Six Phases, Five Scenarios, and the Long Work of Shepherding
A man walks into his pastor's office on a Tuesday afternoon. His wife had a cardiac arrest three weeks ago. The doctors brought her back. But she came back changed. She tells him she met "a being of light" who told her that "everyone makes it home eventually." Now she does not want to come to church. She wants to read books her pastor has never heard of. The husband is scared and confused. He has come to ask one question: What do I do?
This scene, or some version of it, is happening more often in churches across the country. Near-death experiences (NDEs) and deathbed experiences (DBEs) are too widespread now for pastoral ministry to dodge them.1 The question is not whether pastors will meet NDErs. The question is whether they will be ready when they do.
This chapter is for pastors, elders, Christian counselors, small group leaders, and any believer who carries pastoral weight in another person's life. Even if you are not a pastor by title, the principles here apply to anyone walking deeply with an NDEr over time. Pastoral care for NDErs is real work. It calls for listening well, discerning carefully, helping the experiencer make sense of what happened in light of Scripture, and protecting them from unhealthy NDE-community influences that would shape them in the wrong direction. This chapter offers a framework for that work.
Many pastors, lacking preparation, fall into one of two ditches. Some respond with wholesale dismissal: "Don't put stock in such things. The brain plays tricks. Just trust the Bible." Others respond with uncritical acceptance: "Praise God for that miracle. What a wonderful word from heaven!" Both responses fail the NDEr. The first abandons her to figure out a profound experience alone — which means she will figure it out with help from the NDE community, much of which teaches things Scripture does not. The second baptizes whatever happened as divine truth, even if specific elements need careful testing.
The biblical posture for pastors is neither dismissal nor naive endorsement. It is shepherding. Peter wrote to elders: "shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you."2 Shepherds know their sheep. They know each one's wounds, fears, and tendencies. They lead with patience. They protect against wolves. NDErs need this kind of careful, personal care — not a sermon delivered from a distance, and not a polite shrug.
The pastor's calling is to "pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God" (Acts 20:28, ESV). NDErs in your church are part of "all the flock." They cannot be ignored or handed off. Their experience is a real thing, and your shepherding is the means God uses to integrate it well.
Caring for an NDEr usually unfolds in stages. Trying to do everything at once does not work. The framework that follows breaks the work into six phases — not a strict schedule, but a map for the journey.
The NDEr has come to you to talk. Your first task is to make space for them. Welcome them. Affirm that you genuinely want to hear what happened. Make time — a fifteen-minute meeting between Sunday services is almost always too short. Schedule a longer session, with no clock you must watch. Begin with open-ended questions: "Will you tell me what happened, in your own words?" Take notes if it helps and they give permission, but do not bury your head in a notepad while they speak.
Resist the urge to evaluate in real time. Your goal in Phase 1 is to understand, not to judge. James reminds us, "let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger."3 NDErs almost always carry a fear that someone will tell them they are crazy or demon-possessed. If your face shows alarm in the first ten minutes, you may lose the chance to help them at all. Listen first. Listen long. The discernment work will come.
Once they have told the story on their terms, dig deeper with gentle questions. Clarify details: "When you say you saw a being of light, can you describe that being more?" "What were you feeling at different points?" Ask about the aftermath: "How have you been since? What's changed in you?" Ask about their spiritual history: "Before this happened, how were you walking with the Lord?" For non-Christian NDErs, ask, "Before this happened, how did you think about God?" Then ask how they are making sense of it now: "What do you think it meant?"
The shape of these questions matters. Notice that they invite the NDEr to keep talking. They do not lead the witness. They do not telegraph the "right" answer. You are gathering data — phenomenological data about the experience itself, biographical data about the person, and interpretive data about how they read it. All three matter for what comes next.
After Phase 2, you should have enough information to begin assessing. The seven-test framework developed in Chapter 10 is the right tool here, but used internally — a private framework for your own pastoral guidance, not a checklist you wave in the NDEr's face. Ask yourself: Does the experience pass the Christological Test? Does the theology the NDEr is drawing from it line up with Scripture? What fruit is starting to emerge? Are there specific elements that concern you?
Your assessment is not a verdict. You are not the judge of their soul. You are a shepherd taking stock of where the sheep is, what is good, and what may be threatening. That assessment shapes how you pastor going forward — but it never becomes a pronouncement you deliver and walk away from.
This is the heart of the work. Help the NDEr integrate their experience with biblical faith. Several sub-steps unfold over many conversations.
Affirm what is genuine. If the experience passes the central tests, say so. "I believe God met you in this experience. What you describe is consistent with Scripture's picture of Jesus and heaven." NDErs often come to pastors expecting rejection. Real affirmation, when warranted, builds the trust needed for the harder conversations later.
Identify specific concerns gently. If specific elements are troubling, name them — but in a careful, focused way. "I want to talk about one specific thing you shared — the message that 'everyone makes it home eventually.' Let's think through that together with Scripture." Do not try to fix everything at once. Pick the most important issue. Walk through it patiently. Galatians 6:1 calls us to "restore" the wandering brother or sister "in a spirit of gentleness."4 Gentleness is the tone, even when the content is correction.
Point back to Scripture. Ask, "What do you think Scripture says about that?" Use biblical teaching as the guide. The NDEr's own willingness to compare their experience to Scripture is itself a sign of healthy integration.
Warn about NDE community pressures. "As you keep working through this, you will probably run into people and books that want to shape your interpretation in particular directions. Let's think together about how to discern those influences." This is loving forewarning, not paranoia.
Suggest reading. Recommend trustworthy NDE resources (covered in Chapter 29). Discourage unreliable ones (Chapters 30–31) gently rather than with a list of names that feels like an enemies list.
Offer ongoing counsel. Make clear this is not a one-session matter. Plan to meet again. Plan to walk with them over months, even years.
The NDEr needs the body of Christ for long-term integration. NDErs sometimes drift toward isolation, or toward spiritual communities outside the church that share their interest in their experience. Help them stay anchored in your local body. Be careful about public testimony. NDErs often want to share their story with the whole church soon after the event. This is usually too quick. Give the integration time before the platform. When the time for testimony comes, help shape it carefully — what to include, what to leave out, how to keep Christ at the center rather than the experience itself.
Connect them with other mature Christians, not only you. They need multiple wise voices. And include the experience in normal discipleship rather than treating it as an island. The NDE is part of their overall life with God, which still includes Scripture, prayer, sacrament, fellowship, and service. The ordinary means of grace are not replaced by the extraordinary moment.5
Years pass. Continue walking with the NDEr. Watch for drift — toward non-Christian NDE community, toward spiritual pride, toward claiming special authority because of what they saw. Watch for growth — biblical literacy, humble service, maturing character — and celebrate it. Keep the experience proportionate. The NDE is important, but it is not their whole identity. Help them hold it in balance with the rest of their Christian life. Many problems in the NDE world come from experiencers building a whole identity, and sometimes a whole ministry, around twenty minutes of experience, while neglecting decades of ordinary discipleship.
The relationship is the medium. Most discipleship of NDErs does not happen in dramatic correction sessions. It happens in shared meals, regular conversations, sermons heard week after week, and ordinary friendship over years. The pastor who shows up consistently has more influence than the pastor who delivers brilliant theology in one meeting and never follows up.
Five scenarios show up often enough to be worth thinking through ahead of time.
The NDEr who wants to start a ministry. Some experiencers, soon after the event, want to start speaking, writing, podcasting, or launching a ministry around the NDE. The pastoral counsel is simple: slow down. Integration takes time. Ministry that flows from a poorly integrated experience can do real harm — both to the NDEr and to those they teach. Encourage them to spend years deepening in Scripture, serving humbly in the local church, and letting the experience mature before building any platform around it. Some will resist this counsel. Some will leave for ministries that will platform them quickly. Hold the line anyway.
The NDEr whose account has significantly non-Christian elements. The pastor must lovingly but clearly help the NDEr see the gaps between the experience (or its interpretation) and biblical teaching. Galatians 1:8 stands as a sober reminder: even an angel from heaven preaching a different gospel is not to be received.6 An "NDE Jesus" who teaches universalism, reincarnation, or human divinity is not Jesus, no matter how strong the experiencer's certainty. Saying this gently may take many conversations. Do not endorse or platform a non-biblical interpretation. Also do not be harshly dismissive. Walk the line patiently.
The NDEr with trauma or distressing content. Distressing NDEs can require specialized care.7 Some experiencers benefit from Christian counseling with a therapist trained in trauma. The pastor's role is to be present, to connect them with resources, and to refuse the temptation to be the only resource the person has. You are part of the care team, not the whole team.
The unbelieving NDEr who is now open to faith. Some NDEs lead to a real openness to Christianity that was not there before.8 This is a precious evangelistic opportunity. Engage them with the gospel directly but patiently. Remember that the NDE may have prepared the soil, but conversion is still a work of grace. Howard Storm's testimony, Ian McCormack's testimony, and many others fit this pattern. Walk with them toward Christ rather than treating their NDE as already amounting to conversion.
The NDEr who has been led astray before coming to you. Sometimes the experiencer has already been shaped by problematic NDE teachers — books read, podcasts followed, online communities joined — before they ever sought pastoral care. The task is patient re-formation, not demolition. Do not tear down everything they have absorbed in one sitting. Gradually re-anchor them in biblical teaching. Ask what specific ideas have been most meaningful, and address those over time. Trust the Spirit to do slow, deep work.
Do not treat every NDEr the same. The dying grandmother who quietly tells her hospice nurse she saw Jesus does not need a five-step framework. She needs to be received in love. The cardiac patient now teaching universalism on a podcast does need careful, patient correction. The framework in this chapter is a tool for matching pastoral response to pastoral situation — not a one-size-fits-all checklist.
Five competencies undergird this work.
Competency 1: Biblical theology of the afterlife. Pastors should know what Scripture teaches about death, the intermediate state, heaven, Hades, resurrection, and final judgment. The biblical witness to a conscious intermediate state — the soul's continued existence between bodily death and bodily resurrection — is the very foundation that makes NDEs theologically possible in the first place.9 Without this foundation, pastoral engagement becomes guesswork.
Competency 2: Familiarity with the NDE literature. Pastors should read at least a few trustworthy NDE books — Tabatt, Miller, Sabom, Burke. They should know the names of major NDE teachers and their basic theological orientations. You do not need to be an expert. You need to be informed enough not to be blindsided.
Competency 3: Competence in spiritual discernment. The seven tests of Chapter 10. The principles drawn from 2 Corinthians 11:14 about Satan disguising himself as an angel of light. The ability to distinguish genuine from counterfeit. This is the heart of the pastoral skill set for NDE care.
Competency 4: Pastoral care skills. Listening, asking open questions, walking with people across long stretches of time, helping people integrate trauma and deep experience with ongoing discipleship. These are general pastoral skills, but they apply with special force here. Paul's directive to the Thessalonians captures it: "admonish the idle, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with them all."10 Different NDErs need different combinations of these.
Competency 5: Relational patience. Long-term shepherding. Not expecting immediate theological clarity. Trusting the Spirit's work over time. The pastor who has the patience to walk with one NDEr for five years often accomplishes more than the pastor who delivers a "perfect" theological correction in one meeting and never sees the person again.
A few limits are worth naming, because forgetting them leads pastors into trouble.
The pastor cannot validate or invalidate the experience with absolute certainty. The pastor assesses; the pastor does not pronounce final judgment. Only God knows the full truth of what happened to the experiencer. The pastor's role is humble, careful, biblically informed assessment — not infallible verdict.
The pastor cannot force the NDEr to adopt correct theology. The pastor guides; the Spirit works. Persuasion happens through patient relationship and faithful exposition of Scripture, not through pressure or threats.
The pastor cannot replace the ordinary means of grace. The NDE is not a substitute for Scripture, prayer, the Lord's Supper, baptism, the gathered worship of the church, and the community of believers. Whether the experience was wholly genuine or partly distorted, the answer for the experiencer is the same: an ordinary, faithful, biblically anchored Christian life.
The pastor cannot know everything. Sometimes the right pastoral answer is, "I don't know — let's think about this together." NDEs raise questions that even careful theologians cannot fully resolve. Pastoral honesty about the limits of one's knowledge is itself a form of integrity that NDErs notice and respect.
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Pastors who take this work seriously will find that NDErs in the church are a gift. Their experiences, properly integrated, can deepen congregational faith, open evangelistic doors with skeptical neighbors, and bear witness to the reality of heaven and the love of Christ. The grandmother who saw Jesus in the last hours of her life leaves a testimony that strengthens her family for decades. The cardiac patient whose NDE was carefully evaluated and faithfully integrated becomes a quiet witness in the workplace and the neighborhood. The unbeliever whose NDE opened the door to faith becomes one more story of grace in the church's living history.
Pastors equipped to shepherd NDErs well will find this a rich area of ministry. Pastors who neglect it will miss real opportunities and may fail people who needed their shepherding. The writer of Hebrews reminds church leaders that they "are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account."11 NDErs are souls. Their shepherds will give account for how they cared for them.
The framework in this chapter — six phases, five scenarios, five competencies, four limitations — is meant to be a tool, not a script. Real pastoral care is messier, slower, and more relational than any framework can capture. But the goal is steady. Listen well. Discern carefully. Affirm what is genuine. Correct what is wrong, gently. Walk with the experiencer over time. Anchor them in the church and in Christ. Trust the Spirit's slow work.
The husband who walked into his pastor's office on Tuesday afternoon may walk out the same day still scared. His wife may not come back to church for months. The pastor's first conversation with her may be awkward. But if the pastor is patient, prepared, and prayerful, that family can be served well across the years that follow. The NDE will not be the last word in their lives. Christ will. And the pastor's quiet, faithful shepherding will be one of the means by which that last word becomes loudest.
You will not get every conversation right. You will sometimes say too much, sometimes too little. You will sometimes correct prematurely and sometimes wait too long. The Lord works through imperfect shepherds. Faithfulness over years matters more than perfection in any one meeting. Show up. Listen. Open your Bible. Pray with them. Walk together. That is the work.
Chapter 33 addressed how ordinary Christian friends respond when a loved one shares an NDE. This chapter has addressed the deeper, more sustained work of pastoral care over time. Chapter 35 turns to the opposite error: Christians and pastors who dismiss all NDEs wholesale, including those of John MacArthur and others. Both errors — naive acceptance and wholesale dismissal — fail NDErs. The biblical path runs between them, with discernment in one hand and love in the other.
Burke, John. Imagine Heaven: Near-Death Experiences, God's Promises, and the Exhilarating Future That Awaits You. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2015.
Cooper, John W. Body, Soul, and Life Everlasting: Biblical Anthropology and the Monism-Dualism Debate. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000.
Miller, J. Steve. Is Christianity Compatible with Deathbed and Near-Death Experiences? The Surprising Presence of Jesus, Scarcity of Anti-Christian Elements, and Compatibility with Historic Christian Teachings. Acworth, GA: Wisdom Creek Press, 2023.
Sabom, Michael. Light and Death: One Doctor's Fascinating Account of Near-Death Experiences. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1998.
Tabatt, Shaun. The NDE Conspiracy. Shippensburg, PA: Destiny Image, 2025.