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Think of somebody you know who is in the middle of something hard right now. A death. A diagnosis. A marriage coming apart. A child who has walked away. A job gone, and no sign of another one.

Now be honest about the last month. Have you gone to them?

Most of us have not. And the reason is almost never that we do not care.

The reason we stay away

We stay away because we are afraid. We feel inadequate. We do not know what to say. We are afraid of saying the wrong thing, of making them cry, of standing in a kitchen with nothing useful in our hands.

So we wait for a better moment, or for somebody more qualified, or for a sentence to arrive that will help. None of those come. The waiting turns into silence, and here is the hard part: the silence is not neutral. The sufferer notices. Grieving families remember for years who came and who did not, and your absence does not read to them as respect for their privacy. It reads as evidence that their pain was too much, or too unimportant, to be worth your discomfort.

This was never the pastor’s job alone

Many churches have quietly agreed that comfort is professional work. Somebody is sick, so we tell the pastor. Somebody is grieving, so we wait to hear what the pastor is doing.

Scripture assigns it to the whole body. Paul wrote, Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort; Who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God (2 Corinthians 1:3-4).

That is written to a church, not to a clergy. So is the command in Galatians, Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ (Galatians 6:2). One another. If a suffering member of your church is waiting for the pastor before anybody comes, that verse is being disobeyed by the whole congregation at once.

This course exists to get you through the door.