Moral Failure in Ministry

by David Pettett

We have recently heard of the resignation of Pastor Brian Houston from Hillsong, the ministry he was the founding pastor of and of which he was recently the Global Pastor. Houston’s resignation follows disclosure of drunkenness and very unclear statements of what went on in a female staff member’s hotel room.

 

The Board of Hillsong issued a statement about the resignation that seemed to minimise moral failure. Some reaction to the Board’s statement has taken the high ground and criticised it for praising Pastor Houston’s long term, fruitful ministry.

 

The pastoral issue here is that neither the Board’s statement nor the reaction to it demonstrate any balance of pastoral care. The Board’s statement was true. Brian Houston has had an extremely fruitful ministry over decades. And it is right to praise God for Houston’s faithful ministry. But by minimising the moral failure, the Board has failed to understand the high standard the Scriptures place on those in ministry. Minimising moral failure is also a moral failure in itself in that it minimises the hurt caused to the victim.

 

Yet those who have taken the high ground are wrong to imply that moral failure obliterates the fruits of years of faithful ministry. God has blessed Brian Houston’s ministry. Thousands of people have been converted to Christ through this ministry. The world is hearing the good news of Jesus because of the dynamic and godly work of Houston. Do not minimise what God has done.

 

Houston is not the first man to leave a fruitful ministry under a cloud and sadly, he will not be the last. What is needed is a much deeper understanding of the pressures our pastors are under. They need constant upholding and pastoral care. There has been a failure in this case to care for a pastor who faced tremendous pressure and a very heavy workload. Some one should have seen Houston’s issues with alcohol long before it became a problem and drawn alongside in pastoral care to care for their pastor.

 

When a pastor fails, our response should not be to minimise what has led to the failure nor to take the high ground and minimise years of faithful ministry. Both must be acknowledged. What also must be acknowledged when there is failure in ministry is failure to care for our pastors.

The apostle Paul encourages us to see that those elders who rule well be considered worthy of double honour, especially those who labour in preaching and teaching. Their ministry is hard. They need pastoral care. Surveys have consistently shown that half our clergy leave ministry. The reasons are varied, but the statistics show pastors are not being cared for. Some churches are seeking to address the issue by encouraging ministers to have regular pastoral supervision. While this will not be the magic bullet that will solve the issue, it goes some way towards caring for our pastors.

 

More needs to be done. We need to understand that pastors suffer the same human needs, distresses and difficulties all of us face. We need to make sure we are providing pastoral care to our pastors to help prevent burnout and moral failure. Where clergy leave ministry for moral failure, this is not only an inditement on the person for their sin but it is also an inditement on the whole church for a lack of support and fellowship in the body which builds itself up in love.

Chaplaincy Informs Christian Ministry

by David Pettett

I remember the occasion at the National Chaplaincy Conference in Australia when the keynote speaker began, “Chaplaincy informs Christian ministry.” To some cheers and not a little surprised and relieved agreement he continued, “Pastoral care lies at the core of Christian ministry.”

The term Pastoral Care has come to mean many different things. In its modern context it usually refers to bringing a listening ear to a person in crisis and seeks to find spiritual meaning. The idea that pastoral care is an all-of-life-encompassing ministry which focuses on the cure of souls has been allowed to slip from the core of Christian ministry. Pastoral care has been outsourced to the professionals in psychology and counselling.

There is a great deal we can learn from psychology and other human sciences about the nature of humanity and ways to help people who struggle in life. We can incorporate many of those insights into our pastoral practice. But pastoral care is first and foremost a spiritual discipline and remains firmly in the realm of Christian ministry. Pastoral care is the work which focuses on the salvation and sanctification of Christ’s flock. Secular counselling and psychology say very little about forgiveness and even less about sin and about humanity being created in the image of God. These disciplines therefore have very little to say to the most fundamental issues of human flourishing. Having said that, it is sometimes right to refer a member of our congregation to a counsellor but outsourcing pastoral care to a counsellor is a fundamental mistake and a misunderstanding of the nature of Christian ministry.

I have a narrow definition of Christian ministry. It is something the saints do, and its purpose is to build the body of Christ (see Ephesians 4:12ff). I also have a narrow definition of the body of Christ. It is the local congregation. We often hear that “our church” is part of the body of Christ, meaning, our local congregation is a part of the church universal, or it is part of the sum total of all Christians throughout the world. I think, however, the New Testament leads us to understand that the local congregation is the complete body of Christ in that, a local church has within it every aspect of the body of Christ. Each local church is not part of the body but, rather, is the body of Christ. Therefore, when the apostle Paul tells pastor teachers their role is to “equip the saints for the work of ministry … for the building of the body of Christ”, he is telling them that their ministry of pastoral care equips the local congregation to grow in Christ and to be effective in the world.

Because the purpose of what the pastor teacher does is to equip the saints to build the body of Christ, pastoral care goes beyond what some people call mercy ministries. These are usually thought to be things like providing food for the hungry, clothing, housing, counselling etc. Mercy ministries are a very small part of pastoral care which focuses on equipping the saints so that the body of Christ is built into unity and maturity. Pastoral care is much more of a whole person ministry than the limits of providing for a person’s material needs. I am not saying these are wrong things to do. I think they are essential things for Christians to be engaged in. They reflect God’s love and compassion. I would love to see more congregations involved in these types of ministries. But here, I am trying to define my terms in the light of what the New Testament says about Christian ministry and pastoral care. I am trying to do this because I think we have not been rigorous enough in our definitions and pastoral care has been hijacked by secular ideas and definitions. Inevitably these secular ideas lead us away from doing Christian ministry and Christian pastoral care in ways the New Testament tells us we should be doing them.

As the term pastoral care has shifted in meaning in the modern world the understanding of the word spiritual has also changed meaning. Spiritual has come to mean something that gives a person meaning in life. If you have an experience you believe touches your inner being, your soul, in the modern context this is spoken of as a spiritual experience. This definition of spiritual is a far cry from a Christian understanding of the word. Jesus explained to the Samaritan woman at the well that God seeks people who worship him in spirit and in truth (John 4:24). In context, the Spirit Jesus talks about is the Holy Spirit himself. We cannot truly worship God without the movement of the Holy Spirit within us. We cannot say, “Jesus is Lord” except by the Holy Spirit (see 1 Corinthians 12:3) and if we do not have the Spirit we do not belong to Christ (Romans 8:9). Christian pastoral care therefore cannot seriously leave a person in need believing that they have spiritual understanding or growth if they do not have the Holy Spirit. Leaving pastoral care in the hands of a psychologist or counsellor who doesn’t have a clear theological understanding of the role of the Holy Spirit in a person’s life is, for the Christian pastor, to abdicate their office and obligation to be the person who has responsibility for the cure of souls.

Our modern world sees pastoral care as something you do for people who are in crisis. Our theological colleges and seminaries do not help. They offer courses in pastoral care where students are asked to:

 Outline a scenario in which a person is seeking pastoral care support in response to:

- Unemployment and work-related stress

- Long term illness e.g., cancer 

- Alcoholism or drug dependence

- Domestic violence or abuse

Some of our theological colleges are teaching that pastoral care is for people who are in a crisis situation in which they need help. People who are sick need pastoral care. People who are having difficulties in a relationship need pastoral care. People with mental illness need pastoral care. People who are dying need pastoral care. However, this is a very truncated view of pastoral care. Christian pastoral care is so much more, so much richer, so much all-of-life-equipping. Christian pastoral care helps a person to know Jesus and to live a full life under His lordship. In the 4^th century Gregory of Nazianzus said pastoral care is, "to provide the soul with wings, to rescue it from the world and give it to God, and to watch over that which is in His image". Pastoral care is about rescuing a person from the world and giving them to God. It is not about helping a person cope with the world. It is about helping a person who is not of this world to live in it with a focus on God.

If it is true, as the keynote speaker at the chaplaincy conference said, that Chaplaincy informs Christian ministry, those involved with leading Christian churches as the pastor teacher are not listening. Our theological colleges and seminaries are not listening. Pastoral care is limited to times of crisis and often given to professionals who don’t have an understanding of the cure of souls. It is time for pastor teachers to bring pastoral care back into their role of equipping the saints for their work of ministry.

Scripture and Chaplaincy

by David Pettett

Chaplaincy seeks to bring the comfort and encouragement of the Lord to those in hard places. It seeks, “to give the soul wings and rescue it from the world and give it to God”, to use Gregory of Nazianzus beautiful expression. 

“Rescuing the soul from the world” is a recognition that chaplaincy’s focus is not on helping people to live better lives in this world, but to live in this world in the presence of God, whatever our circumstances. Our cancer may continue its ugly long and destructive journey in our body over many years. Chaplaincy does not teach that positive thinking will bring healing or that a right diet and meditation will cause the cancer to disappear. Chaplaincy helps us to know God’s presence in our distress and, while our body decays, we rest in His unchangelessness.

 

We have such confidence because God Himself has told us it is so. God has spoken to us. God has revealed Himself to us. We have confidence that He is with us because this is His promise. I know this to be true because I have a book which tells me it is true. This book is no ordinary book. It is God’s words to us, breathed out by God inspiring ordinary people to write down His words. We call this book the Bible. We use the word Scriptures to describe it. We believe that, “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.” (2 Timothy 3:16 ESV)

 

Christian chaplaincy has nothing to say to a hurting world if it does not bring these words of God to the people it encounters. Psychology and the human sciences inform us well of some of the nature of the human struggle and we profitably learn from it. Good counselling will be of great benefit to hurting people and chaplains are well advised to learn to be good counsellors. But if psychology and counselling are the extent of the comfort we offer people we fail as chaplains. Chaplaincy gives the soul wings.

 

We can only give the soul wings if we understand what God says about life in the Scriptures. Having a deep knowledge of the Scriptures and a pastorally sensitive love to speak the words of Scripture to a broken and hurting person, is the stuff of chaplaincy. A faithful Christian chaplain will have a confidence that every word of Scripture is God breathed and profitable for making a person complete.

 

I believe the Bible is the word of God. It is His inerrant word to us. I am not a fundamentalist in the sense that I believe in a six-day creation of literal 24 hours each. How could I believe that when the sun, by which we mark the hours of the day, was not created until the fourth day? But I do believe the Scriptures teach us who God is, what He has done for us and who He wants us to be. All Scripture is breathed out by God. However, there are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction (2 Peter 3:16. ESV). This is where the role of the chaplain comes in. We have the task of so speaking the Scriptures that they give the soul wings.

 

Our God acts in history, yet it is not history as such that we teach. What is important is what God says about those historical events where He acted. In the 1^st century A.D., the Roman government crucified thousands of people in the area of Palestine. At some points the roads were lined with men dying in agony, hanging on Roman crosses. It is not the mere historical fact of Jesus’ crucifixion that tells us that this one death among thousands brings salvation to the world. It is what God says about this one crucifixion which assures us that herein lies reconciliation between God and humanity. God’s words about the death of Jesus of Nazareth give so much more to life than just our observation of the event of his death.

 

Bringing God’s words to hurting people brings so much more meaning than the human sciences. Christian chaplaincy is about feeling confident that God speaks in the Scriptures and that what He says gives the soul wings.