Pastors Who Love Too Much

(From Christianity Today)

Research has shown that a large percentage of people who enter the ministry are of a particular personality type: warm, empathic, attuned to feelings, concerned about relationships.

That makes them good pastors. But every silver lining has its cloud: this one brings with it the potential for emotional over involvement with a parishioner. The very trait that makes a pastor a good listener can bring him to grief, for the line between appropriate empathy and physical intimacy can be a thin one indeed.

A pastor’s personal warmth may mean he will not be comfortable maintaining a sense of professional distance. Pastors may envision themselves as a parishioner’s friend, helper, and sympathetic ear privy to the most personal feelings and intimate thoughts. But when they lose detachment and distance, ministers step into territory where judgment blurs, and rationalization can run wild, and where almost anything will be done for the sake of a person they care about.

To protect a pastor’s reputation and a counselee’s trust, some guidelines are in order. Try these:

1. Learn the signs of overinvolvement.

  • Myth: Ministers are called to risk their all for just one of the Lord’s sheep.
  • Fact: When the needs of a particular parishioner begin to dominate a pastor’s consciousness, he is becoming obsessive and is in danger of doing something stupid. It is probably time for that painful duty of breaking off the relationship and helping the parishioner find another counselor.

2. Learn to refer.

  • Myth: A pastor is competent to counsel parishioners.
  • Fact: Most pastors are armed with only a meager knowledge of behavioral therapies. A pastor’s calling is, primarily, a spiritual one, helping people to find strength in God’s presence and a sense of divine direction in the midst of difficulty. Psychological adjustment is a different matter, and when it requires serious attention, pastors should find ways of partnering with professional counselors or psychiatrists.

3. Learn to say no.

  • Myth: A pastor is a present help in time of emotional trouble.
  • Fact: A pastor is not always on call for every parishioner, but has to build boundaries around family and private life like anyone else. If the request cannot be handled during reasonably structured office hours (which today must include some evening and weekend time), it is probably robbing attention from a pastor’s spouse and children, or from his duty to the whole church to be a person of prayer and study.

4. Leave the office door ajar.

  • Myth: Parishioners will not openly discuss what is bothering them with the possibility that a secretary might overhear.
  • Fact: Counselees will open up soon enough. In the meantime, the knowledge that someone else is close by keeps both parties on their best behavior.

5. Avoid the appearance of impropriety.

  • Myth: In these sophisticated times, no one will care if you give her a ride home after Bible study.
  • Fact: There is a good chance that someone will care. Offer to pay for a taxi. And try carrying out home-visitation in pairs. The Lord sent out his disciples two-by-two. No one has improved on that pattern since.

6. Try to arrange same-sex counseling, especially where sexual matters are concerned.

  • Myth: A pastor can objectively listen to and discuss a parishioner’s sexual dysfunction.
  • Fact: A man cannot discuss with a woman the details of sexual function without mentally placing himself into the picture. If her husband is cold, demanding, and insensitive, what man will not think himself a lot better! What would definitely be better is woman-to-woman counseling.

7. Enter into an accountability covenant with another minister or a professional counselor.

  • Myth: A pastor does not need a pastor.
  • Fact: A pastor needs to talk through professional and personal challenges with a competent professional. It is better to share your personal feelings of need with a therapist or spiritual director than with a vulnerable, trusting counselee.

8. Don’t feel invulnerable.

  • Myth: It can’t happen to me.
  • Fact: It can. As Paul told the Corinthians, “Let any one who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall” (1 Corinthians 10:12).
–May/June 1992
The article, "Pastors Who Love Too Much." was prepared by the editors of Christianity Today, and is copyrighted by Christianity Today 1992. It is used here by permission.

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