Slide One: Cover Sheet
Gary R. Mauldin Ph.D.
Holston Conference Pastoral Counseling Center
The ethical practice of Christian Ministry
Slide Two: World Trade Center (film clip)
Introduction
September 11, 2001 will always be one of those dates that live in our collective memory. I had completed in June of that year 21 years of ministry as a local Church pastor. My oldest son was in his first year of college. My youngest son was in his third year of High School. And for the first time, I was not preaching. I was in one of those in between periods of life. I was teaching marriage and family counseling and doing research at a University and Graduate School and waiting for God’s call to come.
As I walked across campus toward the library I noticed that the campus silent. People were walking but no one was talking. We were all in shock. Whatever models that we had used to understand and conceptualize our world were gone in a moment. I was thinking of how out of place I felt. I would be teaching that evening on the nuances of Freudian Psychology, but what I sensed was an intense desire to say something. I felt the need to preach in that gap between our hurt and pain. I wanted to sing a hymn of faith. I longed to be in the fellowship of others. In those moments I sensed, as many of you did, God’s call on my life. If I was to respond to that call I would have to reclaim it. I would have to reclaim what I had left and what I would do in ministry. And that is where we are; we need to reclaim God’s call on our lives. We need to reclaim our calling and connection to our covenant community and to one another.
Slide Three: Challenges to Christian Ministry
Challenges to Christian Ministry
We are living in a unique time in the history of the Church. It is a time of great peril and opportunity. So, I like this labyrinth because it reinforces to me our calling to ministry and the need to follow the path that God has put before us.
Slide Four: Labyrinth Picture
Ministry today is like traversing a labyrinth. Our calling is more than preaching a well honed sermon and leading an exciting Bible study or offering superb pastoral care. Certainly the concepts and values of Word, Sacrament, Order and Service continue to be at the heart of what we are as clergy. However, we face unique demands because of the realities of the current world situation and the need for appropriate ethical behavior. So, this labyrinth represents to me the challenges and opportunities we have for ministry today. Let me briefly outline a few of those challenges as I see them.
Slide five: Our First Challenge
Our first challenge: How do we preach and teach the Word of God that will be both biblically and culturally relevant? We need to be truthful to our congregations about what the Bible says. However we also must be sensitive to the cultural milieu of the congregations we serve. If the message is too familiar then we will be dismissed as irrelevant and spiritually non-challenging. If the message is too different then the congregation will reject us as a radical.
Our preaching must be culturally relevant, inclusive in language, theologically coherent, emotionally moving, personal, referenced like a doctoral dissertation, and spiritually challenging.
Slide Six: Our second Challenge
Our second challenge: Being true to our calling as spiritual leaders where the cry of our parishioners is, “We have never done it that way before.” Congregations long for something new and innovative so long as it is not too new and innovative. We may struggle with joining in a style of worship that they find comfortable but is strange to us. We can confront the difference and challenge the congregation to change which will lead to anxiety and hurt.
Slide Seven: Our third Challenge
Our third challenge: How do we fulfill our calling as “pastor in charge” without appearing to be the “Pastor in control?”
Slide Eight: Rick Warren
I like what Rick Warren (2002) said, “It’s not about you,” We are not the “clergy in control.” Rather, we have been invested with the responsibility of facilitating the spiritual growth of the Church and the well being of the persons under our care. However, lay folk need to hear that message as well. “It’s not about me, and what I want.” We are all called to be open to spiritual growth and the transformation of our lives. It goes both ways. Now, I use the term “growth” here in the broadest sense of the term.
The Church “growth” metaphor has been used in recent years to argue for a value concerning an increase in numbers as the true measure of the well being of congregation. In my mind, “Church growth” should involve more than the sheer wonder of a number. Unfortunately, we have bought into a philosophy whereby congregations and pastors are evaluated not in terms of the subjective growth of spiritual experience but by what I have called “Babylonian numerology.”
Slide Nine: Babylonian Numerology
This is the relative degree of numerical growth in membership, attendance, budget, and noise. “Noise?” that is simply the numbers of persons who voice unhappiness. I fear in our quest for numerical growth we have lost our sense of mission which is fundamentally about character and commitment. Our focus should be on inviting persons into the possibilities found in a spirit filled life and not the moral bankruptcy of a number.
Slide Ten: Our forth challenge
Our fourth challenge: How to provide skilful and appropriate pastoral care in a culture inundated with stories of clergy abuse and misconduct. We have been called to counsel persons who are in spiritual and emotional distress and to visit in the homes of our members and prospective members. However, because of the problems with clergy who have failed to maintain appropriate boundaries we live with the fear that even if we do our job well we may still be accused of misconduct.
Many judicatories and congregations have adopted detailed policies regarding ethical guidelines for pastoral care such as leaving office doors open or having windows installed in them. The earlier Books of Discipline aspirational ethic that suggested clergy adhere to the highest ideals of Christian character and witness has now been reduced to codes of ethical behavior we cannot and must not do. The benefit of such polices is that we now know what behaviors to avoid if we want to prevent litigation, humiliation and loss of our ministerial credentials. Where the codes fail is in the area of the truth that we most need, clarity concerning what it means to be Christian and clarity concerning the ethical practice of Christian Ministry.
Last year when I talked to you about ethical issues related to pastoral care a couple of persons talked to me that I may have given the impression that clergy should not provide counsel or pastoral care to persons. In my discussion of the differences between professional counseling and pastoral care giving, in no way did I mean to diminish the important role clergy have in providing care and spiritual support. What I was trying to say last year and what I want to say this year is that prevention polices such as having windows in doors are not going to solve issues related to clergy abuse.
Our problem is ethical confusion on the role and function of Christian ministry and not inadequate architectural features of our Churches. Doors do not cause or prevent people from abusing others. People make those choices. Our issue is fuzziness concerning our core values and theological foundations for the ethical practice of Christian ministry.
Slide eleven: “A bit of Advice”
Slide Twelve: Bear
Slide Thirteen: Theological Foundations
Theological Foundations of Ethical Inquiry
Now, if those are the challenges we face, then what are the Wesleyan theological foundations that we need for ethical decision making as Christian ministers? For this part I revisited Theodore Runyon’s (1998) book, “The New Creation: John Wesley’s Theology for today,” and Wesley’s Quadrilateral and our theological task.
The Word of God and Ethics
As United Methodists we have long affirmed the Bible as the primary source for our faith and tradition. So does it surprise you for me to say that our ethical decision making should begin with the Bible? We need to re-affirm that ethical decision making begins, not with the important influences of modern science, psychology, or what is politically relevant but with the primacy of the message of the Word of God for the people of God that we receive in scripture. So, what does the Bible say about ethics?
For one thing, the Bible affirms we are a part of a world community where we are all created by God and we are all created equally. As humans we are more alike than different. We have similar desires for relationship and connection with others. We also struggle with brokenness and human sin that separates us from our families, community, world and the God that created us.
It is not the Word that I use to serve my own needs and desires. Rather the Bible is God’s Word to the world for the whole world. We can never be rightly related to God until we are rightly related to each other. Similarly, we can never be right with others until we are rightly related to the God that created us. That is what Buber (1958) meant when he suggested “hate is always blind.”
Finally, the Bible is the primary theological source for ethical decision making because of the hope that it affirms to the world. Jesus affirmed a way of loving other people that does not ask for love to be reciprocated. “You have heard it said to love your neighbor as yourself, but I say that you love your enemies too.” He taught us to love, not because we have been loved but for the purpose of loving others unilaterally. We love the people that Jesus loved and we love the people we do not like. The ethical practice of ministry is based upon the embodiment of God’s love for the whole world in and through the ministry of all Christians.
Calling from within and toward Community
A second source for ethical decision making is the tradition of the whole Church. Sue was a middle age second career person who I was interviewing for a recommendation as a prospective candidate for ordination. One of the other committee members asked Sue, “How did you come to decide to become a minister?” Without hesitation Sue responded, “Because God has called me to be a preacher!” Sue seemed a bit frustrated by such an obvious question. It was like the committee should have already known the answer. Then another committee member asked her the critical question, “Sue, how did you come to know that God has called you to preach.” At this point Sue became angry and upset. It was like we were questioning her integrity. Sue’s assumption was that we ought to ordain her simply because she had come to the point in her life when she believed that God was calling her to preach. The interview committee was simply an irrelevant hoop that she had to jump through. But the committee would not be satisfied until they had an answer, “Sue, how did you come to know that you were called?”
She finally acquiesced and told a lengthy story of the process that she had gone through to come to this place in her life. What was interesting was that at no point had Sue audibly heard God’s voice call her nor had she experienced a vision where she saw God calling her to preach.
Rather, Sue told us about all of the people that she had talked with and that had encouraged her to pursue this career. She had spoken with several clergy all of whom suggested that she had gifts and graces for ministry. She had spoken with her family and spouse who had confirmed their belief in her gifts and offered their support. She mentioned a number of friends that had suggested she do this. In other words, God’s call on Sue’s life came out of a community and not on top of a mountain. Therefore, I would affirm that a second source for ethical decision making is the tradition of the whole Church. Our calling as ministry professionals does not begin in a vacuum. As Eddie Fox and George Morris (1996) have suggested, “we are not called to go home and be Christian on our own.” Rather, the ethical practice of Christian ministry begins and ends in the context of community and relationship. We are not called to go where ever we want to go. Nor or we called to preach what ever we want to preach. Our ethical obligation is rooted within a particular United Methodist and Wesleyan expression of faith and within a particular faith community.
So the question we must learn to ask ourselves is: “How does my practice of ministry fit with our United Methodist and Wesleyan values, culture and tradition. In my years of experience most ethical violations have occurred because a theological fundamental was either ignored or breached. It is as if we thought that part of the tradition or Bible did not apply to me or did not apply in this case.
A vital spiritual Experience
A third source for ethical decision making is the need for a vital spiritual experience. As Gustavo Gutierrez (1973) suggested, “we each must drink from our own wells.” Our understanding of Christian faith and the ethical practice of Christian ministry needs to be more than an intellectual pursuit. It must involve more than the pursuit of pure knowledge. Christian ethics assumes that one will be, in a word, Christian.
Robert Mullholland (1979) once suggested that a person can read a number of books on snow skiing. You can learn everything there is to know about the topic of snow, mountains, and skis. But until you put on a pair of skis and buy a lift ticket to ride to the top of a mountain and start down that slop. Fundamentally you are not a skier. And I would add that it is impossible to be healthy in ministry unless and until we practice the holiness of life that we preach.