Sustaining Ministry

Foundations and Practices for Serving Faithfully

Wheeler, Sondra

• Éditeur: Baker Academic
• Année: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781493411573
• Sujet: Theology & Religion
• Sous-sujet: Christian Ministry

This book offers an account of the moral foundations of pastoral ethics and the underlying interpersonal dynamics that make the practice of ministry powerful--and also morally dangerous, even for those with the best of intentions. Sondra Wheeler examines the personal disciplines and spiritual practices that help sustain safe ministry, including the essential practices of prayer and spiritual accountability. She equips ministers to abide by ethical standards when they come under pressure and offers practical strategies for navigating challenges. The author also stresses personal vulnerability and "unselfish self-care."

1
A Moral Framework for Power

We live in a time when the language of power is used often in popular discussion but with quite contradictory inflections. Power is both sought after and feared, praised and decried. Depending on the context, what is meant by the word “power” and how it is viewed by the speaker vary dramatically. Working (as I do) in Washington, DC, one quickly becomes aware of the resonances of the description “politically powerful,” which suggests self-interested elites able to manipulate a system toward their own ends. Power seen from this angle is something to be guarded against, something to be monitored and limited to the best of our ability in order to prevent inequity and injustice. We frequently hear of maintaining the balance of power between nations and of the checks and balances put in place by the US Constitution to prevent power from being concentrated in a single branch of government or in the hands of a small group of people. These measures reflect our appraisal of human beings as perennially tempted by power, ever inclined to misuse or overextend legitimate authority to the detriment of others. Some of our most hotly contested public debates have to do with measures to reassign, reallocate, or restrain power in arenas ranging from health care policy to voter registration to campaign finance law. Managing power in the public realm is a constant preoccupation and a constant struggle.

But much attention is also paid to enhancing power, both for individuals and on behalf of groups that are deemed to be disadvantaged or vulnerable. A wealth of self-help literature is aimed at people in various situations and walks of life, coaching them on how to achieve, maintain, and use power in work or social relationships.1 And a wide array of political movements have the explicit goal of gaining power for people whose economic status, ethnicity, or other characteristics are thought to make them more likely to be harmed or exploited—though there is little consensus regarding which groups really are most vulnerable.

Many definitions of power operate in these conversations, and quite different kinds of power are in view. Therapeutic strategies for those who have been traumatized or abused may focus on recovering the personal power to defend oneself from threats in the environment, whether arising from other persons or from things that may trigger responses of fear or aggression.2 Feminist activists and writers stress the acceptance and use of personal and institutional power by women, who are often socialized to regard direct exercises of power as domineering and inappropriate. In a different arena, several resources lift up power as a tool of spiritual growth. These may be grounded in a variety of religious faiths and practices or in the teachings of a leader of no particular tradition. They may invoke the power of the Holy Spirit or of meditation or of positive thinking; they may put forward wisdom more or less esoteric about harnessing the power of the spiritual forces of nature or of the ancestors.3 All of these are offered as paths to greater well-being and peace for human beings, who often experience themselves as beset and beleaguered, pushed one way and another by forces beyond their control. In short, people pursue power in a variety of ways, even while they are often uneasy about it.

Ambivalence about power may be particularly strong among those deeply informed by Christian faith, and this ambivalence may pull them in two directions at once. On one hand, Christians are used to thinking of God as omnipotent, and they are accustomed to forms of address that stress divine power. “The Lord of Hosts” and “the Almighty” are familiar and reassuring names for God in prayer and song, inspiring confidence in the believer that the One on whom they call is able to help and sustain them, no matter what circumstances they face. Christians are also formed by biblical texts and liturgies that call on God the Holy Spirit to descend in power on God’s people, enabling them to resist evil and transforming them so that they might be signs of the in-breaking of God’s power to heal the world. All of this encourages them to view power positively, in terms of its agency for good in a broken world.

On the other hand, Christians are also heirs to the scathing critiques of earthly power, both political and economic, that run through the great Hebrew prophets. These range from the woes pronounced on “those who are at ease in Zion” who “eat lambs from the flock, and fattened calves from the stall” but “are not grieved over the ruin of Joseph” (Amos 6:1, 4, 6) to predictions of all the impositions that would result from the king Israel was determined to have in order to be “like other nations” (1 Sam. 8:4–18). Over and over, the Hebrew Scriptures denounce the arrogance and overreaching that attend the exercise of human power, warning that the abuses of the powerful will bring down judgment on the nations, including Israel and Judah. And for Christians the climax of the biblical witness is the revelation of Jesus the Redeemer, who empties himself of his own power for the sake of those he comes to save (Phil. 2:6–8). He appears not as the conquering hero but as the Suffering Servant, the Lamb of God who “did not open his mouth,” even to defend himself before corrupt authorities (Isa. 53:7; Matt. 27:12–14). His advent marks the decisive intervention of the God who “has put down the mighty from their thrones, and exalted those of low degree” (Luke 1:52 RSV), and firmly ties the cause of the Holy One of Israel to those who are despised and powerless.

The unease about power is likely to be especially acute among those who have been to seminary. Theological research over the last fifty years has stressed the degree to which the mission of God in the world is identified with rescuing the marginal and challenging the structures that maintain inequity and foster injustice.4 Jesus explicitly takes up this mantle at his first public utterance, when he applies Isaiah’s words to his own ministry: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4:18–19). No wonder those who aim to follow this itinerant preacher, a man of questionable parentage and no visible means of support, are uncertain about the role of power in Christian life and ministry.

But pastors who wish to align themselves with God’s mission, who wish to be of help to the world that God loves, cannot simply dismiss all human power as a manifestation of evil. The broadest and most helpful definition of “power” may come to us not from sociology or political science, but from physics: power is simply the ability to have an effect in the world. In itself, then, power is a kind of capacity, a channeling of energy that makes it possible to bring about a change. Only those who are content to be ineffectual in their ministry can eschew power altogether or regard it as inherently tainted. Thus the key questions, the ones necessary to any moral evaluation of power, are these: What kind of power is used? By whom? And to what ends is it directed? Only when we have answers to such questions can we determine whether the abstract good that power represents is good in any actual case, that is, whether it is good news for the inhabitants of the world in which it is exercised. To recover a critical appreciation of power as a necessary force for good, we turn below to an older conception of what makes the use of unequal power legitimate. It is an understanding already well developed in pre-Christian antiquity, and it underlies the three classical professions of ministry, medicine, and law.

Ethics of the Professions

In the contemporary context, anyone who wishes to draw on professional ethics as a source of insight must overcome several hurdles. To begin with, today we use the word “professional” to designate anyone who is paid for any sort of activity, from landscape design to pet photography. It is possible to be a professional house-painter or skateboarder, or even a professional escort (bringing to mind the phrase “the world’s oldest profession,” a euphemism for prostitution). With the bar for what we mean by a profession set so low, it is no surprise that we often take “professional ethics” to mean no more than the application of lowest-common-denominator standards of decent behavior to the arena of paid work. Thus we might expect to find in manuals on professional ethics minimal requirements of honest exchange and prohibitions on force and fraud, perhaps with some aspirations to basic competence thrown in for good measure. And in general we would not be far off. But embedded in the word “professional” is the trace of the term’s origin in the verb “to profess”—that is, to declare publicly one’s central convictions and commitments. This is a clue to a much older and richer understanding of certain kinds of human work, one that regards them as fundamentally moral enterprises demanding far more than the minimum of decent behavior.

Underlying the classical professions is the ideal of service to fundamental human needs, needs that require the development of specialized knowledge and skills to address. The acquisition of such knowledge and skills is a prolonged and labor-intensive process. It demands focused study over a number of years and a substantial period of supervised practice. These preparations must be supplemented by ongoing education so that practitioners remain well informed about emerging knowledge in their fields. Since it is not possible for everyone to acquire the requisite knowledge and skills—and indeed not possible for anyone to become expert in all three arenas—all human beings must sometimes depend on the services of professionals to meet essential needs, including the need for spiritual health and salvation, for bodily health and life, and for the maintenance of justice among humans and between them and their societies. Dedication to meeting these needs is the moral foundation of the three original professions of ministry, medicine, and law.5

The disparate knowledge and skills possessed by the professional regarding a basic human need create an imbalance of power between the practitioner and those served in a critical area. It is one thing for a student’s tennis instructor to know more about his or her game than the student does, but it is quite another for someone’s physician to know more about his or her body and how to treat it than that patient does. The latter is potentially a matter of health and survival. Similarly, the expertise of the minister may have a bearing on the eternal welfare of a congregant’s soul, as the knowledge and skills of the attorney may be needed to preserve a client’s property, liberty, or even life. The moral justification for the cultivation and application of this disparate power in other people’s lives is the protection of the interests of the patient, congregant, or client. This entails that the interests of those served must govern, direct, and limit the use of the professional’s power.

But laypeople in any given arena will not be able to assess fully either the competence or the moral performance of the professional to whom they entrust these basic and critical needs. In churches, laypeople do not usually know enough pastoral theology to judge whether the pastoral counselor gives sound spiritual advice, nor are they in a position to know whether the minister is scrupulous and careful in the performance of professional duties. In seeking medical care, patients are generally not able to evaluate independently the medical knowledge and clinical judgment of their doctor, nor to tell whether she or he has done diligent research to identify the best possible treatment plan. Similarly in law, the average client is unable to interpret either the language of legal documents or the significance of legal proceedings. In all these cases, those who turn to professionals for help are in a significant sense at the mercy of those whom they consult. Those seeking help must depend not only on the professionals’ knowledge and skills but also on the professionals’ diligence, compassion, and dedication to the good they are trained to serve. That is to say, they must depend on the character of these strangers who wield enormous power over them at times when they may be extremely vulnerable. For this reason the practice of the professions has historically been understood as an inherently moral undertaking. It is not merely a means of livelihood but a dedicated way of life. With this understanding come the five requisite characteristics that distinguish a profession from other forms of compensated work.

Competence

The first requirement of the professions is competence, which involves the specialized knowledge and skills that enable the professional to meet basic human needs—knowledge and skills that must be acquired and maintained at the highest level. The need for professional competence makes ongoing study a moral obligation, an expectation codified in continuing education requirements for maintaining professional licensing.

Moral Commitment

The second central requirement of the professions is moral commitment. The professional must embody a commitment to the good to be served, whether salvation, health, or justice. This is a matter of conviction and personal dedication as well as knowledge and skill. It is not enough to have the required abilities; the professional also must be the right kind of person and care about the right things. This commitment is expected to shape one’s whole being. A profession is not just a kind of work; it is a kind of life. Thus professional licenses can be forfeited for moral unfitness or misconduct even if it is unrelated to the individual’s work.

Self-Monitoring

Since only those possessed of the requisite knowledge can evaluate the competence of professionals and the performance of their work, the third requirement of the professions is self-monitoring. Professions must have standards of preparation and practice internal to their membership and must provide mechanisms for evaluating and holding one another accountable to those standards of knowledge, skill, and behavior. This requirement for self-monitoring is maintained in bodies of professional licensing and adjudication, such as boards of ministry, state medical boards, and state bar associations.

Altruism

The fourth central requirement of the professions is altruism. The commitment to the well-being of congregants, patients, or clients includes placing their interests above the self-interest of the professional. The form of life of a professional is expected to cost the practitioner something, to entail some degree of sacrifice on behalf of the good of those served. Doctors, for example, are not only expected to be available in emergencies at all hours of the day and night; they are also expected to care for patients even when these patients pose a risk of infection to the doctor. The willingness to make such sacrifices when they are called for is a core element of the moral commitment a professional undertakes. Correspondingly, it is the foundation of the high esteem in which devoted professionals are held by society.6

Fiduciary Responsibility

We have said that professionals attend to essential human needs, that they possess vital knowledge not shared by others, and that their work involves the exercise of power in relation to people who may be especially vulnerable. We have noted the requirements of altruism and devotion to the well-being of others. Together, these features of their work entail that the power professionals wield must be rigorously directed to the interests of those they serve and not to the professionals’ own interests or needs. The obligations that arise from this duty include the scrupulous honoring of confidentiality and the active and intentional protection of the congregant, patient, or client from harm, whether by act or omission. For these reasons, the kind of power exercised by professionals is called “fiduciary power.” It is a term rooted in fides, the Latin word for “faith,” because it represents a power entrusted for the sake of the one served and not that of the one exercising power. Fiduciary power is not power over another person but power for him or her, exercised at the beneficiary’s behest, and on his or her behalf. Thus the final requirement of the professions is fiduciary responsibility, the commitment to use entrusted power appropriately.

Ministry as a (Peculiar) Profession

Thinking of ministry in light of the traditional requirements of professional ethics offers us several insights. Each of the distinctive marks of the professions has implications for how ministry is prepared for and practiced, and for what excellence in that practice requires. First, the nature of professions as grounded in special knowledge in service to human need creates an obligation for ministers to become and remain well informed and well equipped for their work. This means that theological education cannot be finished in seminary. Ministers must set aside time for reading and study, continuing education events, and consultation with others when particular expertise is needed for some aspect of th...