The pressures of parish ministry can cause ministers to lose direction and perspective.

Henri Nouwen, in Creative Ministry, told of a visit paid to him by a Vietnamese Buddhist. He was living in Holland at the time. According to Nouwen, the monk, a thin, slender man, appeared at his door, his eyes radiating insight and affection. He looked straight at Nouwen and began narrating a brief story about a man on a horse, who, in terms of the direction he was being taken, was at the mercy of the horse. The monk, speaking directly to Nouwen, commented, "This is your condition!"¹

Our busyness can also alienate us from the source of our vital energy. Furthermore, when we cease to flow with this all-pervasive grace we forfeit the equanimity that is associated with what Reinhold Niebuhr called the nonchalance of faith.

Our frenetic activity can also seduce us into discounting the uniqueness of our Christian ministry. For example, we enjoy the benefits of psychological understandings and counselling skills, which offer insight into the way Jesus dealt with people, which help us understand how God heals and matures us and which enable us to discern how we can best co-operate with her in this. However, in spite of the fact that personal and spiritual development cannot be separated, if we fail to keep in mind the fact that God, working through the total body/self, is the great healer, we may forfeit the distinctiveness of our role as channels of that grace.²

My intention, in this chapter, is to make a number of observations and suggestions that arise out of sixteen years of parish ministry in three Australian states. I have now been thirty-four years in ministry. Over the course of those years I have moved back and forth between parish ministry and theological education.

The fact that I have drawn on personal experience in ministry, rather than on the vast literature in the area, is not intended to suggest that I have all the answers. However, I did feel that there would be more authenticity in my insights if I spoke from personal experience.

I will be explaining how I have sought to integrate spirituality and parish ministry. I am aware that my methods and explanations will help some and confuse others. The latter is the price I pay for inviting readers into my life and ministry experience.

In exploring the relationship of spirituality to parish ministry we will look at preaching, pastoral counselling, worship and organizational leadership. [200] These are not the only functions that engage the attentions of the parish minister. They are, however, her principal responsibilities.

Preaching

Our spirituality informs our preaching. Whether we are aware of it or not, our spirituality impacts upon our motivation for preaching, our method of preparation, the content of our preaching and our delivery.

Motivation

Preaching is driven by mixed motives. We argue that we preach because we are called by God to proclaim the good news about Jesus Christ, to evangelise the unevangelized and to nurture Christians. Besides this ostensible motivation, which at a surface level may be genuine, lie a host of other motivations. The preacher is mostly oblivious of these ancillary motivations.

Preaching is a tempting pre-occupation for people looking for an opportunity for self display. They may be exhibitionists or people who, craving affirmation, seek it from an audience. Others use the opportunity preaching affords to develop a capacity for public communication that they lack in the context of one-to-one relationships.

I would have to confess that preaching fulfilled this latter need for me.

When I was young I was painfully shy. When I preached, however, particularly after I developed competence, I experienced little, or no inhibition. In the early days, people would notice that I appeared to be two different people, one while I was preaching and another when I met them afterwards as they left the sanctuary. I was not two people, but others were engaging two different parts of me, only one of which was inhibited. If I can use the word "persona" in a positive sense, then I would have to say that they were encountering two different personae of the one individual. Fortunately, after years of working on myself, there is now a congruence between the ways I responded at these two levels of interpersonal communication.

People who are plagued with a sense of powerlessness have opportunity, in preaching, of exercising power over those they address. The more unscrupulous will consciously employ fear and guilt manipulatively.

Preaching can also be used to justify a faith stance, or to impose a theological perspective on others. This may even involve lacerating a congregation for their lack of faith or faithfulness. The minister may believe that the prayer of faith heals. When members of the congregation are not [201] healed, after the minister has asked them to be prayed for, he may castigate the congregation for their lack of faith. This also enables him to avoid facing personal failure or a rethinking of his theology.

Anger can also be a potent motivator, whatever the topic.

Projection also plays a part in preaching. If the preacher is troubled by guilt, it is likely that he will project his self-rejection onto the image of an external God, which will reflect it back to him. He will experience his God as judgmental. His railing about the judgement of God will not relate to God, to the morality of the congregation nor to how his hearers are regarded by God, but to the preacher's unresolved personal guilt.

Observing some preachers, I have had to conclude that their preaching was nothing short of a sexual display. This is most pronounced in those whose theology is body-denying and whose sexuality is repressed. The repressed sexuality becomes a separate personality that intrudes into their preaching. It may also manifest as an alter ego.

A range of motivations inform our preaching and reflect the maturity of our spirituality. We will never be totally free of suspect motivations, but one would hope that, as we grow spiritually, our preaching will be experienced increasingly as an expression of God's grace and be drawn from us by peoples needs, which we become increasingly skilful in discerning.

Preparation

Our spirituality should also inform our method of preparation.

While it is important to master the craft of preaching, preaching is not public speaking. It is Spirit-gifted communication, and, as Phillips Brooks argued, is truth mediated through personality.

Preparation involves the choice of a subject.

If we follow the lectionary, the Scripture passage, or passages, will be chosen for us. This does not necessarily mean that we are locked into a prescribed topic. While it is important for us to study the passage in context, this should not imprison us in a style of preaching that is a running commentary on the passage, or the stringing together of a series of passages. The congregation, rather than the passage, represents God's focus of attention.

In working out what topic we will address and what vantage ground we will take, we need to relax into an awareness of God and anticipate that she will help us discern what she wants to say to the people she has given us responsibility for addressing. In the process, we should also be aware that [202] we are better able to preach on different passages at different stages in our spiritual pilgrimage.

Once I become aware of the topic and perspective I sit at my computer and allow thoughts to cascade out of my mind into my fingers. I follow each thought as far as I can pursue it. The process is a graced prayer-think. I then allow my unconscious mind to weigh and sort the concepts and experiences. After about a week I return to the task, unless the address has intruded into my conscious spontaneously before that time. There have been times when a sermon has dropped into my mind, fully formed. I may have been in the bath or driving the car.

If I need to consciously develop the sermon, I will bring myself to an awareness of God, I will rest in that awareness and then bring the congregation to mind. Out of the contemplative meshing of my awareness of God, of the congregation and of the essence of the message, the address will take shape.

I generally grab hold of the an introductory thought, as if it were the end of a piece of string, and pull. It usually unravels, spontaneously, out of my inner being, out of the core of the body/self, out of my spirit.

Our spirituality, our personal maturity, also influences the content of our preaching. The more we have come to understand and accept ourselves, the more we are acquainted with and have integrated our shadow side, the more we have feelingly appropriated God's loving of us, the more our preaching will relate to the deep inner needs and dysfunctions in other people's lives. The more we know ourselves, the more we know the God who is experienced in the depths of our subjectivity, the more we will understand others and be able to discern how God is working within them to heal them. We will be able to suggest to them ways of co-operating with her in this healing. In our preaching, we will take them by the hand and walk them round inside themselves, introducing them to the God whose presence within them constitutes their existence.

Presentation

Our spirituality is also involved in the presentation of our addresses.

If our acceptance of God's acceptance of us is minimal, we will be looking for affirmation from our performance. We will be anxious and we will be more concerned about how we are coming over than with the needs of the congregation. We will also have difficulty conveying God's love to others. Our ability to convey God's love to people is governed by the degree to which we have feelingly accepted it ourselves and the extent to which this acceptance has changed us. [203]

Before preaching, and after I have gone over the outline of the address in my mind, I like to settle into contemplative prayer, to sit quietly before God, drinking in her presence. At the same time, I bring myself to an awareness of the congregation. Three elements, God, myself and the congregation, are fused together. Aware of a presence within and around my body, I imaginatively extend its perimeter, like a fine gossamer net, or membrane, out over the congregation to encompass all within the building. With my breathing, I circulate that presence throughout the whole area of the net, that is, I bring myself to a consciousness of the graced presence dynamically moving and flowing between us.

Then, when the time comes for the address, I move towards the congregation, aware of this presence, and allow myself to be drawn out by the felt needs of the congregation and at the pace and in the energy of the Spirit's flow. What I experience is presence and mutuality. The Christ in me reaches out and engages the Christ in the congregation. This communication, its poetry and music, is orchestrated by the grace that suffuses the worshipping congregation.

Pastoral Counselling

The second area to which I will give attention is pastoral counselling.

If we are sensitive to the flow of divine Presence, which we experience in ourselves and in our contact with others, we will recognize that God is the great healer. We will realize that it is the graced energies of this God that constitutes and matures us. We will also recognize this presence within others, ever though they may be oblivious of the healthful energy within them. We will also be aware that this Spirit of God facilitates in-depth communication between people.³ This will lead us, in our pastoral visiting and counselling, to anticipate that God will effect healing in the context of this nexus.

To be capable of co-operating with this grace, of flowing with the Tao of healing, we need to be in the process of a progressive appropriation of divine love, a progressive acceptance of God's acceptance of us. Through this process we will gain insight, an awareness of what is happening to us in the context of the encounter, a love for the person, or persons and sufficient freedom from our own concerns to attend to them.

It is important that we approach situations prayerfully, in a contemplative attitude, where we listen, feel, understand, intuit insights and gently probe.

With increasing self-acceptance, where we are not dependent on the parishioner's or counsellee acceptance of us, part of us will also be able to stand aside from the encounter and prayerfully observe what is happening within ourselves, within the other and in the context of the relationship. [204]

When we do this we will be able to read what is happening simultaneously at many levels of symbolic encounter.

I remember talking to a lady who had lost her husband quite a number of years previously. I will call her Jane. The friendship of a couple in the church to which she belonged, who I will refer to as Bob and Cynthia, sustained her. They made sure she was included in many of their activities. A number of years later Bob died and the two widows maintained the friendship.

There were two dysfunctional elements in the relationship, however. Because Jane had been so assiduously cared for by her friends, she had not had to face the full implications of her aloneness. She grieved, but without a healthy resolution. Bob and Cynthia, in one sense, substituted for her husband. Second, the continued constancy of the caring fostered a dependency in Jane and imprisoned Cynthia in weekly rituals.

The balance was upset when, because of a momentary illness, one of these rituals was unable to be performed. It was at that point that I received a call and became involved.

From several conversations I discovered that there were a range of issues that needed to be addressed. Jane was obviously hurt, but insisted that she was not being critical. However, at a deeper level, she was having difficulty holding back her anger, anger over feeling rejected. The temporary removal of the support that had substituted for her husband returned her attention to him. His ghost occupied this third level. I noticed that she was overboard in her praise of her husband. I suspected that there could be an element of guilt concealed in this over-evaluation. Further conversation proved this gut response to be correct. This represented the fourth level. At a fifth level, a theological level, she needed to forgive Cynthia. While, in terms of Cynthia's action, there was nothing to forgive, it was necessary for Jane to deliberately forgive Cynthia for Jane's sake and for the sake of the relationship. But she first needed to recognize her anger, appreciate its naturalness and legitimacy and experience its force. I also recognized, at a sixth level, that in responding to her call and spending time with her I was substituting for the alienated friend, and, ultimately, for her former husband. I appreciated that there may be an element of appropriateness in this, provided it was temporary. At a deeper level again, I realized that Jane was also engaging my maleness, my sexuality. While this was not pathological, and may even, in the short term, assist with her healing, I knew I would need to establish responsible boundaries. The situation, in this case, was made less acute because, while I was in my late thirties, she was in her mid-sixties.

It is important for us, in pastoral or counselling situations, not only to attend to the person, but to consciously open ourselves to an awareness of God, in ourselves, in the other and in the communication between us. It is thus that we will be able to read the many levels of symbolic encounter and [205] to intuit graced responses appropriate to each of these levels. These encounters can be revelatory and healing experiences. To catch up critical elements of intuited responses at each of the levels, and to unselfconsciously weave them into a prayer that the person we are with can join us in praying from their depths, is a deep work of grace. It is in this way that the Wounded Healer,⁴ in an in-depth meeting between two people, can minister to both in the dance of intimacy between them, where the distinction between pastor and church member, or counsellor and counsellee, dissolves away in the felt presence of God.

A further consequence of the impact of our spirituality on our pastoring and counselling is that we will regard our relationship with those to whom we minister as covenantal, rather than contractual. This does not mean, however, that there are no boundaries and we need to be careful that we are not seduced into thinking we have to be saviours.

Worship

Our spirituality also impacts upon our conduct of worship.

Worship in a corporate encounter with God. In the context of shared faith, we each bring our personal awareness of God, our personal spirituality, and contribute it to a common pool of God-awareness. Viewed from a slightly different perspective, we could argue that, in corporate worship, in which we all participate but in which some lead, God presences herself among her people so that they become aware of that presence. Worship is a celebration of her presence and a renewed commitment to her.

In leading worship we cannot take others beyond the limits of our personal spirituality.

If we use a written liturgy it is important that it becomes real to us so that we can make it real to others. The value of a written liturgy is that is comprehensive and does not subject the congregation to the vagaries of our theological predilections or biorhythms.

If you belong to a church tradition that does not work out of a written liturgical tradition and you need to devise a liturgy, or order of service, yourself, it is important that you ask God how she wants to encounter her people.

Work through the issue carefully. Give yourself time to mull over it. Ensure that the liturgy will engage the mind, emotions and will and that it will contain aspects relevant to a range of personalities and perceptual styles, that is, to those who are visual, auditory and those for whom bodily movement is important. Make generous allowance for the engagement of the imagination. [206]

Worship is a celebration in which, according to Nouwen, the past is remembered, the present is affirmed and the future is anticipated. Each of these foci converge on the Eucharist.⁵

According to Nouwen, the leader best able to lead people in worship is someone who is responsive to the sacramental voice of nature.⁶ I would also want to contend that a worship leader would also benefit from being in touch with the joys and hurts of the people and with their deep need of God. Their experience of God needs to be real and edged with an honesty and freshness. The most appropriate worship leader is someone who is resourced through contemplation and who can unobtrusively facilitate the human-divine encounter.

Organization

Our spirituality should also inform our involvement in the organizational life of the church.

If we are responsible for initiating organization development it is important that we seek to discover how God wants us to proceed.

Discernment of the church's environmental context, knowledge of its history and its symbols and awareness of both manifest and latent power structures help us focus the question and interpret the answer.

Our spirituality will influence our motivation.

It is important that you scrutinise your motives and that you be aware that unconscious motives are more powerful than conscious ones. There may be a range of unrecognized needs that we attempt to meet through organizational involvement, not the least of which is the need to exercise power. We are all manipulators, whether our motivation is conscious or unconscious. Spiritual maturation brings an awareness of this, and, by helping us feel accepted, reduces the number and intensity of needs that manipulation serves.

The attitude we adopt within meetings is also related to our spirituality.

We need to be open to the voice of God, especially in the commitments of others. We need to learn to identify what they are saying about themselves when they are in the midst of arguing issues. We also need to hear what God is saying to us through them. For this a degree of contemplative detachment is necessary.

Our spirituality also impinges on the way we make decisions.

In one sense, because our personalities and histories are different, the approach we take to decision-making will differ. However, in spite of this, [207] none of us has a monopoly on wisdom and it will be important for us to recognize that discovering the will of God for a church is a collegial experience. Allow space for the yeasting of a reasonable degree of unanimity, even when you feel pressured by what you sense to be God's will. Check out your conclusions with those who are not afraid to oppose you, though not necessarily with your regular adversaries.

Leadership is a shared responsibility in which your role is that of facilitator. You need to encourage initiative, beginning at the grass-roots group level. To do this you need to be secure in God's love and guidance so that your self esteem does not hang on the results nor your prestige on the achievement of a personal project.

Nouwen argues that the three major dangers facing Christian leaders are concretism, power and pride. Concretism refers to the fact that we become frustrated if a plan does not materialise. The subtle exercise of power is reflected in our annoyance when we are not thanked. Pride is more easily recognized.⁷

The Essence of the Role

Before concluding this chapter I will make three further comments. The first, taken from the title of one of Nouwen's books, is that you, as a minister, are the living reminder of Christ to your congregation.⁸ Second, offer all people heart hospitality. Third, allow your congregation to minister to you. We are Christ to each other. Remembering that it is more blessed to give than receive, allow your people the pleasure of giving to you. [208]

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