The Importance Of Quietness In Pastoral Care (Short Read)

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Quietness is underrated for its importance in pastoral care.

The Hospital and the Horse

A patient who changed the way I think about ministry

The hospital is one of the most demanding environments for pastoral ministry. People are vulnerable, often in pain, and the usual social conventions fall away. What I learned there came not from training but from a single conversation — and a story about a horse.

As part of my training to become a Salvation Army officer, I spent a few hours a week volunteering as a chaplain at King’s College Hospital. I once visited a patient who described how they trained a very difficult horse. In particular, one who was deeply scared of humans. The story that the patient told me challenged me to think about how I do ministry.

The person said that if someone approached it from the front, going in face-first, the horse would shy away. Or it would start trying to escape or lash out at the person. It was too fragile and too damaged by humans. The horse could not tell the difference between someone who wanted to help and someone who had come to hurt. It reacted to them in fear, no matter their actual intention.

To work with the horse, this person realised they would have to work differently. Rather than approaching face-first, they took a big bale of hay and then walked backwards into the stall. Still facing away from the horse, they then put the bale on the ground and sat on it, looking away. They did this day after day, simply sitting, looking away, and waiting for the horse to make the first move.

Eventually, the horse became more curious than scared and started nuzzling the person, wondering what they were doing there. The trainer still didn’t turn around but sat looking away from the horse. Eventually, they started holding little bits of fruit on their shoulders, but still wouldn’t turn around.

It took weeks before they turned around to face the horse. They went at the pace of the horse, responding when the horse was ready. Meeting it where it was rather than trying to make it go at the pace of the person. They simply sat in silence, waiting. The fear was lost.

What the Horse Taught Me About Pastoral Care

The gentleness that waits

The hospital gave me plenty of opportunities to test what the horse had taught. I sat alongside people, mostly in silence, and let them speak. And slowly I began to understand something about the character of God.

In the hospital, I sat alongside people, mostly in silence, and let the other person speak. Gentleness is an often-forgotten quality of God. The gentleness and kindness that goes slowly, that sits in silence, and the gentleness that simply makes space for people to be themselves. Moments of grace in the quietness and in the developing relationship that is driven not at my pace but at the pace of the person I’m with. It is recognising that often I need to walk into a situation facing away — that is, that I don’t come with my own agenda but come with openness and silence, and space for grace to happen.

Jesus described himself as “gentle and humble in heart” (Matthew 11:29, NRSV). That gentleness is not passivity — it is the deliberate choice to make space rather than fill it, to listen rather than speak, to wait rather than push. When we embody that quality in pastoral care, we are not simply being kind. We are reflecting something true about God: a God who came not to overwhelm but to dwell among us, meeting people where they are rather than demanding they come where he is.

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