Monthly Archives: September 2012

Pastoral Etiquette

Posted on by
Reply

Etiquette: a code of behavior that delineates expectations for social behavior according to contemporary conventional norms within a society, social class, or group.

I am currently doing some pre-marriage counseling with a couple. This morning I received this e-mail from the gentleman (names have been changed):

Hi Pastor John,

I have a request to pass to you from my fiance Dorothy. Feel free to decline if you are not completely comfortable. But, there is a married couple we know who are interested in receiving counseling with you. I am sure it is because Dorothy speaks of your help with such glowing praise! So, please let me know how to proceed, and again, please don’t feel obligated.

Hope you have a great day.

Clive

This was my reply:

Hi Clive,

Good to hear from you. I am so glad you and Dorothy are still enjoying the pre-marriage sessions and finding them useful.

Regarding the couple, may I ask if they are Christians and are part of a local Church? I ask this question because as a pastor (rather than merely a counselor) I am very sensitive in making sure that anything I do is never perceived in any way as what some call “sheep stealing.” That is when an individual or couple who are part of a local church assembly are prized away from the care of that leadership by an over zealous pastor. I know many pastors dont feel this kind of sensitivity in our day, but I feel it is very much like someone under the care of a doctor is encouraged by another doctor to be treated by them. Such a thing is not only extremely poor etiquette on the part of the doctor, but it may very well be illegal. It should never occur.

While meeting with me for marriage advice would not be a legal issue, I still feel the same principle of etiquette would apply and am very sensitive about this. I realise that I am more sensitive than most pastors on this issue. If the couple are part of a local Church, I would only wish to meet with them when there is full agreement between the couple and their local Church elders and that the elders give the go-ahead. If the couple are not under the care of local Church leadership, that is a very different matter. For instance, I was happy to meet with you and Dorothy because we have known each other for years and secondly, I knew you were not specifically under the care of local Church leadership.

Am I making sense?

Pastor John

Three Quotes and a Question

Posted on by
3

Three quotes and a question:

“The Enlightenment brought to the discussion of life the proposition that the human being has matured to the point that he must become independent of any outside information about life. ‘He has come of age, but man could begin to see the world the way he wanted to. If reason is the only key to truth, anything may become reasonable to the one who does the explaining to himself.” – Udo Middelmann, Footnotes, December 1998, page 3.

“If it is I who determine where God is to be found, then I shall always find a God who corresponds to me in some way, who is obliging, who is connected with my own nature. But if God determines where he is to be found, then it will be in a place which is not at all congenial to me. This place is the Cross of Christ. And whoever would find him must go to the foot of the Cross, as the Sermon on the Mount commands. This is not according to our nature at all, it is entirely contrary to it. But this is the message of the Bible, not only in the New but also in the Old Testament…” – Dietrich Bonhoeffer, quoted in Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer (Nashville, 2010), page 137.

“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.’ That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic – on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg – or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.” – C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, The MacMillan Company, 1960, pp. 40-41.)

“But who do you say that I am?” – Jesus