The Minister and the Care of Souls by Daniel Day Williams
Chapter 4: Forgiveness, Judgment and Acceptance
VII. The Pastor’s Pastor
The pastor needs a pastor. Wherever there is a need in the Christian life, the Church has generally evolved some structure to meet it. The
institution may become petrified or fall into disuse, but it is there. The bishop is supposed to be among other things, a pastor to his pastors.
Some bishops regard this as one of their primary obligations. It is true that the pressure of administrative responsibilities in the modern
episcopacy has tended to crowd out this function, as indeed it has tended to obscure the spiritual role of the bishop.14 But there are signs of
protest, and a new will to reassert the personal aspects of episcopacy.
Similar episcopal functions are found in other church orders. In the free churches which have no bishops, superintendents, conference ministers, and others recognize the need to offer to their brother ministers pastoral concern and care. We are concerned here with the need of the Christian minister to bring his problems to a colleague who can be pastor to him.
There are three reasons for this:
There is the need for confession. The head of the Roman Church goes to confession. Protestant churches are rethinking the theology and practice of confession in the light of the role of the pastoral counselor. Whether or not we accept the institution of confession as a sacramental and liturgical form, we know the significance of having our inner being disclosed to a mature and understanding person. This is not a denial of, or substitute for, confession to God, but one human condition for aiding a full confession to God. No one can specify just how or with whom the pastor may find this relationship; but there is wisdom in opening the way to it through a conception of the ministry which allows us to offer this to one another.
The pastor needs a pastor also because he needs the continuing criticism and help which can come from reflecting with other colleagues upon the exercise of his vocation. Too often the minister, whether young or old, escapes the discipline of having his work examined by those who can observe critically and judge constructively. One can say that the
Protestant minister usually finds this function adequately fulfilled by his wife, and there is no discounting the significance of this loving and expert criticism. But more than this is needed. It is a cheering
experience to sit in a group of pastors who in confidence discuss the problems they have undertaken to deal with, the failures they have made, and listen with good grace to the critical appraisal of their br- other ministers. There is a resource for insight and mutual support in such sharing. The greatest obstacle to it is, I believe, a defensiveness and anxiety about exposing our incompetence. We need the grace to submit our ministry to colleagues who can speak critical truth in love.
Finally, the pastor needs a pastor because the forms of ministry are being altered in the new pressures of the twentieth century. We need mutual help in the inquiry for a more adequate church life. Ministers are asking in a radical way what, as ministers, they should be doing. This
"troubled ministry" has received some public attention.15 The concern stems not from self-pity, but from an accurate appraisal of the present task of the Church and the inadequacy of purely traditional forms to meet it. Every function of the ministry -- preaching, teaching, pastoral care -- must be carried on in a new kind of world, shaped by enormous new technological forces, conditioned in scientific ways of thinking, threatened by vast forces of revolutionary political and moral
significance. As the minister tries to walk gently in this world, where
"lights are dim and the very stars wander," he may find himself so involved in keeping a complex organization running that his margin of energy for reflecting upon where he is headed is reduced to the danger point.16 His essential ministry remains the same, to follow the Servant in bringing His truth and healing to men; but how that is to be done cannot be decided by old habits alone. We need one another’s understanding and pastoral support in the search for a more adequate expression of our vocation.
The aim of ministry is to serve God and his Church, not to fix attention upon ourselves; but without a genuine self-knowledge we get in our own way and in God’s way. We have tried to see self-knowledge as a dimension of the Christian life and of the pastor’s preparation. Now we
turn our attention to pastoral care in the context of the Church’s life.
Notes:
1. Augustine. Confessions, VII. x, n6.
2. C. H. Dodd, ‘The Mind of Paul: I," in New Testament Studies (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1952), pp. 77-82.
3. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, I, I.
4. Cf. Jacques Maritain, Christianity and Democracy (New York:
Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1944), pp. 57 ff.
5. Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1936), Pt. II. Sec. I, Sec. 4; Pt. III, chap. I-3.
6. Samuel Blizzard, "The Parish Minister’s Self-Image and Variability in Community Culture." Pastoral Psychology, Oct., 1959: "The
Minister’s Dilemma," The Christian Century, Vol. 73, April 25. 1956.
7. H. Richard Niebuhr, Daniel D. Williams, and James M. Gustafson (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1955).
8. The Life and Letters of Frederick W. Robertson, edited by Stafford H.
Brooke (Boston, 1865), Vol. I.
9. E. M. Forster, The Celestial Omnibus and Other Stories (New York:
A. A. Knopf, 1923).
10. Albert Camus, The Fall, English trans. (New York: Alfred A.
Knopf, 1957).
11. Gerard Manley Hopkins. Sonnet "41."
12. Alan Paton, Cry, the Beloved Country (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1948).
13. Erik Erikson, Young Man Luther (New York: W. W. Norton, 1958),
p. 9.
14. Cf. K. E. Kirk, The Apostolic Ministry (New York: Morehouse- Gorham, 1946).
15. Cf. Wesley Shrader, "Why Ministers Are Breaking Down," in Life, Aug. 20, 1956: comments by Roy Pearson and Daniel D. Williams in Christianity and Crisis, Vol. XVI, Nos. 18, 21.
16. The line is from Gilbert Murray. I am indebted to Wayne Oates for it.
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The Minister and the Care of Souls by Daniel Day Williams
Daniel Day Williams was associate professor of Christian theology in the Federated theological Faculty of the University of Chicago and the Chicago Theological Seminary, then Professor of Theology at the Union Theological Seminary in New York City. Published by Harper & Row, New York, Hagerstown, San Francisco, London, 1954. This material was prepared for Religion Online by Ted and Winnie Brock.