u/TFielding38

I have always preferred smaller churches where I have had a personal connection with my pastor (Current church I attend has a few dozen weekly parishioners and really can't fit that many more in the sanctuary). I recently had a medical problem and spent a week in the hospital, and of course my pastor visited me in the ER before I went in for my initial surgery to pray with my wife and I and also came by after Sunday service to bring my wife and I communion (I declined the wine). When I went back to church, I found out that another member was going through a similar trial at the time, and our pastor was visiting them in the hospital as well. And of course, previous pastor's I've had have mentioned doing things like that as part of their normal duties.

It did get me thinking though, how does pastoral care when churches start to have a thousand or more parishioners? Obviously part of the job is doing things like that, but it seems like it would be impractical for one person, and also they likely don't have any sort of personal connection to the individual parishioner. Are there smaller sub groups within the church with "lower level" pastors similar to managers vs execs at a company? Or are there specific "care teams" that handle things like that? Do people just rely on the hospital's Chaplain (Also not knocking hospital chaplains, several pastors I've had had second jobs as chaplains, and before my second surgery my pastor's wife got covid, so I had a chaplain visit me)? Just want to understand how things work differently across the Christian world.