Hospital Visitation Ministry: Darrel Carver

AHUMC’s hospital visitation ministry is one of several highly valued Congregational Care initiatives dedicated to serving suffering persons of our church family with prayerful, personal presence. Our Senior Pastor, Dr. Mary Spradlin initiated the formation of this joint lay-clergy ministry under the guidance of our then Associate Minister, Grant Palma, in 2013. Today, the Hospital Visitation Ministry continues under the careful liaison and direction of Rev. Allen Lutes and Rev. Dr. Jim Pledger.

This ministry’s great value and comfort was first driven home to me in 2001 when my father, Royce Carver, repeatedly spent time in Fort Worth hospitals with congestive heart failure episodes. At that time, Lee and I lived in the Brazilian Amazon Basin as missionaries and returned whenever we felt the urgent need to tend to my parents’ needs. Of course our prayers rose constantly for the Lord to cover and comfort Dad and Mom in his times of need. From those experiences, we drew great consolation from answers to those prayers in hearing of regular visits by members of the AHUMC clergy and the Co-Workers Sunday School Class. Their presence of kinship lovingly lifted and sustained my parents’ spirits through those tense moments, often for days and weeks on end.

We certainly know how important hospital visits can be in expressing our church’s genuine caring concern for the one suffering and their family members. In this context, Lee and I have felt a natural calling to serve as representative visitors on behalf of the AHUMC congregation. When we visit together, Lee frequently also represents the AHUMC Prayer Shawl Ministry. As she tenderly drapes a prayer shawl or lap robe over the one we are visiting, we see the wave of physical and spiritual warmth from loving, caring prayers from members of their own church spreading over their face and within him or her.

This is an area of service for you to consider. Prayerfully take stock of your gifts of presence, calm and attentiveness that you could offer to comfort and pray with a brother of sister in Christ at a time of uncertainty and distress in an unsettled period of their lives.