Resources for Care · Framework
Four Tasks of Grief: Deeper Dive
Worden’s Four Tasks of Grief, worked out in practice
Grief is where AI complications show up most often in pastoral care — digital clones of the dead, careers lost to automation, screens standing in for mourning. This deeper dive takes one trusted model, Worden’s Four Tasks of Grief, and works it out in practice: understanding the model, accompanying people safely, and caring for the family around them.
Start where you are:
Part 1 · The model
Worden’s Four Tasks of Grief
“I want to understand the model first.”
The framework beneath everything here: four active tasks of healing, how AI complicates each one, and the pastoral goal for each. Read this first if the series is new to you.
Start with the model →Part 2 · Scope of practice
Being a Safe Companion
“I’m a lay visitor about to make a visit.”
For Stephen Ministers, visitation teams, and elders: what to do, what to avoid, special rules for AI and grief, and when to call the pastor immediately.
Part 3 · Caring for the family
The Co-Caregiver Guide
“A worried family member has come to me.”
Supporting the spouse, parent, or adult child of someone lost in digital grief: how to listen, five strategies for home, traps to avoid, and a prayer for the caregiver.
The three pages also link onward in reading order, so you can start at the model and read straight through.
Working with a different situation than grief? The Hearing, Helping, Healing deep dive works the three-step pastoral sequence out the same way — for job loss, screen anxiety, and digital fear.