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 Primary Tasks of the Pastor

Why must pastoral care be expressed through the primary tasks of preaching, administration and equipping the laity? Within the demands of pastoral care are three primary tasks – preaching, administration, and equipping the laity. All of these responsibilities are important aspects of the role of pastor and all three should not be overlooked or sidestepped. The pastor must not neglect his or her job. Within these three responsibilities is seen the three pastoral roles which were covered in Dr. Leth’s Theology of Ministry course. The three roles of the pastor that were related to us are those of Prophet, Priest, and King. All three of these roles have a Scriptural basis in that all three of these roles are seen in the figure of Christ. The pastor is the representative of Christ to the congregation, so it would make sense that the pastor would have these same three offices that are seen in Christ. The three primary tasks of pastoral care may be recognized within the context of these three pastoral roles – Prophet, Priest, and King.

The Prophetic role of pastoral ministry is best displayed in the act of preaching. Those who are gifted in a prophetic way are skilled in relaying information and the truths of the Gospel in a way that will resonate with the hearers. They can speak in a way that will inspire those who listen. They are gifted in their usage of words, knowing how to simplify something in order to make it easy to understand, and knowing how extrapolate what has already been said in a way that cause the hearer to get a glimpse of the bigger picture. The Prophet is a visionary, a dreamer; one who motivates, captivates, and challenges the hearer. The prophetic role of the pastor may be seen in the preaching of the pastor, which is one of the three primary tasks of pastoral care. The prophetic role may come across in other ways as well, such as in writing, music, or the visual arts. However, not all pastors are gifted in these particular ways. Most pastors, though, do preach. This is one of the pastor’s primary tasks.

The priestly role of the pastor may be seen in the way the pastor interacts on a personal level with the congregation. It is seen in the development of relationships. The pastor must be friend to his people. Also, it is only through personal interaction with the people, as opposed to simply preaching various messages from the pulpit, that the pastor will be able to train the people and give them proper guidance and instruction. When the people listen to the sermons given from the pulpit on a Sunday morning they are only receiving part of their proper training in the faith. In order to fully equip the congregation, the pastor must invest in the lives of his or her people. The pastor must be willing to sit with them, eat with them, laugh with them, grieve with them, converse with them; listening to the wisdom that they may have to share with them as well as sharing with them at the proper times the wisdom which God has given them in the pastoral role. When the pastor properly equips the laity it must be done in such a way that is communal. The pastor must be available to his or her people. The pastor must be willing to listen to their questions as well as giving them answers to those questions. The pastor must work with the people as they wrestle through whatever questions they may have and labor with them as they make their way to the conclusions to which they will come, pointing them in the right direction the whole time and bringing them to a place where they can discern what is the will of God themselves within the context of community. Of course, there are always those within the congregation who tend to not interact with others in the church all that often. For the most part, their involvement with the church is limited to their participation in the Sunday morning worship service. It is difficult for the pastor to equip these particular people in an efficient way. One has to remember that while equipping the laity is the pastor’s responsibility, it is also the responsibility of the people in the church to take some action in that they must be willing to be equipped and to learn and to grow. For those within the congregation who only attend church services on Sunday morning and who are less likely to be actively involved in the church, the preaching responsibility of the pastor is important. The sermon that the pastor preaches on Sunday morning may in fact be the only spiritual direction that these people receive during the week. So it is important that the pastor preaches for this reason as well. Not all people wish to interact on a personal level with the pastor or they find it easier to listen to the pastor preach rather than having an actual conversation with the pastor himself.

The third role seen within the responsibilities of the pastor is the role of administrator. The pastor must practice administration within his or her ministry. The role of administration is a reflection of the role of King within the three roles of the pastor. Administration is something that I would not consider to be one of my own personal strong points as far as the three roles of the pastor are concerned. I know that there are many pastors who feel this way as well. However, we must all remember that administration is a very important part of the pastor’s responsibilities. The administrative role must not be given to someone else in the church. While others may indeed help with administration the pastor must not give up his right and his obligation to lead the church in this way. It would not be right for him to hand over this responsibility to someone else. It is definitely a good thing, however, for the pastor to delegate responsibilities to other people, but this must be done without handing over the complete authority of his office and the administrative responsibilities in which he must necessarily participate over to someone else to take care of.

Christian Counseling

The difference between secular therapies and the Christian care of the pastor is that the secular therapies are based upon expected results which have been determined by observable facts, whereas the Christian care of the pastor is based upon expected results which have been realized through faith in what will be instead of in what has already been observed. While whatever methods have proven to be helpful within the field of psychology ought to be recognized by those in ministry, ultimately the ministry is based upon something that has not been successfully observed through science. There is often a secular set of beliefs behind the secular therapies employed within psychology. An example would be that in much of secular psychology the main goal is to get the patient to be reconciled with his or herself. Within the Christian care of the pastor is seen the central goal of reconciling the person to God. Only when a person is at peace with God will they then be at peace with themselves because the true conflict was one between the person and God. “Psyochotherapy has a great deal to say about the characteristics of thought and behavior but is little concerned with the character of the person. Especially in the more popularized versions of therapy (and that is often the level at which churches and ministers are involved), people are seen as a bundle of needs to be discovered, expressed, examined, and met. Such therapy keeps the person in perpetual dependency as he alternately whines and exults in the exploration of new needs. And it sustains the illusion that such needs are problems to be resolved, problems that can be resolved. In their more fatuous forms, psychotherapies suggest that problems discovered are problems resolved, that self-knowledge is self-healing. Christian faith, too, affirms the axiom, ‘Know thyself.’ But the discovery of our real selves is not through internal probing but external promise; becoming our true selves is not a therapeutic project but a vocation” (Neuhaus 89).

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Source

Richard Neuhaus. Freedom for Ministry: A Guide for the Perplexed Who are Called to Serve. (1992), pp. 89.