I reached a figurative wall this month in studies, and I didn’t see it coming -- but then, surprise is often what gets us to new places.

I’ve been finding the counseling program here to be an easy match for my interests and passions. Studies have been adding a lot to what’s been learned and observed over my life to this point.

Not that there haven’t been revelations which have given pause. Last semester it occurred to me that nearly all of the pastoral care I’ve given, in the terminology of the counseling field, would be viewed as having taken place in the context of dual relationships. That is, those sessions have taken place in the midst of a relationships complicated (in many ways enriched) by competing responsibilities toward the counseled: in the context of relationships sometimes professional, sometimes social... you can name other descriptors. Any of us would get complications when we try to ‘counsel’ friends too, in fact we can’t properly counsel them -- that’s not to say that we can’t be helpful friends.

Dual relationships are acknowledged to be very dicey from an ethical standpoint. Partly a matter of which role one is acting in at each encounter, and partly a recognition that even though you are trying to act from one role, the other roles by which you know one another will influence the role from which you are attempting to operate. Are you the guide, sounding board, advisor? Pastors get up in front of the ‘counseled’ (and a crowd of other people, each with different stories) and preach. Counseling relationships don’t usually introduce that magnitude of complication. To what effect? It is the counselors responsibility to live in awareness, and even to inform the counseled what is being offered so the counseled can make informed decisions.

In that moment I felt vindicated in past policy, referring out after no more than three meetings. Counseling is not pastoral care, and the first is properly the province of individuals who’ve taken part in more extensive preparation, who don’t have so many competing responsibilities to the persons in front of them.

Jolting me to attention more recently was my study of group counseling. In group discipline so much is made of the construction of the group, screening for participation, methods of exercising leadership and subsequent developmental stages in group function.

Some of you may know my story well enough to know that I had my butt kicked by a congregation. It wasn’t a one-time experience we later got beyond; it happened early and often for five years. Not everybody willfully added to my butt kicking, but there was enough of a continuing presence to make it a significant challenge. The first year was painful; after a couple of years, when I was traveling, old friends in conversations would say, “why are you apologizing, you’re not responsible for X” [X = some innocuous shared disappointment, like missing the train]. But I’d taken on so much of the weight of the circumstances of my butt-kicking that accepting responsibility for this other thing just seemed a natural extension, it had become a default position.

Then somebody in the larger church’s administration told me my record didn’t look so good -- to be fair, that individual hadn’t been present for any but the last of those years, but the presented conclusion, given not in the context of an invitation to examine, but rather as a settled judgment, was to me shattering. It did severe damage to the impression cultivated by his predecessor, and continuing hope, that I was operating as part of a team. Suddenly I saw Uriah differently.

Pastors don’t seem to talk about this. As I transitioned from that painful assignment to the next I sought out some colleagues who’s work in ministry I respected, individuals who I heard had at some point had a tough time with a congregation. I didn’t get anyone to talk. Given the way we are together I don’t blame those I approached. If you are lucky enough to get beyond such things, I suspect you don’t want to get near that taint again. You know what it is to be marginalized and perhaps on some level fear that giving out insight about you might again empower unreasonable people. Stigma would accompany the work of any recovery network.

From the beginning of that awful time I used to say to my superintendent that the congregation had a pretty low regard for the role of a pastor among them. Some thought the pastor’s role was simply to deliver what they wanted, as reflected in the individual who told me, “the will of God is what we say it is!”

I now realize that early on I’d been screened out of that church, by a relatively small but influential control group, and to a lesser extent by others who in innocence didn’t know the screening was taking place, but who placed high value on continuing to do what had been done -- ‘No, this isn’t in line with our purposes, but Charlie has done a lot. Shouldn’t we give Charlie this show of support’.

Like all of my colleagues I’m not a perfect pastor, but I am an earnest servant of the Lord -- not simply self-identified as a pastor, but carefully and prayerfully screened by others in a wide-ranging community.

Screening me out largely deprived that local community of what could be brought. In some churches which function like twelve step groups, not acknowledging formal leadership, churches where longer-tenured individuals can establish influence, and can use their influence to work their way -- speaking as if all has been left to fate -- this isn’t all that uncommon a story.

As for me, I now take comfort in the existence of screening procedures in group counseling. We may be once saved, but the obligation to respond is moment to moment. It’s an active process, not a box to check.

To be willing to try new things and make changes to improve life circumstances -- that is very consistent with Christian teaching and discipleship. Yet resistance to personal change is at the heart of struggles. Churches struggle because individuals within them think they are the exception to that commitment to personal change, too many think they needn’t adapt to continuously evolving circumstances.

A few months after my new start one of my new church’s leaders confided to me: ‘I thought all that talk about change at your introduction was for the benefit of the Superintendent’ (my new boss, leading the introduction). Putting aside my concern that this individual apparently thought I would say things I did not believe if the circumstance called for it, prayerfully, I began to consider with them the circumstances of our setting, and attendant implications for we disciples who find ourselves there...