The Dangers of Pastoral Counseling

One of the dangers within pastoral counseling is always the possibility that the pastor may in fact do greater harm than good to the individual receiving the counsel. The pastor must be very careful in what he or she says and must use discernment in the approach he or she uses to every person who comes to them for pastoral counsel. It is important that the pastor be a good listener as well as someone who can speak good words of counsel. The pastor must also remember that the person they are counseling is much more than simply a problem to be solved or something broken that needs to be fixed. The pastor needs to remember that while it may very well be true that this person has many issues that need to be resolved, the pastor may not always be able to lead them to the place that would be the most desirable for them to be. It can be easy for the pastor to become discouraged when he or she sees people making the same mistakes or getting caught in the same sins or problems over and over again. The pastor needs to keep in mind that while this is heartbreaking to see people harming themselves in these ways, the pastor cannot be the savior of everybody. Christ is the savior, not the pastor. The pastor is only Christ’s representative attempting to bring Christ’s healing to His people. Ultimately though, it is Christ who heals. Christ does, however, use His people, including the pastor through counseling, to bring about the healing of people. It can become dangerous when the pastor begins to think that everything relies on him or her. The pastor is responsible for an important part, but not the whole. Christ, but also the person receiving pastoral counseling, is also responsible for much of the progress that is made. Dr. Quanstrom mentioned in class how he had to give up on trying to save the marriage of a particular couple he was counseling because he came to the realization that he cared much more about saving their marriage than they did themselves. The pastor is not responsible for everything.

The pastor must also be careful in counseling because it can be easy for the pastor to become too emotionally involved with the person who is receiving the counsel. If the pastor recognizes that he or she is thinking often about the person he or she is counseling outside of the counseling sessions, then that would be a good indication that these counseling sessions should stop happening. Counseling is not meant to be a long-term process. The goal is that the one receiving counsel will be helped and then be able to move on. When the counseling sessions begin to drag out this can be a sign that this counseling is moving in an unhealthy direction.

Another danger in pastoral counseling is that often people reveal too much information to the pastor about a great many number of things. While it may difficult, the pastor needs to recognize when the person is beginning to speak too much about certain things and he or she must be willing to interrupt and move the conversation in a different direction. Sometimes people reveal things that did not need to be disclosed about other people in the church, but they can also place themselves in a position of extreme vulnerability. It is good for the pastor to recognize that if he or she lets a parishioner become too vulnerable with them then he or she may be jeopardizing their own role as pastor and shepherd in this person’s life. The pastor needs to remember that his or her primary role as pastor is pastoring, not counseling. While counsel may be involved, the pastor must never surrender their role as someone’s pastor in order to be their counselor. Dr. Quanstrom gave an example of this in class, saying that there was a woman in the congregation who had revealed too much about her past to him in counseling, and after that the pastoral relationship was never as it had or could have been because she appeared to feel shame every time they came into contact with each other – almost as though she were thinking every time she saw him “Oh, he knows what I did. He knows how dirty I am.”

Another danger that the pastor may experience in counseling people is that of feeling as though he or she finds meaning or purpose in fixing people’s problems. While it is good to take a certain amount of pride in what you do, the danger comes when your emotional needs are met by counseling other people. You become reliant on the problems of other people in order to make yourself feel good or better about yourself. This is a problem because in doing this one not only takes on a wrong and unhealthy view of the one being counseled and the problems that they face, but one also begins to develop a false perception of his or her self. They begin to rely on the one being counseled and the act of counseling them to define who they are as a person instead of allowing God to have the final word as to their worth. We must rely on God to fulfill us and not on the feeling we get when we “fix” people. Also, with this idea we are recognizing that we are not the ones that do the fixing. God is the one who “fixes” people, and He uses us in this process.

Another important thing to watch out for when counseling people is to make sure that your own family life is healthy. The temptation to do something inappropriate with someone you are counseling to either satisfy emotional needs or sexual desires can become greater when you are not living in right relationship with your spouse. Counseling people of the opposite gender can be dangerous when done on a one-on-one basis. Dr. Quanstrom said that when he counseled people at his church, it was done in a fairly open setting. His office had windows exposed to the front of the Church and his secretary was in the building as well. He also ran to his wife whenever someone of the opposite sex started to make advances on him. It is important to be honest with your wife about things like this. The counseling of this person can no longer be a private matter, because this person obviously had other intentions different from receiving counsel. While it is not necessary or helpful to tell your wife about everybody’s problems in the church, it is necessary to involve your wife in something like this. If you find yourself hiding things like this from your wife, then this is a serious issue.

The Incarnational Essence of the Pastoral Call

The pastor is the presence of God to his or her people in fleshly form. To many of them, when the pastor shows up it means that God is with them. This is not to say that God was not with them before of course, but the pastor serves as a visible reminder of God’s presence among his people. People need physical reminders that God is present. People need relationships with a pastor because to them (and to God) the pastor is one who provides a physical relationship that is representative of the relationship between God and mankind. It is both over and underestimated the role of the pastor as the representative between God and mankind. It is overestimated when we think that God speaks to people by only the means of the pastor. It is underestimated when we think that God mainly speaks to people individually. Such a view is isolating and individualistic – a concept foreign to the community of the saints. People need to “see” God, particularly in times of tragedy, and the pastor is usually the closest that people come to “seeing” God. The pastor represents the hope and love of God just by his or her own presence during times of uncertainty and tragedy. “One’s being there is in a powerful sense the ‘presence’ of the Church, and of Christ. Why is it so urgently, so pathetically, important that the pastor be there? Because he is the palpable sign of the supportive community and the community’s Lord. Of course Christ has preceded the pastor. Of course, of course. But in such times of crisis these commonplaces are frighteningly distant and abstract. It is the personal character of the Presence in the person of the pastor that is believable and consoling” (Neuhaus 43-4).

An Eschatological Community

It is important for the church to recognize itself as an eschatological community because the church has an eschatological hope. The church exists in the future as well as the present. It is the hope of what the church will be that drives the church in its present work and causes the church to realize that what she will be in the future is something that she can take hold of now in the present time. This is called “living up to what one has already attained,” or “taking hold of what one already owns.” This future hope causes the church to act according to that hope. The church becomes in the present what she believes she will be in the future. If the church believes that she will fade and die out in the end then she is in fact fading and dying now. If the church believes that she will shine and be made new in the end then she is in fact shining and being made new in the present. What we believe ourselves to be in the future is what we become today. This is why dwelling upon the sin of the past is unhealthy, because that assumes that what we were yesterday is what we will always be to a certain extent, and if we believe that then we truly will be all that we dwell upon in the past that we allow to captivate us. We must allow the hope of the future glory to shape us now and so cause the future to become the present. “But it is precisely in speaking of the future that we address the here and now; for the needs and hungers of the moment cannot be understood except by reference to that healing and filling which is the promised future.” (Neuhaus 132).