to genuflect before the altar of the mental health professional is not new. As I have noted, this tendency has been evident for more than half a century.
Attention was given to this phenomenon in the 1970s by the clinical psychologist Paul W. Pruyser. A Presbyterian elder, Pruyser worked at the Menninger Foundation in Topeka, Kansas (now located in Houston). He supervised ministers in graduate and postgraduate clinical education; and when reflecting on case studies with them, Pruyser noted something interesting. Ministers often had difficulty drawing on their distinctive perspectives and training. He writes: “To put my observations in a nutshell, these [ministers] all too often used ‘our’ psychological language, and frequently the worst selection from it—stultified words like depression, paranoid, [and] hysterical. When urged to conceptualize their observations in their own language, using their own theological concepts and symbols, and to conduct their interviews in full awareness of their pastoral office and church setting, they felt greatly at sea” (Pruyser, 1976, 27). In other words, Pruyser observed that regarding the giving of care and counsel ministers had let go of their distinctive perspectives and training, which no other professional would embody and utilize, at least not as frequently or explicitly.
High Stakes
“So what?” You might ask. What is the big deal? Well, quite a lot. As Clebsch and Jaekle (1964/1967) observe, much is at stake when pastoral caregivers loose sight of what they and they alone may bring to peoples’ lives. They write, “[Ministers] who in this age have imitated doctors, lawyers, psychiatrists, psychologists, counselors, and social workers, like [ministers] who imitated the current helping professions of other ages, frequently become merely incompetent amateurs or inexpert apprentices in arts properly belonging to others” (68). In other words, ministers become members of a “me too” vocation.
As an alternative, Pruyser urged ministers to reclaim their distinctive offering to people in need—what he called “a pastoral perspective on personal problems.” He pointed out that in turning to ministers most people want “to ponder, understand, and solve a problem within the very framework to which the [minister] professes”—that is, his or her faith (see Cole, 2008c, 18). Not only that, but, as Pruyser (1976) further noted, “a great many persons who turn to their [ministers] for help in solving personal problems seek assistance in some kind of religious or moral self-evaluation. They want to see some criteria of their [own] faith applied to themselves” (49–50, emphasis added).
We may assume, therefore, that someone seeking out a minister (whether an ordained pastor or other servant of the church) believes, on some level, that the minister will not only be helpful but that this help will grow out of her vocation as minister of the gospel. As Pruyser put it, “Problem-laden persons who seek help from a [minister] do so for very deep reasons—from the desire to look at themselves from a theological perspective” (43).
I should add that Pruyser does not endorse an exclusively theological perspective. He neither wants to reify theology nor dismiss what theologians may learn from the human sciences and other fields of inquiry and practice. As Robert C. Dykstra (2005) points out, although Pruyser wants ministers to move beyond “any exclusive attachment to psychology and the intrapsychic realm” and to reclaim their distinct offerings regarding personal problems, he is not “suggesting that ministers return to some pre-critical, pre-clinical, [or] moralistic frame of reference of past eras” (153; see also Cole, 2008c, 18–19). Nevertheless, Pruyser reminds us that people who approach ministers with their problems usually assume that the care the minister may offer will be laden with certain understandings and commitments—namely, those that follow from the minister’s embrace of Christian faith and her vocation as one of its professors. As Pruyser (1976) asks rhetorically, “In seeking a pastoral answer, even if recognizing that [it] may be only a first or tentative answer, are they not placing themselves voluntarily into a value system, and into an ambience of special tradition and communion which they consider relevant?” (45).
At the same time, Pruyser suggests that when a person comes to a minister with a problem or need—that is, when a person comes to one assumed to embody and represent the Christian story—if the minister’s response does not convey a willingness to work with the person from commitments to that story (however implicit these may be), then the person may very well have his pain and disillusionment exacerbated. People seek out ministers for a reason, Pruyser suggests. They want a minister’s perspective. So, indeed a lot is at stake with regard to the perspectives on caregiving that we as ministers embrace.
Conclusion
I am reminded here of psychoanalyst Erik H. Erikson’s (1950/1993) claim that what he offered his patients was “a way of looking at things” (403). Pastoral caregivers may offer a way of looking at things—namely, through the lens of the Christian story. By virtue of their calling, training, and (in some traditions) their office—all of which assume a larger community’s endorsement—ministers (whether ordained or lay) bring something particular and distinctive to caring. As those who embrace the Christian story and who attend to souls against its backdrop, ministers have ways of looking at things that the people they serve want and need.
It goes without saying that ministers do not have a monopoly on caring. Nor do Christians, for that matter. Scores of people—professionals and nonprofessionals, Christians and those of other faiths alike—may care for those in need; may care for souls. We must not discount what may be provided by those who are not ministers or by those who embrace stories other than the Christian story. Moreover, human struggles and needs may call for more than pastoral care. Medical, psychological, or other means of care may be required when caring for souls, perhaps along with pastoral care. A variety of care approaches may serve as instruments of grace.
Furthermore, we must be open to caring not only for those who seem interested in what we may offer (the woman at the pool), but also (perhaps especially) for those who lack interest (the woman’s husband who took off for the other end of the pool). My experience has been that typical caregivers encounter in the ordinary course of life and ministry those with different tolerances for care. We meet persons who are more receptive and open to what the caregiver represents but also those who run for cover when the conversation gets “religious,” “spiritual,” or “churchy.” But this is as it should be given that the Christian story calls for not only “reaching in” but also “reaching out.”
Faithful care thus requires that pastoral caregivers learn to reach in multiple directions, even when doing so requires different approaches to care.
Still, I am suggesting that pastoral caring tied to Christianity entails particular kinds of care—distinctive offerings located in and arising from a particular frame of reference, a “way of looking at things.” That frame, as I have suggested, is first and foremost the story of God’s creative, transformative, and redemptive acts throughout history, which Christians have most frequently recognized in the history of Israel, the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, and the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit. That frame is the Christian story. Perhaps Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1954) put it best in his classic book Life Together: “It is not that God is the spectator and sharer of our present life, howsoever important that is; but rather that we are the reverent listeners and participants in God’s action in the sacred story, the history of the Christ on earth. And only insofar as we are there, is God with us today also” (53–54, emphasis added).
This way of looking at things may never make for an easy pool conversation. It certainly did not for me. But if ministry is distinctive work—and I believe it is and I hope that you do, too—then its complexities and the challenges of articulating them must never prevent speaking as best we can about what we do: speaking thoughtfully, faithfully, and perhaps even courageously about our way of looking at things, whether having to do with the care of souls or some other aspect of ministry in the name of Christ. Why? Because the stakes are high! If ministers do not offer their distinctive perspectives on personal problems, then who will offer them?
