PPNC: THIRD
PRESENTATION
“Transforming
Language for Presbytery Pastoral Care-Giving”
We know
that how we talk basically ‘sets up’ how we think and how we behave. As St. James ruefully observed over 2000
years ago,
IF WE PUT BITS INTO THE MOUNTHS OF HORSES TO MAKE THEM OBEY US, WE GUIDE THEIR WHOLE BODIES. (James 3
When it comes to presbyteries’ pastoral care-giving, I share
James’ consciousness of the power of the tongue, but not so much for its
capacity toward great mischief as a tool of the devil in church fights, but for
its capacity to set up how we perceive and conceive of realities outside
ourselves. Thomas Kuhn has shown us that
these patterns of consciousness that he called ‘paradigms’ are patterns of thinking
that reflect familiar and unexamined assumptions we carry in our heads for
making sense of our situations and therefore for directing our perspectives and
behavior in our situations. Until our language and the paradigms arising from
our language for pastoral care-giving are transformed, our presbyteries and
their pastoral care-giving will not be transformed.
I. Presbytery
Care-Giving: from Programs to Process
Since the
second world war, when mainline American Protestant churches began modeling
themselves on bureaucratic institutional structures, presbyteries have offered
resources to congregations and clergy as PROGRAMS – programs of Christian
Education, Stewardship, Evangelism, Social Justice, Women’s Ministry, etc.. The primary paradigm that has been used to
frame and form the work of the church has been, PROGRAM. Ministry in the form of programs has
consisted of uniform, fixed, ideas and operations that are to be used and
adapted to all ministers and all churches.
For
example, Christian Education programs have been mainly church school curricula
created for consuming congregations as if these clients are all basically
alike. Sophisticated curricula have offered varieties of programs that for
different congregations, e.g., city, suburban, rural congregations, etc. But
even sophisticated curricula have tended to be designed to conform to certain
reading levels, standards of Biblical content, assumptions of skin color,
gender, and clothing in illustrations, etc. Or again, stewardship programs
usually set giving goals and organize ways of soliciting contributions to meet
those goals. However, stewardship as a
process involves givers in discerning their personalized goals for the
congregation’s work, and determining how much they can contribute to that goal.
The point
is not that programs are bad; the point is that serving others through
programming is limited, and often unhelpful.
Indeed, small congregations that do not have the instructors or finances
to buy and use middle class church curricula may even conclude that they cannot
have Christian education at all!
The
one-fits-all dynamics of programs is especially dysfunctional for giving care
to pastoral relationships. Ministers,
congregations, and their shared circumstances are so diverse and so complex,
that no one program of introducing, forming, developing or concluding pastoral
relationships can possibly work. Witness
the frustrations and lengthy time-frames now disfiguring the task of locating
and relocating ministers. I recently received a taped account from the
chairperson of the Pastoral Nominating Committee of a congregation in
The
language/paradigm for presbytery’s pastoral care of pastoral relationships is
PROCESS. Process is a plan or design of
activities whose coherence arises from a clear objective or goal with clear
criteria for achieving that goal.
Process is interactive with the parties to the process. It is therefore always basically “tailor
made” to the users of the process. It is
situation-driven rather than substantively engineered. It emerges from shared
communication and reflection rather than from fixed information. It is
multi-lateral rather than unilateral.
What
presbytery care-giving can do to serve pastoral relationships is to offer a process by which both parties –
congregation and pastor – can mutually discover, communicate, consult, and
decide on their partnership in ministry.
This process can lead both parties in remembering what they bring to the
table, where they are coming from emotionally, what they discern God is calling
them to be and go, and how they can invest their skills, gifts, and time in
collaborative mission activity. This process can also provide both parties’
ways of maintaining accountability of how the agreements and commitments they
have made together are actually working out, making those agreements subject to
continuing change and development based on non-judgmental experience.
What
presbyteries invest in care-giving as process is the most precious gift God
gives human beings: TIME. Time is to process what money is to program.
While program is time-saving with more or less irrelevance, process is
labor-intensive with more or less productivity.
In the long run, labor-intensive time investments prevent time wasted in
negative, de-motivating, debilitating misuses of the time of both congregations
and ministers. Programmed care-giving yields predictability that soon becomes
boring and slothful; pastoral care-giving process yields creativity that soon
becomes energizing and motivating.
Perhaps, it is time to spend less presbytery time in publicizing and seeking subscription to programs of ministry by a large number of the pastors and congregations constituting a presbytery, in order to spend more presbytery time in participating in processes of guided communication and consultation by which a few pastors and congregations devise and invest their human and spiritual resources in forming and developing their pastoral relationship in ministries that fulfill them and the intentions of the God they seek to serve.
II. Presbytery Care-giving: from secular language to faith language
1. The
over-arching significance meaning of pastoral relationships is not just a
matter of institutionalized ministry for a congregation (‘organized-religion’
kind of thinking) nor just a matter of a pastor’s professional career (‘job’
kind of thinking). Of course, pastoral
relationships function both institutionally and professionally. But the most
significant meaning pastoral relationships hold for both congregations and
pastors is as means to the practice of
Christ’s ministry. They are means to such ends, but not ends in themselves.
Without being valued as means for the practice of Christ’s ministry, neither
the salary, job satisfaction, nor social status
pastoral relationships offer congregations and pastors are adequate to motivate
and sustain the parties to them. God-service rather than consumer services is
what makes pastoral relationships worthy of parties’ investments in them. The language for speaking of them and working
with them should be “callings” more than “careers”, “gifts” more than
“credentials”, and “partnerships” more than “fits”.
2. The sure foundation for pastoral relationships is the spiritual dependence on, trust in, and relationship to God rather than just human wholeness. Psychological fitness, therapeutic self-care, and continuing education are all strategic assets for strengthening pastoral relationships; however, nothing less than relating to God’s presence through daily prayer and mediation can adequately support parties to pastoral relationships. There is simply too much work, too much conflict, and too much dysfunctional behavior occurring between pastors and congregations for secular or humanistic assets to measure up to what’s needed.
Presbyteries and seminaries with responsibilities to equip and utilize congregations and pastors in pastoral relationships need to reclaim faith language as well as the language of behavioral sciences in order to meet the difficulties, challenges, and stress of all parties to pastoral relationships today.
In conclusion
The vision here proposed of presbytery’s stewardship of pastoral relations is an ambitious challenge of the ways presbyteries are operating. First, it requires a paradigm shift in the consciousness of presbyters who are deeply engraved by and invested in an individualistic way of understanding themselves and the practice of ministry. Second, it involves significant structural, cultural, and process changes by presbyters who have modeled the institutional church on the bureaucratic, programmatic, and productivity concepts of the church as secular, efficient, and familiar corporate organization. On both counts the vision and its implementation seem problematic if not completely impractical. The rationale for offering such a challenging vision is a urgent sense that we are rapidly running out of time to stay in business as the mainline Protestant church. Our pastors and congregations are in or are nearing crisis levels of pain, dysfunction, down-sizing, and even despair. The belief is that it is takes demanding and experimental risk-taking in order to respond to these crisis levels. The hope is that practical efforts to pursue this vision may transforms presbyteries into communities of pastoral care-giving that are secured by an emerging re-imagined structure, culture, and consciousness that God may empower for journeys of increasing mutuality and reciprocity between congregations and pastors in ministry more faithful to the realm of God, hopeful for the for the churches, and more redemptive for humankind.