Hidden Feelings of the Heart
Each of us has a reservoir of feelings rooted in significant relationships with people from our past–parents, grandparents, siblings, childhood friends, former sweethearts, and, occasionally, former spouses. The more closely people and circumstances in the present resemble people and circumstances from our past, the greater the likelihood that our present response will be colored by hidden feelings of the heart. Thus, totally objective responses to life are extremely rare. Interactions between ministers and laypeople can stimulate these historic patterns of emotional response.
The minister-layperson relationship is unique
The relationship between ministers and congregants is unique. In no other professional relationship does this same intensity of feelings exist. Physicians or therapists who experience this phenomenon are much more protected by (1) the more structured, professional nature of their relationship and (2) the limited amount of time they spend with each patient. Ministers, however, may be with church members as much as five times per week for church services, board and committee meetings, church social events, and personal moments of sharing.
Minister-layperson relationships resemble family relationships. Jesus spoke of the similarity between a person's natural family and his or her spiritual family (cf. Mark 3:31-35). Perhaps this explains why the pastor is often viewed as a substitute parent figure by many people.
When ministers and laypeople have had healthy family relationships, their relationships with each other are likely to be pleasant. But if they have experienced unhealthy family relationships, some potentially explosive situations exist in the church family.
MINISTERS AS AUTHORITY FIGURES
Ministers who have not had healthy relationships with the authority figure in their natural families may have difficulty being healthy authority figures in their churches. Some may abuse authority; some may not be able to take criticism; and others may be too timid to exercise ministerial authority, even at times when it is critical to the unity of the church.
Laypersons who were abused by authoritarian parents may be predisposed to resent any expression of ministerial authority, regardless of how healthy it may be. These people may lash out angrily at the pastor–venting anger they were never able to express toward their parents.
Those members who had a tendency to idolize their parents may also idolize their pastor.
In the eyes of some members, the minister and his or her family can do no right. But in the eyes of others, they can do no wrong. Healthy ministers are not deceived by either critics or fans. They know that the real minister exists somewhere between the pit and the pedestal.
Only God knows the endless complications caused in the lives of sincere ministers, board members, and laypeople because of these hidden and misunderstood feelings of the heart (cf. Jeremiah 17:9; John 1:8).
MINISTERS AS IDEALIZED SPOUSES OR LOVERS
Those who believe their own spouses are insensitive tend to see their pastor as possessing all the romantic and tender traits they find missing at home. But in most cases one frank conversation with the pastor's spouse would help them replace their view with a more realistic picture.
General Guidelines for Pastoral Counseling 1. Maintain confidentiality. The exception to this rule would be if there are ethical or legal reasons dictating the breaking of a confidence. It is imperative that ministers familiarize themselves with the laws in their state pertaining to privileged communications with the clergy and to the exceptions to confidentiality. 2. Avoid manipulating the counselee. Many persons in crisis who seek ministers out are vulnerable. 3. Avoid making decisions for the person seeking help. Many persons come to ministers expecting divinely revealed answers to their problems. The minister can be directive in his or her approach in counseling but should be careful about making decisions for the counselee. 4. Do not inappropriately carry messages. There are times in the ministry of reconciliation when interpreting the behavior or words of one person to another can be appropriate and healing. However, because the minister often has contact with the family or group the counselee may be in conflict with or alienated from, sometimes there is the desire or expectation on the part of the counselee that the minister act as a messenger. This is inappropriate. 5. Do not be a voyeur. The minister must be careful not to seek information that is not germane to the issue at hand. Seeking information for sexual titillation is inappropriate, unfair, and counterproductive. 6. Never become romantically or sexually involved with a counselee. A one-on-one counseling relationship with a person of the opposite sex can be powerfully seductive. Ministers should make sure someone else is in the office area if they are counseling someone of the opposite sex. They should also see a person for only three sessions. –Adapted from Randolph K. Sanders, ed., Christian Counseling Ethics: A Handbook for Therapists, Pastors & Counselors (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1997), 83-84. Used by permission. |
Another potentially dangerous situation occurs when those of the opposite sex seek counseling from their minister. Usually, they are suffering from abusive or broken love relationships and are seeing the minister at a vulnerable time in their lives. Regardless of the circumstances, ministers are legally and morally responsible for protecting themselves and their counselees from any breach of physical boundaries and from any amorous feelings they may experience in the course of the counseling sessions.
Professional counselors refer to the feelings stirred up in counselees toward their counselors by memories of people and situations from their past as transference. Similarly, these same kinds of feelings that occur in the counselor's mind during the counseling relationship are referred to as countertransference.
Transference is the unconscious process whereby the counselee shifts onto the counselor those feelings and fantasies, positive and negative, rooted in reactions to significant people from the counselee's past. Countertransference is the counselor's unconscious emotional responses to a counselee–responses which are likely to interfere with objectivity.
Satan takes advantage of these hidden feelings of the heart to frustrate the healing process and bring as much destruction as possible to both the counselee and the ministerial counselor. Wise ministers understand that any amorous feelings counselees may have toward them are not due to their irresistible physical attraction or charm. Such feelings grow out of admiration for and implicit trust in the minister as a person of God. Were they not ministers, such attractions would never develop. Counselees can be “in love” with the ideal parent/spouse figure of their dreams–the representative of God who tries to explain divine love to them, not the flesh-and-blood person who sits across the counseling office.
DEVELOPING AND APPLYING CONTROLS
Ministers must carefully guard each counselee's trust and take total responsibility for all emotional transactions during the counseling process. They must protect both vulnerable counselees and themselves from counselees' feelings toward them. They must also protect themselves and their counselees from inappropriate feelings they sense they are developing toward their counselees.
How do you go about doing this? You discipline yourself to take certain deliberate steps in preparing for each counseling session. When I first walk into my office in the morning, I begin to prepare myself, spiritually and mentally, for the people I am going to see.
I start by scanning my list of appointments and mentally noting the unique set of emotions each client's name triggers in me. Although I want the Lord to help me serve each of them equally well, I do not have the same feelings toward each of them.
If you are going to be honest and effective in a counseling situation, you cannot ignore the uniqueness of the person you are seeing and your particular reaction to him or her. Of course, you don't share this information with a counselee.
Occasionally, the name of an attractive and challenging female client appears on my list. My feelings are likely to immediately respond to the prospect of seeing her. Even though she may only be attracted to me in my fantasy and not hers, it is always my responsibility to make the session safe for her–and me.
Through the years the Lord has helped me define and observe a discipline of protection for female counselees and myself that has proven very effective. It consists of eight simple, commonsense steps:
- Maintain a physical boundary of 3 to 5 feet from the counselee. Each of us needs from 2 to 3 feet around us to feel safe and secure.
- Be prayerfully aware of your feelings in the counseling process.
- Be prayerfully attentive to the feelings you sense from the counselee.
- Understand that counseling is an engagement in spiritual warfare, fought over the urges, fantasies, and ideas from which the choices of the counselee will come.
- Realize the essential utilization of biblical truth and prayer in the counseling process.
- Honor the counselee as a child of God and respect the sacredness of physical boundaries. (I never touch a woman counselee.)
- Realize that at any given moment in the counseling session, your control over your life and the ministry God has given you is only as secure as the 3 to 5 feet of distance you maintain between yourself and the counselee.
- Frequently remind yourself of what would happen to your spouse, your family, your ministry, your fellow ministers, and all those who put their trust in you if they learn you have damaged yourself and someone else by failing to control the physical boundaries of the counseling relationship.
Every year, I see several ministers who have failed to discipline themselves in their relationship with counselees of the opposite sex. This is a zero-tolerance area. Such behavior tarnishes the image of Christ.
Seldom do these ministers think about the damage they have done not only to the counselees' families but to the ability of the rest of the church to trust another minister. More than once, an angry and disillusioned board member has said to me, “How am I supposed to explain to my children that the pastor can no longer be our pastor?” The congregation of the fallen pastor is a deeply wounded group of people.
OTHER FEELINGS THAT CAN COMPLICATE RELATIONSHIPS
Sexual temptation is not the only way Satan uses the hidden feelings of the heart to disturb the peace of a congregation. Ministers must also guard their relationships with board, committee, and church members.
They need to be aware of three underlying feelings that are likely to complicate church relationships unless they are recognized and dealt with.
1. A minister's need to protect himself or herself from anger and rejection.
None of us like to feel that others reject us or are angry with us. Ministers are especially sensitive to these feelings when they perceive them in people whose agreement and approval they seek–or need–in order to be effective leaders of the church.
One of the healthiest things you can do about a situation where a board member may dislike or reject you is to normalize it; don't “catastrophize” it. Remember, if given an opportunity to express themselves, 15 to 20 percent of the people in any church are likely to indicate they would rather have someone else as their pastor.
Most ministers experience painful feelings of anger and rejection from a leader or two among the membership. Don't take these attacks personally. Absorb them in a way that will lessen their shock value in the meeting, and then place responsibility for them squarely where it belongs: on the owner who has just vented the feelings.
Realize that the one who is trying to inflict these feelings on you is often battling an unsanctified part of his or her history with authority figures.
Decide ahead of time that when these kinds of feelings are expressed in business or board meetings you will not react personally.
Respond nondefensively to such obviously prejudicial feelings by saying something like this: “Is Frank expressing the way everyone on the board feels or simply speaking for himself?” Encourage others to state their opinions of the issues under discussion.
Ministers cannot function at their best when they feel threatened by the anger and rejection of church leadership. One of the deep, hidden feelings in the hearts of ministers is the need to feel that others are pleased and accepting of them.
The more aware you are of the complicated interactions of your own and others' feelings, the less likely they are to trigger painful–and unnecessary–situations among your church leadership.
2. A minister's need to be liked.
Each of us needs to be liked. If ministers have an unusually strong need, they may presume that whenever a board member expresses even minor opposition to their ideas it is an indication that they are not liked.
Mature ministers understand that while it would be nice if everyone liked them, it is certainly not necessary. They know that most of the time their ideas about programs and policies of the church are not direct revelations from “on high.” This helps them not take it too personally when the normal flow of debate and deliberation includes opinions very different from their own.
3. A minister's need to be right.
Pastors share another common characteristic with other leaders: the need to be right. Some board members have this need as well.
Develop enough humility of heart to be able to say to your board and committee members, “Folks, I could be wrong”–and mean it. Your ability to acknowledge this will inspire greater confidence in your leadership. Healthy people do not expect infallibility from ministers.
Get in touch with these hidden feelings: not wanting others to be angry with you or reject you, wanting others to like you, and the need to be right. It will make you a wiser leader. And you will be less likely to act impulsively in response to such urges.
You will also discover that the vast majority of God's people are not going to be angry with you or reject you. Rather, they will like you and value the many good ideas your leadership brings to the policies and programs of the church. They will admire you for being in touch with your feelings. They will see you as a believable role model because you are willing to admit your shortcomings. They will respect you and have confidence in you and your ministry.
 |