- but you aren't sure how to move the conversation forward at your church or ministry group?
We have a story for you
Margaret had been a teacher for thirty-two years.
She had taught third graders to read, fourth graders to multiply fractions, and countless children how to believe in themselves when school felt hard. After retirement, she expected life to slow down a little. Instead, she noticed something else happening around her church.
People were hurting.
There was the young mother whose husband had left unexpectedly. The widower who sat alone every Sunday after fifty years of marriage. The college student battling anxiety. The exhausted grandparents raising grandchildren. The woman quietly caring for her husband through dementia.
Margaret noticed another pattern too.
Almost all of them eventually ended up in Pastor Mike's office.
Her church had wonderful pastors. They had excellent preaching. They had thriving small groups. They had caring people.
But it felt as though every difficult situation somehow landed on the desk of one of three pastors or a handful of small group leaders.
One Sunday afternoon Margaret found herself praying a dangerous prayer:
"Lord, surely there has to be a better way."
The answer surprised her.
Instead of giving her a solution, God gave her an assignment.
Around the same time, Margaret met Jim, a licensed counselor who attended the church quietly with his family. Jim had spent years working in mental health and had watched the same pattern emerge in churches across the country.
"The pastors aren't doing anything wrong," Jim explained over coffee one morning.
"They simply can't carry it all."
Margaret nodded.
Neither of them wanted to build a counseling center inside the church. Neither believed volunteers should act like therapists.
What they imagined was something much simpler.
What if ordinary people in the church could learn to listen?
What if hurting people had someone to walk beside them while they waited for counseling appointments, navigated grief, struggled through anxiety, or faced overwhelming seasons of life?
What if care became something the whole church did instead of something only pastors provided?
Their church leadership wasn't resistant to the idea.
They were contemplative.
They saw the need.
They just weren't sure what to do next.
They worried about liability.
They worried about volunteers giving bad advice.
They worried about starting another ministry they couldn't sustain.
Margaret and Jim decided not to push harder.
Instead, they decided to listen.
They met with pastors and elders individually and asked simple questions:
"What kinds of struggles are people bringing to the church?"
"What keeps you awake at night?"
"Where do you feel stretched thin?"
"If we could wave a magic wand and improve one thing about care in our church, what would it be?"
The answers came quickly.
"We don't want people falling through the cracks."
"We don't want everything coming back to the pastors."
"We want to help, but we don't know how to do it safely."
The church wasn't in the action stage yet.
But they had clearly moved into contemplation.
(See our Talking Points Guide below on communicating with church leadership based on their stage of change. Never heard of stage of change? Read here)
The conversation had changed from "Should we do this?" to "How could this work?"
That's when Margaret and Jim introduced a simple idea.
"Let's not start a ministry," Margaret said.
"Let's start a conversation."
They proposed offering a six-session Listen course for anyone in the church who wanted to become a better listener, spouse, parent, friend, mentor, or small group leader.
No commitment.
No ministry launch.
No budget request.
Just an invitation to learn.
Thirty-two people signed up.
Teachers.
Retired couples.
Small group leaders.
A nurse.
A mechanic.
A young mother.
An engineer.
By the end of the course, something unexpected had happened.
The church discovered it already had caregivers.
They had simply never been given permission, training, or a pathway to serve.
A small team emerged naturally from the group.
The pastors noticed they were no longer carrying every burden alone.
People who needed professional counseling still received referrals.
But now they also received meals, prayer, encouragement, companionship, and follow-up from people in their church family.
The church had moved beyond an informal system of pastoral care and small groups alone toward something larger: a culture of care.
Not because they hired staff.
Not because they created a complicated program.
Because ordinary people stepped forward and said:
"We can help carry this."
Margaret still laughs when people call her the founder of the care ministry.
"I didn't start a ministry," she says.
"I just helped our church take one faithful step."
Most churches don't move from no care ministry to a fully developed care system overnight.
They move through stages.
Awareness.
Conversation.
Experimentation.
Small wins.
Momentum.
The good news is that your church doesn't need to have everything figured out.
You don't need a strategic plan, a budget, or a department.
You may simply need one person willing to ask:
"What would it look like if no one in our church had to hurt alone?"
That question may become the first step toward changing your church's story—and someone else's.
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