A news story from the Central Oregon Daily News on one of our Nurturing Care Prototypes at Bend Church of the Nazarene where leaders build trust through multilingual worship. Reporter Jakob Salao writes:
BEND, Ore. — Church services can be isolating for people who don’t speak English as their first language.
“It’s been said that 10:00 a.m. on Sunday mornings is the most segregated hour in America,” Bend Nazarene Church Kids & Family Pastor Jason Visser said. “Our heart as a church is that we would be the opposite of that.”
Nurturing Care is pleased to report new Gratitude and Trust Makers Space prototypes giving children across Nazarene congregations room to lead—reciting scripture, praying publicly, and serving their communities alongside adult volunteers—according to recent ministry reports from the Southwest Native American District and Southern California.
Leaders say the approach blends worship with lessons on trust, compassion, gratitude and trauma-informed care, creating structured moments where children can participate meaningfully during church meetings and service projects.
In September and October, teams working across the Southwest Native American District reported that after Friday-night trainings for leaders, Saturday services and meetings intentionally made space for children to share what they learned—through songs and scripture recitations—before congregations that included parents and grandparents. At one service, 22 children attended with family members even though no separate activity had been planned for them, the report said.
A children’s worker who had attended the training stepped in, using the unplanned moment to guide the children in sharing scripture and explaining what it meant to them, creating what the report described as a positive and supervised environment for kids who otherwise had no structured programming during the meeting.
The district report also highlighted a missions service where visiting churches from New Mexico and Colorado joined Southwest Native congregations. When Rev. Yazzie asked for offering ushers, two children volunteered immediately—then prayed over the offering—an act that adults from multiple districts described as striking for its confidence and willingness to serve.
A similar emphasis on scripture, gratitude, and children speaking in front of adults was reported in Sandia Valley during a January gathering themed “Gratitude is the new Attitude.” Children recited Psalm 107:1, discussed what the verse meant to them, and wrote down what they were thankful for. Leaders also provided notecards for encouragement; one child wrote a card for every family member, including a two-year-old sister, according to the report.
The session ended with a group activity using different-colored Skittles to prompt children to share specific moments of thankfulness—an interactive closing that organizers said helped kids practice gratitude while working side by side in the “maker space.”
In Hesperia, California, the GratiGrow ministry at the Hesperia Church of the Nazarene reported growth in both volunteers and community impact during December and January, including training new volunteers—about half of them local youth who had never attended church before. Through community-service hours, those youth served alongside the ministry and heard the Gospel, the coordinator wrote.
After continuing volunteer readings and devotion time in December, the group launched its first community outreach in January, working despite cold weather. Families participated “with great enthusiasm,” and children were described as respectful, unified and kind as they cleaned a pastor’s yard, learned to clean an old car, moved wood, and helped inside the home. Parents later reported their children returned home joyful and proud—many having helped in that way for the first time.
The outreach drew gratitude from neighbors and from the pastor who received help, according to the progress report, and the ministry said photos and videos shared with the congregation led three more children to sign up to serve in February.
In a separate thank-you letter dated Jan. 10, 2026, Pastor David Penn and Ruth Penn wrote to coordinator Lucia Y. Babb-Rodriguez to express appreciation for “capable willing workers” from the children and youth ministry. The letter singled out two youths—Levi and Jeremiah—for moving wood that needed extra effort, and noted the Penns included a check as a token of appreciation for summer camp ministry for young people.
A brief excerpt from our recent Day of Learning with Dr. Ross A. Oakes Mueller. In this session Dr. Oakes Mueller separates the virtue of Compassion from specific challenges of being emotionally overwhelmed or having pity for a person. Oakes Mueller also distinguishes compassion from everyday empathy providing a clearer definition of the virtue.
You can watch additional videos from the Day of Learning through NTS Praxis our partner who provides extensive video resources for ministry.
In addition, the conversation around Moral Integration continues through the resources of the Point Loma Nazarene University (PLNU) Center for Pastoral Leadership (CPL).
Dr. Oakes Mueller will continue presentations on the virtues of trust and forgiveness on February 18 and March 11. The growing interest in virtue formation represents an ongoing partnership with PLNU/CPL. To learn more about these presentations contact Program Coordinator Kelley Klassen, kklassen@pointloma.edu or visit https://www.pointloma.edu/centers-institutes/center-pastoral-leadership to sign up for additional information.
In a recent webinar session of the West Coast initiative on virtue formation, Dr. Ross A. Oakes Mueller provided a profound exploration of compassion. Dr. Oakes Mueller serves as psychology professor at Point Loma Nazarene University (PLNU) and as a Nurturing Care consultant in partnership with the PLNU Center for Pastoral Leadership. Dr. Oakes Mueller’s goal was to move participants from a simplistic understanding of compassion through its scientific and psychological complexity to reach a deeper, more practical simplicity on the other side.
The Motivational System: Values vs. Virtues
One of the most salient insights for ministry is the distinction between a value and a virtue. Dr. Oakes Mueller defines values as “cold cognitions”—rational, trans-situational goals that serve as our “directional system.” For many ministers, it is easy to teach the value of neighbor love, yet we often witness a “values-action gap” where well-meaning individuals fail to act in moments of crisis. A virtue, by contrast, is a habit of attention, desire, emotion, and behavior acquired through intentional practice.
Dr. Oakes Mueller also offered an analogy for understanding the difference between values and virtues: Think of a sailing vessel embarking on a voyage. Your values are the compass and the charts that mark the destination; they tell you where you ought to go. However, a ship without wind remains stationary. Virtues are the wind filling the sails; they are the habituated, emotional drives that provide the actual power to move the ship toward the goal of neighbor love.
The Four Facets of the Virtuous Life
To move from valuing compassion to embodying it, Dr. Oakes Mueller identifies four key facets:
See: Developing a moral lens to perceive suffering.
Desire: A “hot intuition” or gut feeling that something must be done.
Feel: A specific emotional state of warmth and sadness that provides motivational intensity.
Do: Possessing the procedural skills or “behavioral scripts” to act effectively.
Using the parable of the Good Samaritan, Dr. Oakes Mueller illustrated how the Samaritan—unlike the priest or Levite—possessed the habituated skills to see the man, move toward the injured person, feel moved by compassion, and execute medical and financial aid.
The Power of Self-Other Differentiation
A second vital insight for those in caregiving roles appears in the necessity of self-other differentiation. True compassion must be distinguished from “distress at another’s distress” (DAAD), where care givers fuse emotionally with a victim and become overwhelmed. When carers “feel exactly what they feel,” their self-involved motivation compels them to reduce their own arousal, which often leads caring people to flee or numb out to protect themselves.
Virtuous compassion requires presence and mindfulness—the ability to see suffering as valid and real while remaining differentiated from it. By maintaining this boundary, caring people avoid “empathy fatigue” and remain capable of an approach-oriented response that seeks the other’s relief rather than their own escape.
Identifying the Barriers: Why Compassion Fails in Our Pews
While most congregants hold the value of compassion in high regard, there remains a persistent “values-action gap” where the actual enactment of neighbor love fails. In his second session on virtue formation, Dr. Ross Oakes Mueller explored the complex psychological and environmental obstacles that prevent us from moving from “seeing” to “doing.” For ministers, identifying these barriers remains a first step in helping a congregation transition from holding well-meaning intentions to living out habituated virtue.
1. The Boundary of the “Neighbor”
Among several obstacles that Dr. Oakes Mueller discussed four key concerns that limits compassion to our “neighbors.” The first obstacle to compassion surfaces through the concept of the circle of moral regard. Research suggests that the further an individual is from their own “in-group,” the less likely he or she possesses the ability to even observe the outsider’s signals of distress. People remain biologically and psychologically primed to meet the needs of those most similar to themselves, such as family or close friends.
To the extent that people categorize others as “them” or “out-group members,” they effectively move them into a “non-neighbor” category, which diminishes caring people’s sense of obligation. Furthermore, if people harbor moral judgments—believing someone’s suffering is deserved or the result of their own sin—the carer’s intuition to relieve that suffering is significantly dampened.
2. The Siege of Inattention and “Hurry”
In modern ministry, perhaps the most pervasive obstacle occurs through distraction and inattention. Dr. Oakes Mueller highlights that electronic media and the sheer pace of life have compromised ministers’ and congregants’ ability to maintain the focused attention necessary to see suffering in the moment.
When people live under high cognitive load—managing too many tasks or thoughts—they lack the mental energy to engage in cognitive empathy or perspective-taking. Drawing on the insights of Dallas Willard, Mueller suggests that a primary barrier to virtue occurs when people fail to “ruthlessly eliminate hurry” from their environment, as hurry prevents people from being present enough to recognize a neighbor in need.
3. The Fear of being Emotionally Overwhelmed
Another salient obstacle occurs through the lack of self-regulation, which leads to “distress at another’s distress” (DAAD). When a congregant sees someone suffering, but lacks the skills to differentiate their own feelings from the victim’s, they may “fuse” emotionally with the experience.
This fusion creates an egoistic or self-involved motivation to reduce one’s own internal arousal, often leading the person to flee, numb out, or cross to the other side of the street to protect themselves. Additionally, some may avoid compassion because they hold cultural narratives that frame care as a sign of weakness or vulnerability, making the emotional cost of connection feel too high.
4. The Mastery Gap: Lack of Behavioral Scripts
Finally, compassion often fails at the “doing” stage because congregants simply lack the procedural skills or “behavioral scripts” to intervene. A person may feel genuine sorrow but stay stationary because they do not know what a “first good step” looks like in a specific crisis. Without mentorship or role-modeling to provide these scripts, the perceived cost of helping remains high, and the potential for action is lost to uncertainty.
Participants might understand Dr. Oakes Mueller’s presentation of the obstacles to compassion as debris on a racetrack. The driver (the congregant) sees a clear destination (the value of neighbor love), but if the track is littered with the debris of distraction, the barriers of prejudice, or the fog of being emotionally overwhelmed, the car cannot reach the finish line. Clearing the track requires the habituated maintenance of virtue, which allows the driver to navigate these hazards smoothly.
Dr. Oakes Mueller’s presentations incorporated a number of additional key insights during the three hour webinar. The range of questions and responses revealed both a desire to cultivate compassionate practices among children and to help alleviate obstacles among adults who often work with children. The virtue of Compassion will appear during the coming Maker’s Space at Point Loma Nazarene University May 28-30. Many of the participants from the Day of Learning remain actively engaged fostering gratitude and trust with children. Hopefully the insights, which will be available through NTS Praxis, will inspire fresh strategies among children.
Each year Nurturing Care submits a report to the Lilly Endowment, Inc. documenting the initiative’s efforts, impact, and most importantly, what our leadership learns through the many prototypes and ministry efforts by our partners. As the initiative gained momentum this year we also discovered a lot about our ministry more as a catalyst and curator than an education “provider.”
Nurturing Care helped to sponsor the Hugh C. Benner Preacher’s Conference at Nazarene Theological Seminary, directed by NTS Praxis and funded through the Laytham Lectureship on Early Childhood Development. The conference, titled “All God’s Children,” brought national leaders (Dr. Lamar Hardwick, Dr. Bill Gaventa, and Dr. Amy Jacober) and well know Nazarene leaders (Dr. Diane Leclerc Rev. Tara Thomas Smith, and Rev. Brad Lee) to both preach and discuss preaching on disability ministry.
The year concluded by expanding the initiatives resource development including the establishment of a new Sensory room/laboratory at Nazarene Theological Seminary. This new location serves more as a catalytic setting to allow congregational leaders explore and prototype adaptive configurations through a large array of sensory devices available on site.
1. Worship and Prayer Are Relational Before They Are Instructional
In 2025, congregations learned that children’s spiritual formation is shaped less by what is taught and more by how presence is shared. When worship and prayer slowed down and became embodied, intergenerational, and sensory-rich, children demonstrated spiritual awareness far beyond adult expectations. This was especially evident among autistic children, whose participation through silence, movement, and non-verbal prayer revealed that spiritual depth is not dependent on speech or cognitive norms. These practices invited congregations to reimagine difference not as a limitation, but as a site of revelation.
2. Prototyping Depends on Psychological and Spiritual Safety
Innovation flourished where leaders were given permission to fail, adapt, and learn publicly. Maker’s Spaces and mini-grant projects showed that prototyping works best when it is understood not as proof of success but as a process of discovery. Congregations that resisted experimentation often sought certainty before beginning. Those that embraced risk were more honest, more adaptive, and more collaborative—confirming that strong relational facilitation and narrative learning matter more than outcome-driven evaluation.
3. Children Transform Congregations Faster Than Structures Can
Children’s leadership—especially in worship—reshaped congregational culture quickly, deepening empathy and attentiveness. Yet institutional systems like budgets, committees, and schedules lagged behind these relational changes. This gap was most visible when child-led worship or disability inclusion disrupted long-held norms. The project learned that lasting change requires pastoral leadership and theological framing, not just new programs.
4. Research Must Follow Relationship
The West Coast experience made clear that research cannot precede trust. Early quantitative research goals proved unsustainable without strong relational foundations. As a result, the project shifted toward qualitative learning and shared narratives as the groundwork for future research. Empirical study remains valuable, but as a second-order activity—emerging from mature practice rather than driving engagement. A new research initiative on trust and trauma will begin in 2026 in partnership with the Southwest Native American District.
5. Theology Emerges from Practice
Perhaps most significantly, 2025 confirmed that theology is not simply applied to children’s ministry—it is generated there.Through worship and prayer with children, especially neurodivergent children, congregations discovered new theological insight. These lived practices now shape sermons, conferences, and scholarly work, positioning children as theological teachers and strengthening Nurturing Care’s role as a bridge between congregational life and academic theology.
Overall 2025 marks a significant year of ministry and learning through Nurturing Care. Hopefully the momentum gained will grow as the initiative moves into 2026.
Want to make a difference in disability ministry? Join Pastor Jonathan Trees, in partnership with Key Ministries, for a Zoom information session ashe invites 100 lead pastors to pick up the mantel and join him at the 2026 Disability and the Church Conference.
Pastor Trees attended last year’s conference and noted that the creative contextualization demonstrated in the multiple presentations generated more ministry energy than he has witnessed at any conference, ever! Every pastor in their first 5 years of ministry should consider this Ted Talk and Workshop style event. Trees himself gave a QuickTake talk to discuss how and why his church, Grace Church of the Nazarene in Nashville, TN, began a Special Needs respite ministry.
While only two years into this disability ministry, the state of Tennessee gifted Tree’s church with a 25,000 dollar grant to use toward special needs ministry – A great example of the King and Cupbearer working together for the same purpose.
Trees encourages denominational district leaders to recommend pastors join the information session that includes Reverend Trees, Key Ministry leader Laura Hunter, and Greg Greer, Vice President, U.S Ministries for Joni and Friends International.
Join this important information session on January 12th at 11:00 am to 12:00 noon Eastern Time.
As Nurturing Care churches approach Christmas, the staff received an early Christmas present courtesy Palmer Family Church of the Nazarene. Palmer grant director Monica Gaige sent a video where children lead worship on Sunday morning inviting congregants to “Go Tell it on the Mountain”. Different from your traditional Christmas pageant, these kids began to build trust both among themselves, but also with adult congregants, by serving as worship leaders.
The worship team included two kids playing piano, one on percussion, and teen mentors playing cello and guitar, along with singers. Gaige reported, “it was a very joyful worship service, perfect for the Advent week of joy.”
The heartfelt presentation sets the stage for Nurturing Care’s New Year’s special Day of Learning with Dr. Ross A. Oakes Meuller, professor of psychology at Point Loma Nazarene University. The event occurs Tuesday, January 6th, 12:30-4:30 pm CST (10:30 am-2:30 pm Pacific Time).
Dr. Oakes Meuller will introduce the “heart of compassion” through two video conference sessions. The sessions will introduce the virtue of compassion and recent research in moral psychology addressing this important aspect of care. Dr. Oakes Mueller researches and teaches the role of moral emotions (such as gratitude and trust) in promoting prosocial behaviors. He serves as a consultant to the Nurturing Care initiative.
To help participants gain a better understanding of Point Loma Nazarene University’s Moral Integration project, which resources Nurturing Care through the PLNU Center for Pastoral Leadership, Nurturing Care curated two presentations given to students at Nazarene Theological Seminary concerning the underlying theory that defines a mature love as generative care.
To understand why trust and compassion reflect two of the four major virtues that Nurturing Care emphasizes through congregational worship and prayer practices. Dr. Oakes Meuller also presented a short presentation on the six virtues that empower generative care within and among people as they practice the virtues.
Join Nurturing Care for this special Day of Learning.
Next May we will host our next Maker’s Space/Incubator at Point Loma Nazarene University where churches will design ministry prototypes like Palmer Family Church to explore and express compassion in the lives of children and adults through worship and prayer.
Discipleship Commons 