Pastor as Person

Maintaining Personal Integrity In The Choices & Challenges Of Ministry

Gary L. Harbaugh

• Publisher: Augsburg Fortress
• Year: 1985
• Print ISBN: 9780806621159
• eBook ISBN: 9781451408317
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

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The Pastor as Person: A (W)holistic Model

When Tom Daniels* opened the letter from his old seminary, he thought it would just be another request for support. Instead, Tom learned that the seminary was planning to introduce a course called “The Person in Ministry.” The course would be scheduled during a student’s first term and was a response, in pan, to the changing patterns of enrollment. With increasing numbers of women and second-career students interested in ordained ministry, the seminary thought that an introductory course that focused on the pastor as a person might be helpful. Tom was one of a randomly selected group of experienced pastors who were being asked to offer some suggestions on how best to approach the course. To keep the study from being too narrow, the seminary also suggested that the question might be raised at Tom’s local ministerial association.

Interested in just about everything and eager to lend a hand, Tom was excited about receiving the letter. He also felt that, after his years in the parish, he had some ideas about seminary education, but he had never before been asked to offer them. The topic was meaningful, too, because Tom had never been so aware of himself as a person. Since he had turned 40, and especially since coming to Messiah congregation, Tom had found that his long-established way of going about his ministry was becoming increasingly difficult. The energy just was not there as it once had been. As a matter of fact, Tom planned to see his physician right after the ministerial meeting.

Having a meeting was Tom’s idea. There was no active ministerial association in his community, but Tom thought it would be good to get some ideas from some of the other ministers in town. He and four other pastors had planned a joint Easter sunrise service last year and, when he called them, they were all interested in offering some suggestions. Joan Russell, pastor of the First Community Church, was the only female and the youngest pastor in the community, except perhaps for Paul Denning, the assistant at St. Peter’s. Chris Campbell was the senior pastor at St. Peter’s, a large, prestigious church in the center of town. Chris was planning to retire in another year or so. The fourth colleague was John Jeffrich, the busy pastor of Good Shepherd, a bustling congregation, really too much for one pastor, although it did have an exceptional lay ministry.

Everyone except Paul Denning was present and on time. Tom had no way of knowing it, but each of the pastors who attended the meeting was privately dealing with a personal problem that related in one way or another to the seminary’s question. Just before lunch, Joan had received a telephone call from a committee from St. James, a parish in another state where she had interned before she graduated from seminary. The chairman asked if she were available for a call to become pastor there. While Joan had not been at First Community Church very long, she had been going through a troubling internal struggle about whether or not the ordained ministry was really for her. She did not feel free to tell any of the other pastors in the community about her thoughts and feelings. Joan avoided giving an immediate response by telling the call committee she would get back to them around dinner time with an answer.

The other two pastors were similarly preoccupied with individual concerns. John Jeffrich had just come from a counseling session. He had not been able to shake the problems out of his mind. He knew that another appointment should have been made, but later in the afternoon he was to drive out of town with Ellen, his wife. Something had to be done about Ellen’s grandmother, and Ellen’s parents asked whether she and John could help with the decision. John was torn between his responsibility as a pastor and as a husband.

Chris Campbell was the last member of the committee who was able to come. His assistant, Paul, was out of town for the day. Chris had some questons about pastoral identity since Paul joined his staff, because Paul’s approach to ministry was so different from his. Chris wondered whether maybe he had been a pastor too long and was somehow out of touch. Being so close to retirement, Chris had little incentive to change, but he felt he might have something to suggest to seminarians just beginning.

After spending a little time socializing over coffee and donuts, everyone seemed ready to get started and Tom opened the session with a brief reading from Scripture and a prayer for guidance. Tom began the discussion by reading the letter his seminary had sent. Then Tom invited the group to respond.

“The changes your seminary describes are taking place in our denomination as well,” said Joan, “except we didn’t have a course like you’re planning. I think it’s a good idea to look at the student as an individual, because some of the old seminary approaches just don’t fit the new situation.”

“Don’t say ‘old’ to someone ready to retire,” Chris chimed in, with a chuckle. “In many ways, I think ministers in my day had a much easier time. Everybody knew what it meant to be a preacher and there wasn’t so much confusion as there is today. One of the things that occurs to me is that our idea of what it is to be a pastor changes over the years. My pension board has been sending me a lot of literature on the life cycle. I think your seminary might give some real thought to approaching the person in ministry from that perspective.”

“Thanks, Chris,” said Tom. “That’s a helpful suggestion. I find I’m a different person today than I was 20 years ago, too. My mind still goes like I’m 20, but my body has a hard time keeping up. Those changes do make a difference in my ministry. Does anyone else have another idea?”

“Well,” John said, “I think it would be helpful for your seminary to start with what the Bible says not just about pastors but about all people, and then tie that into the present ministry situation. My denomination is doing a lot of study about what it means to be baptized into Christ and how that opens up the whole area of lay ministry. I hope your seminary won’t think about a person in ministry only as being in ordained ministry.”

“That’s a good point,” Tom said. “Most of the people who go to my seminary do go into ordained ministry, but there are several lay ministry programs, too. Personally, I was wondering if any of you agree that another approach to a course like this is to see the pastor in relation to the parish situation. What is going on in a parish has a lot of effect on us.”

“I say amen to that,” John responded quickly. “Just before this meeting I was talking with a woman who was wondering what to do about her daughter. Probably not a lot can be done as long as the situation at home is so bad. I think the same thing is true for pastors. I don’t mean home life, necessarily, but certainly the parish. A pastor is really affected by his, excuse me Joan, his or her parish situation. A lot of personal identity comes from the environment, and I think this is true for pastors, too.”

“You’re right,” Joan jumped in, “but I also think something needs to be said about personal responsibility. One of the hardest things that I’ve found as a new pastor is to make major decisions that affect so many people. I never had much help in seminary with that. In fact, after being in the seminary a little while, some seminarians have to decide whether or not to stay. For some, it’s a real faith crisis. One of my friends really had a tough time with that.”

The group then discussed some experiences of themselves and their friends in theological school. After a while, Tom looked at his watch and realized he would have to rush to get to his doctor’s office on time. “OK,” Tom said. “This has really been helpful. We’ve come up with a lot of ideas, maybe too many for one course, unless the seminary finds some way to tie them together. I’ll send in a summary of our discussion and see what happens.”

Tom left to make his appointment with his physician, and John left to pick up Ellen. Joan went back to her office to think about how she was going to respond to the call committee, and Chris left to meet with Ann Richards, who had telephoned and said she needed to see him as soon as possible.

The ministerial meeting had gone quite well. Tom’s colleagues identified resources and perspectives each of which has something important to say about the person in ministry. Few pastors would argue with John that the Bible is basic and a good place to start. However, we can infer from their discussion that this group believes psychology and a number of other disciplines also have valuable contributions to make. Since they touched on physical and psychological as well as spiritual concerns, we can also infer that they are concerned about the whole person in ministry.

The new course on the person in ministry might encourage seminarians to think about themselves as persons, not just from the psychological perspective, but also from the standpoint of the Bible. A review of what the Bible says about persons would bring to the seminarian a renewed sense of being part of the people of God in history—the history of the believing community and the personal history of the believer. This would enable the seminarian to move right into the area of Chris’s concern, life-cycle theory. Developmental psychology helps us appreciate how our bodies and minds and hearts are shaped, in part, through the accumulated experiences of our past. And John’s point about life situations is well taken, also. Current psychotherapies remind us that, as relating persons, we are affected by our interpersonal and wider social environment. Joan’s intuition about decisions is equally insightful. Christian theology guides us to see how, as believing and valuing persons we bring our personal history and our life situation to integration in the choices we make. Each of the approaches suggested by the pastors’ group makes a definite contribution to the understanding of the pastor as a person. Moreover, these points of view do not need to be considered independently of each other.

The purpose of this chapter is to develop an integrative model that will graphically depict the interrelationship and interaction of all of these perspectives on the person in ministry. Although much of what is discussed will be relevant to lay ministry, the primary focus will be on the pastor as a person. Chapters 2–6 will demonstrate how an integrative, (w)holistic model may be of help in a pastor’s self-understanding as the pastor deals with the typical stresses of parish life. Before we turn to application in specific pastoral situations, however, we must more closely review the biblical, psychological, and theological foundations on which we shall develop our theme of the pastor as a person, a whole person, in Christ.

What the Bible Says about Personhood

The Bible tells us three things crucial to our understanding of the pastor as a person. First, the Bible is the basis of our understanding of a person as a whole person, an irreducible whole. Second, wholeness in the Bible is not solely a personal matter, as we might tend to think, influenced as we are by the individualism of contemporary society. In the biblical view personal wholeness can be understood only when an individual is seen in relationship with others. Finally, a person is truly whole only in relationship with God.

While most pastors would readily agree that the Bible supports a view of persons as whole persons, it is not always so clear that the Bible understands persons only as whole persons. Until the biblical scholarship of the twentieth century challenged the assumption, Christians for centuries did not question the Greek philosophical teaching that the body was separate from the soul.³

The Whole Person

A brief review of some basic biblical concepts will help us think our way back into the Hebrew and early Christian way of looking at persons as an indivisible whole.⁴ The Hebrew word for soul (nephesh) is usually translated in the New Testament by the word psyche, which means “self,” “mind,” “personality,” or “life.” When we read in Genesis 2:7 (KJV) that “the Lord God formed man of the dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul [nephesh],” it is clear that nephesh here indicates not a part, but the whole. Does one have a nephesh? That is not the biblical question. A human being is a living nephesh, gifted with life by God.

The biblical words for body and even parts of the body emphasize that same wholeness. While the word for flesh (Hebrew, basar, Greek, sarx) is used to show the unity of all creatures, the word for body (soma) denotes the person created by and for God. In the Bible, the body “often stands for the total personality of man just as ‘the body of Christ’ is the whole Christian church.”⁵ The evidence is strong enough for biblical scholars to state without equivocation, “The Hebrew idea of the personality is an animated body.... Man does not have a body, he is a body.”⁶

The argument is no less compelling when it comes to pans of the body, such as the heart (Hebrew, leb; Greek, kardia). The Hebrews had no conception of physiology comparable to our own. Consequently, the Hebrew could say that a person’s heart died within him, without literally meaning that the heart stopped beating (1 Sam. 25:37). Hebrew reference to bodily organs such as heart is usually figurative rather than literal. The heart was understood to be a center of emotions, although it could also be understood in relation to individual intellect or will. In repentance, a person could request a “new” or “clean” heart (Ps. 51:10; cf. Ezek. 36:26). God’s response is to renew the whole person.

Jesus did not reject Hebrew anthropology, and neither did the early Christian church. In the Bible a person is understood to be whole and indivisible, a psychophysical unity.⁷ While a person may be addressed in terms of his or her body, mind, emotions, or in a variety of other ways, when God or the believing community speaks, the appropriate response is that of the whole person with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength (Mark 12:29ff.).

The Whole Person in Relationship

The second emphasis of the Bible is that the whole person is always a person in relationship. As we noted, the individual is related to all other creatures, but especially to other persons. While individuality is highly prized today and only a few seem to have a social conscience, the biblical perspective on individuality always includes participation with the community. The Israelite person had identity only in relation to Israel, the people of God. Separation from the community was synonymous with disintegration, disease, and death. Hope and healing meant restoration to the community. The healed lepers were told, “Go and show yourselves to the priests” (Luke 17:14). Being in a right relationship with yourself meant being in a right relationship with the community. Scripture teaches us that the person becomes a person only in relation to other persons. Personal wholeness is inextricably involved with a person’s interpersonal and social context.⁸

The Whole Person and God

When the Bible speaks of relationship, however, relationship is more than kinship with creation or other creatures. Biblical anthropology is (w)holistic in that the creature cannot be understood except in relation to the Creator. The Hebrew word shalom brings together the personal, interpersonal, and theological significance of wholeness by pointing to the internal, horizontal, and vertical dimensions of “peace.” To have shalom is to be in right relationship with oneself, one’s neighbor, and one’s God. This is life, and anything short of this is, in the Hebrew — and Christian — perspective, a form of death.⁹ The first and greatest commandment, Jesus told us, is to love the Lord our God wholeheartedly, and then our neighbor as ourself (Mark 12:29-31). The biblical view is of a person called to a life of love and peace with oneself, others, and God.

This (w)holistic model arranges the physical, mental, emotional, and social dimensions of humanness in such a way as to emphasize the interrelationship of each to the other.¹⁰ The inter relati...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Preface
• 1. The Pastor as Person: A (W)holistic Model
• 2. The Pastor as a Physical Person
• 3. The Pastor as a Thinking Person
• 4. The Pastor as a Feeling Person
• 5. The Pastor as a Relating Person
• 6. The Pastor as a Choosing Person
• Notes