> Rhys Bezzant Case #44 - Soul Care Chaplaincy Incarnation One-to-one Ministry Pastoral Care Psalms Theology & Philosophy

Our Days & God’s Years: Our Labours in Individual Settings

March 01, 2016

We saw in ‘Our Days and God’s Years: Pastoral care in times of change’ that Psalm 102 sets up some of the contours of care for individuals in difficult circumstances, and has provided us with the largest theological arc of all, namely the cosmic purposes of God and our place within them to understand the nature of service despite suffering. I want in this next section to expand on some of these points using history as our guide, for the points made eloquently by the psalmist are made concretely by reflection on Christian history as well.

One on one ministry

i) A Protestant contribution

It is of course correct to understand the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century as a period in which the authority of the Scriptures was reasserted over the instructions of the papal church, and in which the doctrine of justification by grace through faith was placed again at the centre of theological reflection. These are known as the formal principle and the material principle of the Reformation respectively. It can leave the impression, however, that the Reformation was essentially a movement for doctrinal clarification, pursued by professional theologians. It is probably better to understand the Reformation as a diverse movement to re-evangelise the laity, or to bring insights concerning the Scriptures and grace to bear on the lived experience of average church attenders. Recent scholars have argued that the Reformation in its various forms was, at its heart, a movement providing pastoral consolation to anguished souls. It is astounding to discover, for example, that the writings of Luther which sold best in his own day were his tracts or sermons on consolation.

The Reformation in Germany began in 1517 with Luther criticising the sale of indulgences, which was connected to the sacrament of penance. His critique was not, in the first instance, of the Mass, as was later the case in France. A leading strategy for care in the late middle ages was auricular confession before a priest, and the priest applying a variety of disciplines to the penitent believer, like repetition of the Lord’s Prayer/Our Father or the Hail Mary, or purchase of certificates of indulgence or forgiveness. The average church-goer only took the bread (without the wine) at most three times a year (at Christmas, Easter and Pentecost), so the main contact with the priest was at confession. But this so-called means of grace, rather than relieving anxiety concerning our status before God, furthered it by requiring good works. The laity was in need of deep and sustaining consolation. This strategy for one on one pastoral care had been misapplied. Luther’s attempts to reform the practice flagged his insight into the needs of parishioners for consolation, for care, which might extend beyond the priestly ministry of the ordained person. The cure of souls was being redefined. He expected—even from priests—less emphasis on listing sins, on demanding exercises of contrition, and more on gospel proclamation, coupled with voluntary visits for confession. Pastoral care for Luther was more about the person’s state before God than before others in the community. Perhaps this had all begun in the monastery, when Staupitz his mentor, seeing in Luther a troubled conscience, had advised him to look to Christ not his own sins, and to seek in the Scriptures his consolation in God’s powerful presence. The practice of pastoral care, while not divorced from ordained ministry, was given a new centre in the Word not the priest.[1]

A ministry of consolation is at the heart of all pastoral ministry, even when particular strategies for that ministry fall to the ordained person. We might name it as providing assurance, or being encouraging, but sharing the Word of grace is thoroughly Protestant and the broadest foundation of Christian ministry. Setting the individual within God’s gospel plans is a way to care.

ii) A variety of validation

One on one ministry has a venerable past, though at certain moments it has increased in importance. It is useful to point out that this kind of ministry, sometimes called spiritual direction, sometimes mentoring, sometimes soul care, has been of particular significance in those historical periods when the authority of the institutional church has, for whatever reason, been questioned or attacked. In times of dramatic social change, one on one ministries have often flourished, and this may have contributed to the growth of the confessional from the thirteenth century onward as the papal church groaned under its corruptions. Here, I want in particular to draw attention to the importance of one on one ministries during the great revivals of religion in the eighteenth century.

It is commonly assumed that the ministry of leaders like John and Charles Wesley, George Whitefield, or Jonathan Edwards was essentially about preaching or proclamation. And of course this did take up a large amount of their time and energy. What must not be lost, however, is the time and energy spent during the revivals to attend to the needs of individuals, who came to them after the preaching event for spiritual counsel and soul care. This reflects two things: both the skills for spiritual guidance that these preachers possessed, and the impoverished state of the church in the period. Even if, as some scholars have recently argued, the church was not as morally impotent as a previous generation of writers has assumed, it was nevertheless performing poorly in reaching the masses of those not attending church and in adapting to changing social realities.[2] When the church appears to have lost its authority, by virtue of moral compromise or social irrelevance, it is not surprising that those in need turn to particular individuals for care, insight, or validation. And asking for help can be a means of clarifying one’s own responsibility in the process, not assuming that an institution can do it all. This model of care has as its goal not to produce self-reliant individuals who ignore traditional authority, but rather humble and consoled Christians, who have experienced a measure of healing without waiting for others to take the initiative. When the church appears to fail in its task of educating the conscience, one on one ministry might be exactly what the Great Physician has ordered.

I suspect this is exactly the role of the chaplain, for the chaplain represents soft authority not hard authority, authority mediated through informal not formal channels. For example, in military settings, the chaplain is deliberately placed outside the line of command, but provides the authority of the institution in more personal and private ways. In hospitals, the chaplain takes the authority that the health professionals represent, but adapts that to the deeper needs for care that the patient presents with. A semi-institutional validation is enough for the distressed person to seek out the chaplain’s help, but does not assume that the treatment is complete or lacking in professional standards. The care in these circumstances can be adapted to the underlying needs of the client. There is in this relationship an expectation of voluntary engagement. The individual is at the centre of the encounter, not work outcomes or institutional goals narrowly defined. The individual’s needs are validated without compromising institutional values.

iii) The art of conversation

Another soft skill set which the nature of one on one ministry requires is an ability to cultivate the art of conversation. We might assume the presence of conversational ability everywhere, but it is explained or taught almost nowhere! Conversation has been valued throughout the ages, but it became an increasingly prized skill after the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century. That was the century of Parisian salons and London clubs. Both are testimony to the growth of voluntary association—people joining together not on the basis of coercion or control but on the basis of affinity, or interest, or attraction. As society became more urban in the industrial revolution, and members of society aspired to mobility and specialist interests as a function of growing wealth, so conversation grew as an expression of individual agency. It was still seen in the eighteenth century as a subset of moral formation, for national life was still understood in terms of the pursuit of the common good, though increasingly conversation was valued as an aid to psychological health, intellectual development and political stability as well. Democratic reform would be built not on power being presented from above, but negotiated through conversation from below. In an age of revivals amongst the Methodists in the United Kingdom, or amongst the Puritan Congregationalists in the American colonies, where strong emotions and the danger of social divisions were common, conversational arts took on another kind of role: to provide a buffer zone for strong views, creating a social space in which theological stability could be negotiated. This was also an age that was growing in informality, whether expressed through less planned landscape gardening, through less formal and more widespread capacity to engage in letter writing, indeed anywhere where previously excessive ceremony had been the norm. The arts of conversation were explained in popular periodicals to lubricate social etiquette where social norms were in flux.[3]

It seems to me that chaplains of all stripes need to be expert in conversational skills. This arises from our post-modern culture, where the local is prized above the universal, and there is nothing more local than an unscripted encounter between two individuals. In Australia, we are known for our informality and our aversion to the ceremonial, making pastoral care in ritual settings no less important but certainly less familiar. Of course our urban society is highly mobile and built on the pursuit of self-expression, of which conversation is a chief means. A democratic nation, and one in which strong emotions are brought to public debate, highlights the value of conversation to establish social stability. Indeed, in pastoral encounters, the sense of mutuality in conversation and the opportunity to negotiate an outcome fit well with our national temperament. Perhaps we are not so good at conversation because we are not so used to thinking grammatically or linguistically about our self-presentation: what is the right moment to ask a question, or how might we introduce new words into an exchange, or how might our ideas be received when we use parataxis rather than hypotaxis? I wonder if one of the chief tools of pastoral ministry in chaplaincy contexts is ever really taught seriously. If powerful words are our sword, instruction in verbal fencing is surely advisable.

iv) A testimony to incarnation

In the modern period, we have begun to use the category and vocabulary of incarnation to describe Christian ministries of all sorts. Traditionally Protestants have held that the incarnation of Christ was a means to the greater ends of atonement and resurrection: Christ could not die and rise unless he had a body to do it in. From the late nineteenth century, the belief that the incarnation was the chief strategy of God to redeem—drawing close that we might draw close to him—came to be held more widely, and Anglicans were in the vanguard of this change. The death of Christ on this score was a further example of costly suffering and solidarity, not a propitiation of the wrath of God.[4] The language of incarnation has been subsequently used to highlight the importance of intentional presence in ministry, positioning ministry as an opportunity to draw alongside others with less or indeed no place for speaking God’s words proactively. I am not a fan of the language of incarnational ministry because it seems to me that it woud be hard to do ministry in this world without having a body to do it in! Is not incarnational ministry just ministry?

Having declared my hand on the use of this style of language, I should also say that the incarnation of Christ might nonetheless flag for us a particular communication strategy, in which God accommodates himself to our capacity to hear and understand. Christ appears in a body because God can better demonstrate by that means human virtues that language struggles to capture and pass on. Just as Calvin said that God is like a nursing mother, who uses baby language at the cradle to speak in age-appropriate ways (see Institutes, Book I, chapter 13, section 1), so those of us in pastoral ministry, particularly those on the front line in chaplaincy, are functioning theologically as accommodating God’s communication to particular individuals. There is nothing as ‘incarnational’ as one one one ministry, for the person speaking and acting on God’s behalf accommodates communication not to a group but to an individual in need. Of course we have to be careful that we don’t indulge our generation by giving the impression that an individual can set the agenda for God. Holifield warns us that ‘the changing styles of pastoral conversation have closely parallelled those changing conceptions of the self in Protestant religious culture’.[5] But it is true nonetheless that being physically present with someone not only aids listening, but provides an example of how the words spoken are visible in the lived experience of the chaplain. Our intentional presence is an embodied testimony to the Lord Christ and the virtues and practices which he grows in us.

In a visual age, we must persevere in using words to communicate our message, but we must recognise too that a person who communicates the message with authenticity and integrity is more attractive than disembodied images on the internet, for the person in front of us has a greater chance of communicating integration and wholeness than fragmented experiences in the rest of our lives. Our world is fragmented, but our communication can be holistic as a sign of the life that is offered to us in Christ and through the church. Chaplains can offer a hand in friendship, eat and drink with those in their care, offer appropriate windows into another human’s soul, let emotions be evident through multiple senses, meet with people at a bedside, on the edge of the school oval, in a jail laundry, or on a street after a critical incident. In the end, human beings themselves are the best illustration of how living as a Christian can make a difference.

Our labour is not in vain

Christ is the chief shepherd of the flock, caring for us through his powerful Word which sustains all of reality and breaks into our lives to provide new hope. Indeed, Luther sees in this psalm the Lord Christ who provides the care we yearn for:

I cannot come to Thee. Therefore, O Lord, arise, come to me, and take me to Thyself. The arising refers to the very sweet and gracious coming of God into the flesh … to Christ and His kingdom.[6]

We labour in the Lord because we know that he first laboured for us, and so our labours are not in vain. We can have confidence in God’s powerful words:

God whose almighty Word

Chaos and darkness heard

And took their flight

Hear us we humbly pray

And where the gospel day

Sheds not its glorious ray

Let there be light!

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Burke, Peter. The Art of Conversation. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993.

Dierks, Konstantin. In My Power: Letter Writing and Communications in Early America. Early American Studies. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009.

Hempton, David. The Church in the Long Eighteenth Century. The I. B. Tauris History of the Christian Church. London: I. B. Tauris, 2011.

Holifield, E. Brooks. A History of Pastoral Care in America: From Salvation to Self-Realization. Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 1983.

Miller, Stephen. Conversation: A History of a Declining Art. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.

Trueman, Carl R. ‘Reformers, Puritans and Evangelicals: The Lay Connection’. Pages 17-35 in The Rise of the Laity in Evangelical Protestantism. Edited by Deryck W. Lovegrove. London: Routledge, 2002.

[1] Carl R. Trueman, ‘Reformers, Puritans and Evangelicals: The Lay Connection’. The Rise of the Laity in Evangelical Protestantism ed. D. W. Lovegrove (Routledge, 2002); Ron Rittgers, The Reformation of Suffering: Pastoral Theology and Lay Piety in Late Medieval and Early Modern Germany (Oxford University Press, 2012).

[2] See David Hempton, The Church in the Long Eighteenth Century The I. B. Tauris History of the Christian Church (I. B. Tauris, 2011).

[3] For more on these topics, see Peter Burke, The Art of Conversation (Cornell University Press, 1993), Konstantin Dierks, In My Power: Letter Writing and Communications in Early America Early American Studies (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), or Stephen Miller, Conversation: A History of a Declining Art (Yale University Press, 2006).

[4] For more on this, see Charles Gore, ed., Lux Mundi: A Series of Studies in the Religion of the Incarnation. 10th edition (John Murray, 1890).

[5] E. Brooks Holifield, A History of Pastoral Care in America: From Salvation to Self-Realization (Wipf & Stock, 1983), pp351-352.

[6] Martin Luther, Luther’s Works, Vol. 14: Selected Psalms III ed. Jaroslav Jan Pelikan, Hilton C. Oswald, and Helmut T. Lehmann, Vol. 14 (Concordia Publishing House, 1999), p183.