The myths of relationship abuse

Fortunately, people are becoming more aware than they used to be of the existence of relationship abuse and are consulting ministers and pastoral counselors to help them deal with this problem. Unfortunately, several myths exist regarding relationship abuse which, if taken as fact, are counterproductive to people involved in such relationships and countertherapeutic for the ministers and pastoral counselors who are attempting to help. This article addresses four commonly held myths regarding relationship abuse and the attendant pastoral implications. is a pastoral consultant and conductor of workshops. He makes his home in Tiburon, California.     

Why do people remain in abusive relationships?

Increasingly ministers and pastoral counselors are being consulted by people who are in abusive relationships. Consequently, it is important for all ministers and pastoral counselors to develop both an intellectual and an emotional appreciation for the complexities involved in remaining in, or leaving, abusive relationships. This article discusses six basic reasons why people choose to remain in abusive relationships, and concludes with three pastoral implications for ministers who counsel people in such relationships.     

Testosterone and occupational choice: actors, ministers, and other men

Occupational differences in testosterone concentrations, focusing on actors and ministers, were explored in 3 studies. The 1st examined salivary testosterone in 7 occupational groups and an unemployed comparison group and found actors and football players higher than ministers but no other significant differences. The 2nd examined salivary testosterone in 2 kinds of actors (stage actors and comedians) and 2 kinds of ministers (pastoral ministers and missionaries) and found actors high and ministers low but no differences between subgroups within each occupation. The 3rd examined serum testosterone in entertainers and ministers in an archival sample of military veterans and found entertainers high and ministers low. The results are interpreted in terms of dominance and antisocial tendencies, with the conclusion that these variables are complex and can affect occupational preference in subtle ways.     

Clergy Work-Related Psychological Health: Listening to the Ministers of Word and Sacrament Within the United Reformed Church in England

Drawing on the classic model of balanced affect proposed by Bradburn (The structure of psychological well-being, Aldine, Chicago, IL, 1969), this study conceptualised poor work-related psychological health in terms of high levels of negative affect in the absence of acceptable levels of positive affect. In order to illuminate self-perceptions of work-related psychological health among a well-defined group of clergy, a random sample of 58 ministers of word and sacrament serving within the west midlands synod of the United Reformed Church in England completed an open-ended questionnaire concerned with the following six guiding questions. Do you enjoy your work? How would you define stress? How would you define burnout? What stresses are there in your ministry? What do you do to keep healthy? What can the church do to enhance the work-related psychological health of ministers? Content analysis highlighted the main themes recurring through these open-ended responses. The conclusion is drawn that ministers of word and sacrament within the United Reformed Church in England are exposed to a number of recurrent recognisable sources of stress. Suggestions are advanced regarding the need for future more detailed research and for the development of more effective pastoral strategies.     

A Phonological Existential Analysis to the Book of Job

This current article “A Phonological Existential Analysis to the Book of Job” explores the various ways that Job’s friends attempted to help him deal with his grief. Dr. Johnson is able to identify the various stages of grief that Job goes through and correlate each stage and the response from the friends in current psychological terms. It becomes clear that various practices of modern psychotherapy can be seen in each response from Job’s friends. It is reasonable to conclude that the responses from Job’s friends were part of the therapeutic process that moved Job to a state of rationality and wholeness. While the article approaches the Book of Job from a psychotherapeutic standpoint, it does not distract for the spiritual teachings found in the document. Fred Johnson is licensed as a counseling psychologist and is certified as a school psychologist. Dr. Johnson has worked many over 15 years as a private practicing family therapist and behavior specialist. Dr. Johnson completed his doctorate in counseling psychologist at the University of Louisville and attended Southern Baptist Theological Seminary obtaining a degree in pastoral psychology. He currently owns Educational Resource Services, a company that is dedicated to providing seminars in classroom behavior management throughout the United States and Canada. Dr. Johnson has published two books, Effective Discipline for the Difficult Child and From Chaos to Control: Managing Disruptive Classroom Behavior. He has also published several research studies, including ones dealing with the role of the ministers and a pastoral approach to divorce.     

Pastoral hermeneutics and the challenge of a global economy: care to the living human Web

The author discusses the relationship between a pastoral hermeneutics and the current social context as determined by international communication and globalization. He explores the influence of telecommunications on the human quest for meaning and the implication of this for pastoral care and counseling. A paradigm shift is proposed in terms of care to the living human web. A pastoral assessment which interprets the undergirding philosophy and belief system of globalization and its influence on human dignity is suggested; and a pastoral ministry which takes up its prophetic task and voices the needs of people in terms of a "globalization from below" is explicated.     

A challenge to church leaders: the necessity of supervision for ordained ministers

This article is an explicit challenge to church leaders and ministers of all denominations to take seriously the necessity of obligatory supervision for ordained ministers. To support this challenge, the author describes fundamental principles of pastoral care that found the moral demand for and benefits of the supervision of pastoral practice. Before offering practical suggestions on the implementation of supervision, reasons for the personal and institutional resistance to supervision of ordained ministers are depicted.     

Render Unto Caesar: Pastoral Care and the American Empire

This article addresses the relation between the American Empire and the intriguing contradictions and problems that arise for pastoral ministers who live in and are citizens of the empire. Sources and characteristics of the American Empire are described, which serves as a foundation for identifying four key features of an empire psyche. The attributes of the empire psyche, which are yoked to pastoral identity and practice, contradict central Christian claims. Given the reality of the American Empire and an empire psyche, I identify and describe some pastoral struggles and possible responses.

PASTORAL PSYCHOTHERAPY: IS IT UNIQUE?

Proponents and practitioners of pastoral psychotherapy hold to the idea that it is a unique form of psychotherapy. Little empirical or procedural evidence seems to exist to substantiate that viewpoint. Indeed, the data suggest that pastoral psychotherapy is a close kin to secular psychotherapy, not only in practice, but in the opinion of those who seek it out for help. This article takes the viewpoint that pastoral psychotherapy should be unique and attempts to show how it can be. The author stresses that it is ordination that makes pastoral psychotherapy unique, because the ordained pastor is both a theologian and a representative of the church. These two elements provide unique “lenses” for doing psychotherapy. To the extent that these lenses are not being used, the author issues a challenge to pastoral psychotherapists to bring this uniqueness to the forefront.     

Cognitive development: Pastoral implications

How people think influences how they feel, and this combination of thinking and feeling drives behavior. While ministers often have a good understanding of the emotional dimension of the people who seek their counsel, xthe importance of cognitive development has often been understated in their education and training. With this in mind, this article discusses seven developmental stages of cognitive development and how each stage affects daily behavior. This discussion is followed by four pastoral implications.     

Discrete varieties of care in the clinical pastoral tradition: continuing the dialogue

In the current cultural context, clinically trained ministers, lay and ordained, offer themselves to troubled souls through at least three distinct varieties of assistance: pastoral care, pastoral counseling, and pastoral psychotherapy. This essay delineates three accepted disciplines, emphasizing the importance of ascertaining, and perhaps re-evaluating, the particular needs and desires of persons who are in physical, mental, or spiritual distress. "Pastoral care," "pastoral counseling," and "pastoral psychotherapy" each play an important role in fulfilling the traditional mandate for "the cure of souls."     

Family counseling: Basic concepts for ministers

Much of the time that ministers spend counseling is taken with family related issues. Yet many ministers find themselves in the difficult position of having little or no formal education or training in family counseling. This article deals with some basic issues related to problematic families and pastoral counseling that are meant to bridge the gap between having no formal training in family counseling and having advanced training and education.     

Avoiding malpractice suits in pastoral counseling

This article advises caution for ministers engaged in pastoral counseling and describes the necessary elements of a successful malpractice suit. Areas of special concern for the counselor are reviewed and guidelines for professional conduct and self-protection are outlined.     

Text and Tune,Speaking and Listening: Musical Resources in Pastoral Care

This article examines the power of music to help transform suffering. It draws on insights from the work of music theorist David Schwarz (1997) that bridges psychoanalysis, music, and culture; and from Daniel Levitin’s (2008) work on music and human nature, especially as it pertains to religion, ritual and songs. Schwarz describes listening to music as a process of retrospective fantasy and as a type of transference experience. If how we listen to music is shaped by traces of past experiences, then music as a resource in pastoral care has the potential to assist ministers in the process of guiding their parishioners to re-trace painful experiences in ways that “re-sound” with thoughts and feelings which have become an impediment to healing. A “case study” in which the author was a “player” (or more accurately performer) is briefly examined, and the role of music in the lives of Steve Lopez and Nathaniel Ayers (Lopez 2008) is explored to demonstrate how music—specifically religious music or song associated with religious ritual—is an overlooked resource for pastoral care. The article concludes with an illustration of how individuals’ personal associations with a hymn may have implications for pastoral care.     

Ministering to cancer patients

Ministers, both ordained and lay, face a special challenge in caring for cancer patients and their families. It is important for seminarians and ministers to have not only a basic understanding of cancer but also of the myriad psychological and spiritual dynamics that cancer patients and their families present. Cancer presents severe stress not only for patients and families but also for ministers who care for them. It is vitally important for ministers to develop the competence and confidence necessary to face this challenge. Michael E. Cavanagh, Ph.D., is a pastoral consultant and conductor of workshops who makes his home in Tiburon, California.     

Phenomenology and pastoral care

The author discusses phenomenology as a potential resource for pastoral care generally and then illustrates its implications in two specific areas of pastoral care. After a brief discussion of the development of phenomenology, he defines pastoral care and identifies its methodological problem. Phenomenology, it is argued, offers potentially helpful methods and interpretative categories in its attitude, its attempts at self-aware, ordered discernment, and its anthropology. It serves to militate against the temptation in pastoral care to understand human problems in terms of individual and social pathology, in the case of individuals, and to illumine the ways the community functions as a dimension of pastoral care.He is the author ofEcclesial Man.     

Contemplation and compassion: the heart of a Franciscan spirituality of clinical pastoral supervision

After five years of supervising CPE modules in two different hospitals in South Africa, a chaplain supervisor reflects on how his Franciscan spirituality had impacted his supervisory ministry. He describes how he was able to narrow the impact to two defining Franciscan qualities: contemplation and compassion. This article explores the relationship between spirituality and clinical pastoral supervision. Then the Franciscan dimension of contemplation and compassion of Franciscan spirituality are considered. Finally some contours of a Franciscan spirituality of clinical pastoral supervision are described.     

Informed consent and parish clergy

Pastors are given permission by others to extend care and to practice ministry. This permission may be given in denominational policy, congregational expectations, or individual requests for pastoral care. At the individual level, permission for pastoral care can be understood as analogous to the notion of informed consent in health care ethics. Informed consent is a compound concept involving: (1) the sharing and clarifying of relevant information, and (2) the respect for a person's consent for care or refusal of care. It functions as a guard both against harm and against unwanted beneficence. Because many expectations for pastoral care are not explicitly stated, ministers need to develop sensitivity to hear both requests for help and requests for privacy.     

Training for pastoral care and its ecumenical dimension

Summary Responsible to a pluralistic society more directly than to a denominational constituency, ministers in training for pastoral care in public institutions engage simultaneously in ecumenical associations and in the construction of an ecumenically validated pastoral theology. The process was clearly under way in the pioneering work of Boisen, and it continues today with greater scope and a larger harvest. If present indications have predictive value, the history of ecumenicity in the last half of the Twentieth Century will make a modest but secure place for the discovery and use of clinical methods of training for pastoral care.     

Clergy wives of the new generation

This article describes the changes that are occurring in the lives of wives of ministers, the difficulties and satisfactions they are experiencing, the issues they are confronting. It presents the thesis that the crucial change in the past 15 years for wives of ministers is that they no longer derive their primary identity from being ministers' wives, and therefore they are less involved in their husbands' ministries and more focused on their own issues and careers.Dr. Niswander is a pastoral counselor and senior staff member of the Pastoral Psychotherapy Institute, 1580 N. Northwest Highway, Park Ridge, Illinois 60068. She has been the wife of a United Methodist minister for 27 years and was recently ordained by that denomination as an elder herself. She has led retreats, workshops and study groups for wives of ministers as well as counseling them professionally.