Why women fail/succeed in ministry: Psychological factors

A study was made of the most and least successful women minister graduates of Christian Theological Seminary since 1959. Significant differences were found in several scales of the CTMM, the ACL and the MMPI. These indicated, for example, higher intelligence, a better self-image, more openness to feelings and to general human faults plus alternative viewpoints, more leadership ability and ability to take charge of their own lives, for the more successful women. Implications for helpful interventions were discussed.Dr. Cardwell is Assistant Professor of Psychology and Counseling and Director of the Pastoral Counseling Service at Christian Theological Seminary, 1000 West 42nd Street, Indianapolis, Indiana 46208.     

The Carkhuff model of counseling and religiousmetanoia

The article suggests some pastoral applications of a psychological counseling technique recently published by Robert R. Carkhuff and William A. Anthony. Specific attention is focused on the process of personal conversion ormetanoia. Theological implications are discussed.Reverend Griffin is Professor of Pastoral Psychology, St. John's Seminary, Boston, MA 02135.     

Toward a theology of maturity in pastoral care

Popular theology has neglected a developmental perspective and has reinforced the concepts of human inadequacy and divine self-sufficiency. This has tended to keep persons in a state of infantile dependency on a super-father-figure God. Pastoral care, with its concern for the person and its commitment to the processes of growing and maturing in the self and in relationships, needs a theological frame of reference which positively reinforces a developing maturity in relation to God, as well as self and others.Formerly Associate Professor of Psychology of Religion and Pastoral Care at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Dr. Woodruff is Executive Director of the Peninsula Pastoral Counseling Center, Hampton, Virginia.     

Persistence in seminary and in ministry

A follow-up study of 672 seminary students from 14 seminaries who took the Theological School Inventory in 1962 and 574 from 10 seminaries who took it in 1973 investigated factors involved in persistence in seminary and in ministry. Among those found were definiteness of decision, interest in parish ministry, a supportive spouse, unambivalent resolution of the authority problem, good role models in father and ministers. Motivations included redemptive outreach, pastoral care, Christian insight and scholarship, the encouragement of other people and a sense of effectiveness in ministry.Dr. Cardwell is Assistant Professor of Psychology and Counseling at Christian Theological Seminary, 1000 W. 42nd St., Indianapolis, Indiana 46208. This study was the basis for her Ph.D. dissertation, Indiana University, June, 1978. TSI data for the 1973 subjects were made available by Richard A. Hunt, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology, Southern Methodist University, and Director of Ministry Inventories, P.O. Box 8265, Dallas, Texas 75205. TSI data for the 1962 subjects were coded and made available by Edgar W. Mills. Ph.D., presently visiting Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Texas, San Antonio, formerly Director, Ministry Studies Board. Special credit is due the 16 seminaries who cooperated by furnishing follow-up data.     

Clergy divorce and remarriage

The incidence of clergy divorce and remarriage requires a rethinking of the church's position when the divine intent for marriage is not fulfilled. A ministry to clergy couples and families marked by truth and grace can lead to a restoration of persons and an effecting of constructive ministries for clergy who have themselves been restored.Dr. Brown is Assistant Professor of Pastoral Theology, Princeton Theological Seminary, CN 821, Princeton, New Jersey 08540. She is currently serving as the Chairperson of the Theological and Social Concerns Committee of the American Association of Pastoral Counselors.     

You must leave before you can cleave: A family systems approach to premarital pastoral work

We advocate the use of a family systems approach to premarital pastoral work, involving exploration of the families of origin of the intended spouses. Family systems theory argues that a marriage is like a merger of two corporations, each having its own stockholders; thus, adequate preparation for marriage involves coming to terms with the realities of one's family of origin and that of one's intended spouse. Exploratory techniques include genograms, house tours, family photo albums, and discussions of the rules and rituals in the respective families. Leaving father and mother is the central prerequisite to marriage.Dr. Mitchell is Professor of Pastoral Care and Theology, Eden Theological Seminary, 475 E. Lockwood Ave., Webster Groves, Missouri 63119. Dr. Anderson is Associate Professor of Pastoral Theology, Wartburg Theological Seminary, 333 Wartburg Place, Dubuque, Iowa 52001.     

Warren Zevon’s <Emphasis Type="Italic">The Wind</Emphasis> and Ecclesiastes: Searching for Meaning at the Threshold of Death

Telling one's story itself brings purpose to ones life, and it is an essential part of coming to grips with death. The book of Ecclesiastes and Warren Zevon’s album The Wind express the hope for social immortality rather than an actual afterlife. Both of them are suffused with a sense of death-awareness, although their location in time and place and the genre of their expressions are quite different. By looking closely at these texts, one is able to ascertain certain aspects of life review which are necessary for wholeness and completion. Hospice Chaplain CHRISTUS VNA Hospice and Palliative Care, 4415 Centerview, San Antonio, TX 78228, USA. Reverend Philip Browning Helsel is a hospice chaplain at CHRISTUS Hospice in San Antontio. He received his Master of Divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary and Clinical Pastoral Education units from Yuma Regional Medical Center in Yuma, AZ, and is an ordained minister in the Church of God (Anderson, IN). He has been a chaplain in psychiatric and general hospital settings. Past publications include articles in Pastoral Psychology and Presence, the Journal of Spiritual Directors International. He is working on a book about the life review process in literature and music, and applying for membership in the Association of Professional Chaplains.     

The Minister's own marriage

From a questionnaire study of 56 clergy couples and concurrent in-depth interviews with ten selected couples, findings and conclusions are reported. The difficulties confronting the pastor and his wife are discussed and suggestions offered to remedy them. Ministers' marriages are currently undergoing some stress due to social changes in our culture and to changes in the concept of ministry. Some promising new developments suggest that the necessary readjustments can be made over time.He also serves as Director and Staff Counselor of the Tenafly Pastoral Counseling Center and as Clinical Associate and Supervisor of Student Pastors at Drew Theological Seminary.     

Beginning thoughts on a theological method for ministry

There is an emerging consensus in theological education about the components of a method of practical theology. Some of these components are: experience in ministry, theological reflection, reflection in cognate disciplines (especially the human sciences), reflection on personal involvement, and planning for ministry. This article describes a nine-step method which can be used in local churches or seminaries to move from experience to reflection to planning for ministry.Dr. Poling is Assistant Professor of Pastoral Care and Counseling, Bethany Theological Seminary, Oak Brook, Illinois 60521.The author acknowledges that the method described in this article was developed in conversations with Donald E. Miller, Professor of Christian Ethics at Bethany Seminary.     

Zombie Alleluias: Learning to Live in the Space Between Worlds

This essay was delivered as the Baer Seminar on Pastoral Care at an alumni/ae reunion of Princeton Theological Seminary on October 22, 2013, and at a Princeton Seminary alumni/ae gathering at Preston Hollow Presbyterian Church in Dallas, Texas, on February 10, 2014. It considers an increasing fascination with zombies in recent American cultural life as a means by which individuals attempt to cope with anxieties related to the rise of political and religious extremism in the post-9/11 landscape. Building on Freud’s recognition of fundamentalist tendencies within the human psyche and his sense that modern persons are living psychologically “beyond their means,” it calls for an empathic embrace of the complexities of what Donald Capps deems the “ecumenical self” as a path toward engaging personal threats within and without.     

The rationing of health care: A doctor's dilemma

Physicians are currently presented with very difficult ethical issues regarding who receives what level of medical care and for how long. A meaningful response to these perplexing issues necessitates a collaboration of doctors with others steeped in religious and ethical traditions. This paper addresses the complicated issue of the rationing of health care, and this issue is then addressed by responses from representatives of the religious community. This symposium took place at the New York Hospital—Cornell Medical Center in March 1991.The Rev. Curtis W. Hart, M.Div. is Director of Pastoral Care and Education at the New York Hospital—Cornell Medical Center.The Rev. Paul Conner, O.P., is Associate Professor and Director of the Master's Program in Public Health Care Ethics at New York Medical College. Larry Rasmussen, Th.D., is Reinhold Niebuhr Professor of Social Ethics at Union Theological Seminary in New York. Dr. Harlan J. Wechsler is Rabbi of Congregation Or Zarua and Visiting Professor of Philosophy at Jewish Theological Seminary in New York.     

Use of family systems in preparation for ministry

Understanding the systematic dynamics of one's family of origin is necessary in preparation for ministry and can be most powerfully effected by engaging students in one of several family therapy techniques. Moreover, a family systems orientation is useful for theological explorations regarding family and Church as family, as well as enhancing skills for ministering to the contemporary family in all its diversity.Dr. Anderson is Associate Professor of Pastoral Theology, Waterburg Theological Seminary, Dubuque, Iowa 52001. Dr. Fitzgerald is Chaplain Supervisor, Medical Center at Princeton, Princeton, New Jersey 08540. This article stemmed from a presentation made by the authors on November 11, 1977, at the annual Conference of the Association for Clinical Pastoral Education.     

Envy: Further thoughts

Urges toward the good may be hidden in bad acts. A case in point is envy, which is often motivated by desire for the good. Its ill effects can be counteracted by this realization.Ann Belford Ulanov, M.Div., Ph.D., is Christiane Brooks Johnson Professor of Psychiatry and Religion at Union Theological Seminary in New York, a psychoanalyst in private practice, and Co-Editor of theJournal of Religion and Health.     

Personal and professional integrity in relation to pastoral assessment

Though concerns about personal integrity have led some to de-emphasize the role of assessment and the pastor's professional viewpoint in pastoral care, as re-examined here these same concerns call for a recognition of the vital connection between professional and personal integrity. The relationship between personal and professional integrity as they shape pastoral assessment is analyzed in terms of respect, encounter, and anticipation. The relationship of a theology of hope or anticipation to the predictive validity of pastoral assessment presents a challenging agenda for pastoral ministry today.Dr. Underwood is Associate Professor of Pastoral Care at the Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary     

A Poetic Path from Melancholy to Mourning: Robert Lowell's Elegies as Case Study

This essay builds on a previous one in this journal (Cole, 2005) that details how reading elegiac poetry, the poetry of mourning, may be a pastoral resource for complicated grief or what is classically termed melancholia. A study of elegies by poet Robert Lowell (1917–1977), which depict a progression from melancholia to more “typical” mourning, demonstrates how thinking and writing in elegiac terms may offer a similar resource, whether for one's own melancholia or that of persons in one's care. Allan Hugh Cole, Jr. is Assistant Professor of Pastoral Care at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary.     

John Nash: Three Phases in the Career of a Beautiful Mind

This article is the Helen Flanders Dunbar Lecture presented at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital in New York City in 2002, the centennial year of her birth. It focuses on three periods in the evolution of Nash’s mental illness, the predelusional, delusional, and postdelusional periods, and provides a psychoanalytic interpretation of each. Donald Capps is Professor of Pastoral Psychology at Princeton Theological Seminary. His books include Men, Religion, and Melancholia (1997), Living Stories: Pastoral Counseling in Congregational Context (1998), Social Phobia: Alleviating Anxiety in an Age of Self-Promotion (1999), Jesus: A Psychological Biography (2000), Giving Counsel: A Minister’s Guidebook (2001), Men and Their Religion: Honor, Hope, and Humor (2002), and A Time to Laugh: The Religion of Humor (2005). He has served as President of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion and has an honorary doctorate in theology from the University of Uppsala, Sweden. Correspondence to Donald Capps, joan.blyth@ptsem.edu     

Ethical reflection and pastoral care,part I

Many authors are calling pastoral counseling to give greater attention to issues of morality and ethics in the healing ministries. This article summarizes the main positions in theological ethics and argues that the ethic of character is the most appropriate form for the practice of pastoral counseling.Professor Poling is Assistant Professor of Pastoral Care and Counseling, Bethany Theological Seminary, Oak Brook, IL 60521. Part II of his article will appear in the Spring, 1984 issue.     

Social Phobia and the Experience of Shame: Childhood Origins and Pastoral Implications

While social phobia is typically diagnosed in adolescence, the roots of social phobia are found in childhood experiences of shame. When shame occurs because of a failure to meet a child’s need this creates a fundamental uncertainty which can become internalized in the form of self-contempt. Emotions such as sadness are sometimes forbidden by caregivers, and the expression of natural sexual drives are sometimes prohibited. Such experiences create shame and may keep the person from feeling emotions and drives because shame has displaced the real emotion. The fractures in early relationships can be restored through the healing presence of another. The pastor has access to persons with social phobia who may not be willing to seek psychiatric care and is in a unique position to bring the resources of the church to bear in the lives of persons with social phobia. To do so, she moves away from the extroverted frame of reference within which the church frequently operates.Philip Browning Helsel, a graduate of Princeton Theological Seminary, serves as a Chaplain Resident in the Clinical Pastoral Education program at Yuma Regional Medical Center in, Yuma, AZ     

Incarnation and pastoral care

This essay is an examination of the usefulness of incarnation as a theological metaphor for pastoral care and counseling. Understanding the incarnation as both an event and as a paradigm of God's relationship to the world provides a theological perspective for examining four interrelated questions about identity and the helping relationship frequently asked by the pastoral care-giver. The incarnation metaphor finally frees us to care in the confidence that in God the Incarnating One, all things, including our care for the sick, are held together.Dr. Anderson is Associate Professor of Pastoral Theology and Counseling at Wartburg Theological Seminary, 333 Wartburg Place, Dubuque, Iowa 52001.     

Counseling and the development of responsibility

Growth in counseling means growth in responsibility. Examination of this clinical observation reveals a threefold development. Specifically, the individual becomes more responsible by gaining an increased ability to acknowledge his faults, to exercise his freedom of choice, and to respond to his situation in a fitting way. Each development is an important part of being responsible, but the individual moves toward genuine fulfillment only when he is able to be responsible in the last sense.Dr. Aden is Professor of Pastoral Care at the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, 7301 Germantown Road, Philadelphia, PA 19119.