Some of my most awkward moments have been when I was present in the pain of the people I’m called to pastor, and I didn’t know what to say.

I can remember sitting in the living room of a family from the church whose infant son had stopped breathing in his swing one day, and I didn’t even know what to feel, let alone words to say. I lived across the street from a member who was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer, and when I would visit her I felt like an alien visiting earth. Part of it is ...