Pastoral Care Week
Pastoral Care Week gives opportunities for organizations and institutions of all types to recognize the spiritual caregivers in their midst and the ministry that the caregivers provide.
This year, Pastoral Care Week will be celebrated October 18-24, 2026.
This year’s theme is Healing through Presence and Grace.
Pastoral Care Week - Schedule 2026
Monday, October 19
- NACC Executive Director Erica Cohen Moore will kick off the week with a special video message. The message will arrive by email.
- 6pm - 7:30pm Central: Virtual Career Night with Discerning Students. Learn more & Register!
Wednesday, October 21
- 12pm - 12:30pm Central: Prayer Service: The NACC is offering an opportunity for our members to pray together. Please join us. Register!
Thursday, October 22
- 6pm - 7:30pm Central: Called, Blessed, and Sent: A Celebration of Mission and Faithful Service. Join us for a prayerful celebration as we bless and send forth all who were certified or renewed their certification in 2025/2026 and joyfully honor our three 2026 award recipients for their faithful service. All are welcome! Register!
Friday, October 23
- NACC Board Chair, Austine Duru BCC, will close the week with a special video message. The message will arrive by email.
Theme Overview
This year’s theme is Healing through Presence and Grace.
Kintsugi is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold, silver, or platinum lacquer. Rather than hiding the cracks, Kintsugi highlights them — transforming what was once broken into something more beautiful and valuable. When applied to the heart and spiritual care, this image becomes deeply meaningful.
Join us as we honor the sacred work of chaplains and spiritual care providers — those who walk beside the brokenhearted and offer healing, not by fixing, but by being present. Just as Kintsugi turns cracks into art with veins of gold, chaplains and spiritual care providers help others discover strength, beauty, and meaning through life’s wounds.
We are all vessels — shaped by life, marked by joy, and, at times, fractured by sorrow. In the sacred art of Kintsugi, broken pottery is not discarded but mended with gold, transforming what was once broken into a piece of beauty and resilience. So it is with the human heart.
Chaplains and spiritual care providers walk tenderly into the places where others have cracked under the weight of grief, illness, and loss. We do not rush to fix but instead sit in the sacred silence of pain, bearing witness. With compassion, presence, and spiritual wisdom, we help others see that their brokenness is not the end of the story — but the beginning of a new one.
Each repaired heart is a testament: not to perfection, but to healing. Not to erasure, but to grace. We are all Kintsugi hearts — restored by love, made whole by presence, and shining with the gold of God’s mercy.
Let us celebrate the ministry and presence, compassion, and spiritual resilience.
Planning something for Pastoral Care Week 2026?
Tell us about it! Contact us at [email protected] or 414-483-4898 to tell us how you plan to celebrate the week. Send pictures and details of events after you’ve held them, too! If you give permission, we’ll share them on our website.