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If pastors want to minister well, they must not minister alone. Draw the circles wider, they were told by the Rev. Marvin McMickle at the Bishop's Advent Day Apart for Clergy on Dec. 5. These wider circles are not just a good idea, they could change a person's world.

Although he is now president of Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School in New York, there was a time, McMickle said, when he was convinced he was heading to prison or an early grave. But then a man at his mother's church reached into his life and gave him his first lesson in pastoral care that goes beyond the pastor.

The man drove him around Chicago. They talked and stopped by the local prison. He walked McMickle over to the wall and told him, "If you don't change the way you're living, change the course of your life, next time I'll be visiting you in this place." 

"I can still feel the brick and mortar of Cook County jail in my hand," McMickle told the more than 350 pastors from the Baltimore-Washington Conference who gathered at Catonsville UMC Dec. 5 for the Bishop's Advent Day Apart. "This man was not my father, nor my pastor. He was just somebody who understood that ministry is for all the people."

Bishop Marcus Matthews suffered a death in his family and was unable to attend the Day Apart. But he had invited McMickle to share a word about pastoral care and how pastors need to develop a deep understanding of Ephesians 4, which calls for all the saints to be equipped for the ministry of the church.

In understanding pastoral care, it's helpful to think of three concentric circles, McMickle said.

A concentric circle is like an impression in the water when an object is dropped in it, he said. The bigger the object and the deeper the water, the larger the circles.

The first circle, he explained, represents pastors caring for their congregation with pastoral calls and counseling at points of need throughout the members' lives. But most pastors, McMickle said, have convinced themselves that they are the only ones who can do this ministry. "They ignore Ephesians 4 as if their role was not building up of the body of Christ to do the work of the ministry," McMickle said.

Stuck in this ego driven perspective, pastors burn out and suffer health problems. "You need to purposefully and intentionally share ministry with people. If you're not, you're not doing your job," he cautioned.

The second circle holds members of the congregation caring for one another.

To illustrate these second-level circles, McMickle told a number of Bible stories, including the one in Mark 2 about  "some men," nameless and faceless, who instead of just seeking a blessing for themselves, picked up and carried a paralyzed man to see Jesus. When they arrived, the house was full, so they pulled the paralyzed man onto the roof and lowered him down into the presence of Jesus. The man was healed and Jesus said that healing came, not from his power, but by the faith of "some men."

In this passage, McMickle said, ministry extends itself beyond the walls of the sanctuary.

"I know we love the Lord, but most of us love the Lord most in the sanctuary. Most of us praise the Lord most of the time in the sanctuary. It's a great spot to praise him," said McMickle. "But this is not where the Lord needs us most. Mark 2 asks us, 'Who have you paused to pick up?'"

In going beyond, the third circle comes into play. It represents the congregation being motivated to reach outside the walls of the  church and to care for the people and problems that reside well beyond its reach.

To illustrate this story, McMickle shared the story of Lazarus, who was a beggar, and the rich man in Luke 16:19-22. Lazarus lay covered in sores at the house gates of the rich man, who was inside dressed in fine clothes and eating sumptuously. He did not offer Lazarus even the crumbs from his table.

When the two died, Lazarus went to heaven, the rich man was sent to hell.

McMickle told the pastors he sees equivalent stories being lived out in our churches today.

"We need to enter into ministries that require us to engage in creative and meaningful ways with the Lazarus just outside our doors," he said. "If all you do is have churches with Advent services, carol singing, pageants, Christmas cookies and punch, the Lord will have a word for you: 'Go to hell. Go directly to hell. You had the chance to minister to Lazarus while you were still here."

Quoting James 2:14-17, McMickle asked, "What good is it if you see a brother hungry, a sister thirsty or a stranger cold, and say to him, 'Be warm.' How does one 'be warm' unless the Baltimore-Washington Conference provides the means?"

The church in the third circle provides the kind of pastoral care that reaches beyond culture, custom and religion to engage people and make them feel like children of God.

At the Day Apart, pastors were given the opportunity to practice this kind of "third-circle outreach" by making a pledge to the Imagine No Malaria campaign, in which the conference is seeking to raise pledges and gifts of $2.1 million by May 2014.

The campaign, explained David and Sylvia Simpson, is an attempt by The United Methodist Church to end deaths by malaria. This treatable disease claims the lives of a child every 60 seconds. In Africa, it kills more than 655,000 people a year.

Since The United Methodist Church has become involved in eradicating malaria, the death toll has been cut in half, saving nearly 1,800 lives a day.

In an Advent litany, the pastors were encouraged to "be light in the darkness," and to make a personal pledge. They were also encouraged to invite their churches to give.

In the Baltimore-Washington Conference, on any given Sunday, there are 65,000 people in worship. If each of these people pledged only $10 for each of the next three years, they could raise more than $1.9 million, Simpson said.

Information about the Imagine No Malaria Campaign and opportunities to give can be found at www.bwcumc.org/ImagineNoMalaria.

The closing words of the Advent litany cited an African proverb: "If you think you are too small to make a difference, try spending the night with a mosquito."