Roger Abbott on Pastoral Care for the Common Good

Cambridge Papers are published once a quarter and address a wide range of topics, offering ‘Christian reflection on contemporary issues’.

The latest paper is available online here (from where a pdf can be downloaded here):

Roger Abbott, ‘Pastoral care for the common good: How the Church can respond better in the next pandemic’, Cambridge Papers 32, 2 (June 2023).

Here is the summary:

‘Noting that the UK Church’s response to the Covid pandemic was disappointing when compared with her response to disease-related outbreaks of earlier centuries, this paper reflects on the issue of pastoral care by the Church both for congregations and the general public. Requisite pastoral care should have a common grace focus, where carers accept the risks to their own lives, engage collaboratively with the scientific community, yet are also prepared to think and act prophetically. Finally, the paper calls for a way forward that takes seriously the lessons to be learned from the coronavirus pandemic in order to prepare for a more effective response when the next pandemic arrives. The paper closes with an important call for the Christian Church to be at the national policy-making table.’

Biblical Counselling UK on Care in a Covid World

Recognising that ‘the pandemic of 2020-21 has brought a unique and serious set of challenges to the church in the UK’, Biblical Counselling UK has a set of articles and other resources here on various topics related to caring for each other in a Covid world.

Andrew Root on the Pastor in a Secular Age

On the heels of Andrew Root’s stimulating Faith Formation in a Secular Age: Responding to the Church’s Obsession with Youthfulness (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2017) – the first in a projected ‘Ministry in a Secular Age’ trilogy – comes The Pastor in a Secular Age: Ministry to People Who No Longer Need a God (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2019).

A recent post (here) on ‘Faith and Leadership’ summarises the burden of the most-recent title:

‘[T]hroughout time, from Augustine to Thomas Becket to Jonathan Edwards, pastors and priests have at least served against a cultural backdrop with the shared understanding that the transcendent is real and our lives must interact with something beyond what we can see and touch.

‘Today, things are different.

‘We now live in a time where the very idea that God is real and present in our lives is no longer accepted. Indeed, it’s widely contested. Belief has been made fragile – for the pastor as much as for those in the pews...

‘[W]e are now pastoring, and being church, in a full-blown secular age. From curator of divine things to prodder toward holiness to chaplain of the secular age to entrepreneur, the role of pastor has shifted dramatically as we’ve moved deeper and deeper into a secular age, and farther and farther away from a sense of God’s presence and action in our ordinary lives.

‘Though we might behave otherwise, what confronts the pastor inside a secular age in this new era is not primarily the question of how to sustain an institution, grow a budget, authentically reach the “nones” or double membership.

‘These pursuits lead only to increasing fatigue and despondency. Instead, the pastor’s most pressing calling and deepest question has become, How do we help those who no longer need a God encounter the living God in their lives?’

9Marks Journal (Spring 2017) on Pastoring Singles

The latest issue of the 9Marks Journal, available here as a pdf and here in other formats, is devoted to the topic of ‘Pastoring Singles’.

In the Editor’s Note, Jonathan Leeman writes:

‘Certainly, a single person is far more than his or her singleness. Nonetheless, it’s often experienced as a trial (see Eccl. 4:9–11), even while Paul describes it as a gift (1 Cor. 7:7, 32, 38). So trial and gift. We need to maintain both perspectives in all our speaking and praying and preaching on the topic. And doing that requires wisdom.

‘Why devote an issue of the 9Marks Journal to pastoring singles? To help pastors and members both grow in conscientiousness and wisdom and love for singles.’

Holiness 3, 1 (2017) on Holiness and Pastoral Relationships

The latest issue of Holiness, the journal of Wesley House Cambridge is now available online, this one devoted to ‘Holiness and Pastoral Relationships’.

The editor, Andrew Stobart, leads into the theme with a reflection on the Wesleyan Methodist Conference, meeting in Liverpool in 1820, and being faced with a sharp decline in membership. Among the range of measures adopted, ‘increased pastoral intercourse’ with Methodist people ‘at their own homes’ was recognised as an ‘absolute obligation’. The Conference encouraged its ministers to show ‘unremitting diligence’ in conducting pastoral visitation, which included ‘giving seasonable counsel’, ‘exhorting them to a faithful and loving observance of all the duties of personal and family religion’, and ‘kindly inquiry into their Christian experience’.

The entire journal, containing the below collection of peer-reviewed essays, lecture, and short articles, is available as a pdf here.

Bill Mullally

The Effect of Presence and Power in the Pastoral Supervisory Relationship

This article addresses the important elements of presence and power in the pastoral supervisory relationship. It is based on qualitative research, which used a questionnaire methodology with six Methodist ministers, all of whom had taken part in group pastoral supervision for a period of two years. The aim of this research was to gain insight into their experience of the supervisory process. The article explores how an open, authentic and trusting environment can be created within the pastoral supervisory relationship that has regenerative and healing potential, whereby ministers will be better able to face the challenges of ministry. It contends there is a need for well-qualified, skilled and spiritually sensitive supervisory support for ministers. Such pastoral supervisors will understand the dynamics of power and presence to create a sacred space for ministers to ‘come apart and reflect a while’. This covenant relationship creates transformational possibilities for those who commit to the journey.

James Dunn

Why Four Gospels? Why Only Four?

This is a transcript of the 2016 Fernley-Hartley Lecture, which was delivered during the 2016 British Methodist Conference at the Lambeth Mission, London, and is published here with acknowledgement to the Fernley-Hartley Trust. It stands largely unchanged from its first delivery in the hope that the texture and tone of the lecture might also be retained. The article argues that answering the questions ‘Why four Gospels?’ and ‘Why only four?’ provides a clear picture of the character of the gospel of Jesus as ‘the same yet different’, as well as a challenge to today’s Christians to retell the good news in their own contexts with equal or equivalent effect. The article discusses the context in which the four canonical Gospels were recognised, pointing out that the term ‘gospel’ was coined in the process. The distinctive emphases of the Synoptics and John show how the same story can be told differently, an essential restatement of the same message for new and changing audiences.

Christopher Collins

Reimagining Dementia: Seeing Ourselves More Fully in the Dementia-Diagnosed

How does the Church respond to the increasing number of dementia-diagnosed within our communities? This paper argues that the Church inhabits Kitwood’s ‘standard paradigm’ of dementia, which focuses on the loss and decay of the person. This diverts our attention away from a more theologically nuanced understanding of the person and personhood. Using Lartey’s Theological Form model of action and reflection, I will reflect on the pastoral experience of caring for the dementia-diagnosed and seek to promote an alternative theology of personhood as relationship based on Moltmann’s ‘social trinity’ explored through the creation narrative of Genesis 2. This will allow us to develop an alternative model of pastoral care which enables us to see the ‘angelic mission’ of the dementia-diagnosed.

Paul Gismondi

Fear and Faith: Reflections on Ministry and Death

An experience of observing a cremation instigates theological reflection on the fear of death. Using Laurie Green’s model of action to reflection, and then reflection to action, the article moves through three cycles of theological reflection, exploring first the author’s response to the crematorium, then a subsequent encounter with a family during a funeral visit, and finally a conversation with colleagues. Each cycle produces further insights: the universality of death; the particularity of death; and a final glimpse of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. Through this, the author explores the interaction between his fear of death and his faith.

Catherine Minor

Beyond Horror: Mapping the Contours of Holiness in an Acute Hospital

Reflecting on the experience of hospital chaplaincy in an acute hospital in the north-east of England, this article explores the conviction that God is with us both in and beyond horror. Echoes of Scripture are identified in a number of pastoral encounters, which help to illustrate the presence of God in the midst of horror. The work of chaplaincy also points to God’s presence beyond the horror of present pain and death, turning the hospital into ‘holy ground’.

Elizabeth Dunning

A Good Death? Pastoral Reflections on Closing a Chapel

This article reflects on an experience of the closure of a chapel, exploring ways to challenge the assumption that closure is a failure. Noting the lack of intentional resources to aid churches considering closure, the author identifies the Passion and resurrection narratives as a biblical model for the stages of church awareness of change. Reflecting on these narratives enables the closure of a chapel to be considered as a fitting conclusion to work accomplished, as ‘a good death’.

Jane Leach

‘On Visiting the Sick’: The Art of Pastoral Conversation

This article is a transcript of a lecture delivered as part of the first series of Wesley Memorial Lectures given at Wesley Memorial Church in Oxford in July 2016. Originally entitled ‘Speaking of God in Private’, this lecture was followed by a second, ‘Speaking of God in Public’. It is included here as part of the ongoing journal series exploring what the sermons of John Wesley have done for us, and it stands largely unchanged from its first delivery in order to retain its texture and tone. This article addresses the questions of why in Western culture it is a problem to speak of God in personal conversation; why this is true even within some churches; and whether there are any pointers towards how intentional conversation about God might be recovered in the contemporary Western context in the sermon of John Wesley’s of 1786, ‘On Visiting the Sick’.

Janet Morley

‘I believe; help my unbelief!’ A Reflection and Intercession Based on Mark 9:14–29, and on John Reilly’s Painting, Healing of the Lunatic Boy

Gillian Houghton

Reflections on Self Portrait by Eddy Aigbe

Reviews

Journal of Biblical Counseling 29, 1 (2015)

The latest issue of the Journal of Biblical Counseling is now available ($12 for a year’s electronic subscription of three issues), this one containing the following pieces:

From the Editor’s Desk

David Powlison

More Than a Proof Text

David Powlison introduces our new column: “More Than a Proof Text.” These short articles demonstrate how a Scripture passage becomes a personalized message, how ministry engages a person. These are not Bible studies. Though careful study and accurate exposition reside in the background, these articles illustrate ministry happening in the foreground. Each connects the dots between a person’s complex struggles and a simple truth that bids to rearrange that person’s reality in a vivid and relevant way.

Featured Articles

Jayne V. Clark

Struggling through Singleness

Many single brothers and sisters in the church long for the companionship and friendship of marriage. In this article, Jayne Clark offers her hard-won wisdom on what it looks like to wrestle well with the Lord about the desire for marriage. Along the way, Clark clears up the meaning of the familiar phrase “the gift of singleness” and why marriage is not the answer to loneliness. 

Darby Strickland

Entitlement: When Expectations Go Toxic

A sense of entitlement is a serious problem that can plague relationships. Darby Strickland shows how a person’s self-centered desires can become adamant, rigid demands that destroy love and mutuality. She identifies the key beliefs of an entitled person, provides a biblical framework for understanding the problem, and offers counseling strategies to help bring the entitled person to a renewed relationship with Christ and others. 

Ed Welch

How to Talk with Someone about Sin

Though we tend to avoid talking with others about their sin, God has called us to encourage one another by speaking the truth in love. Ed Welch prepares us to move toward fellow sinners graciously by examining ourselves, learning to see the good in others, and acknowledging hard circumstances. He then gets specific about how to engage with people directly and winsomely. 

David Powlison

Ten Questions to Ask before Starting a Counseling Ministry in Your Church

This article is for church leaders who are thinking about starting a counseling ministry. Rather than a “how to” guide, Powlison offers ten questions to help a church gain a better understanding of itself and its context. Each question is followed by a short discussion that further orients leaders as to what to consider before moving forward.

Sermon

Matthew C. Mitchell

Why Is This Sordid Story in the Bible?: Four Reasons to Read about the Rape of Tamar

Adapting a sermon he preached on this passage, Mitchell walks us through the violent and shameful details of 2 Samuel 13. These include evil scheming, rape, murder, a banished son and a passive king. It’s easy to want to avoid this story, but there are good and important reasons why it is in the Bible.

Counselor’s Toolbox

Lauren Whitman

More Than a Proof Text: “You Are Dust – And God Gets That”

Have you ever thought to use Psalm 103:13–14 to encourage those who struggle with perfectionism? Probably not. But Lauren Whitman shows how these verses can comfort and motivate by bringing home how we are inanimate dust – always in need of animating power from outside ourselves. This reality evokes a joyful dependency.

Michael Gembola

More Than a Proof Text: “Men – Treat Women as Sisters”

There are many passages in Scripture that speak against sexual lust, but Michael Gembola uses 1 Timothy 5:2 to recast the vision for how men are to view women. By tapping into the power of a God-given incest taboo, Gembola offers hope to men that, in Christ, they are able to view women as they would female family members.

Journal of Biblical Counseling 28, 2 (2014)

The latest issue of the Journal of Biblical Counseling is now available ($10 for a year’s electronic subscription of three issues), this one containing the following pieces:

Editorial

David Powlison

The Personal God

The God revealed in the Bible is a person – in fact, “one God in three persons.” Because he is a person himself, he gets personal with each one of us. Powlison’s editorial recounts three stories that show God personally working in the lives of individuals.

Featured Articles

Justin S. and Lindsey A. Holcomb

Does the Bible Say Women Should Suffer Abuse and Violence?

The question posed by the title of this article might seem to be a rhetorical one. The answer of course is a resounding No, women should not suffer abuse and violence. But many women have been told to stay in abusive marriages and the Bible has been used to justify the advice. The Holcombs debunk this line of thought, unpacking biblical examples of proactive strategy and self-protective escape. They then offer concrete advice on how to minister to women in hostile marital situations.

Edward T. Welch

Ten Ways Ordinary People Can Help Those with Psychiatric Problems

The way we are to minister mirrors the way God ministers. This article shows how the normal, God-given ways of relating to people are the same ways we are to minister to those in the church who are deeply troubled, and often troublesome, due to psychiatric problems. Welch’s practical, field-tested advice can benefit every church by encouraging ordinary people to become inviting and helpful to strugglers and their families.

Michael Gembola

Quietness: A Lost Virtue in a Loud World

This article confronts a widely-accepted, rarely-examined social value – the “Extrovert Ideal.” Our society, and even the church, values and rewards those who are comfortable in the spotlight and gregarious by nature – and overlooks quieter, reflective types. But was this always the case? And is this value supported by the Bible? Gembola examines these questions and goes on to discuss some implications of both extroversion and shyness in interpersonal ministry.

Pierce Taylor Hibbs

A House Built upon the Rock: Finding Our Identity in Christ

People tend to base their identity (the essential “Who am I?”) on their feelings, thoughts and experiences. But Pierce Hibbs reminds us that the Christian faith builds on a different foundation. Our core identity – our essence – is defined by being in Christ, not by the sum total of feelings, thoughts and experiences. The world might think this restrictive, but it actually liberates and enables us to become who God made us to be.

William R. Edwards

Redirecting the Church’s Drama

The Apostle Paul had a sharp conflict with the church in Corinth and he wrote about in 2 Corinthians 7:2–16. In this article, Edwards likens Paul’s approach to a technique used in improv theater called “overaccepting” in which someone in the drama actively redirects the course of the story. By overaccepting, Paul carefully shifts the Corinthian church away from its preoccupation with the human problems and redirects the drama to God and his grace. Edwards offers some thoughts on how this can be used to help you to redirect drama in your church.

Steve Midgley

Conflict in Corinth: A Surprising Way to Build a Community

This article takes the same passage in 2 Corinthians and shows how Paul’s faith guides his intensely emotional involvement with the Corinthian church. Paul’s response to the painful conflict is the furthest thing from “clinical detachment” because he is able to care openly in pursuing their welfare. Based on this model for ministry, Midgley offers reflections on how to examine your own approach to conflict.

Counselor’s Toolbox

Benjamin Crawford

How to Help Counselees with Psychoactive Medications

Many counselees take psychoactive medications and many more consider it. This practical piece from Benjamin Crawford helps counselors support their counselees as they move through the decision-making process. He also suggests how to help a counselee monitor the effects of a medication, provides basic information on the most commonly-used psychoactive drugs, and lays out a few counseling implications.

9Marks Journal 10, 2 (March-April 2013) on Pastoring Christians for the Workplace

The latest issue of the 9Marks Journal, this one devoted to ‘pastoring Christians for the workplace’, is now available as a pdf here.

Several of the pieces have already been published on the 9Marks blog over the last couple of weeks, but it’s handy to have them all together in one document.

The paragraphs below are from Jonathan Leeman’s Editorial Note:

‘The topic of work is a popular one right now among Christian writers and thinkers, which makes sense. When the Monday morning sun breaks through the bedroom curtains, the last residues of Sunday’s joys afforded by the Word and the company of the saints, still lingering lightly in the mind, can dissipate with the sigh, “Time to make the donuts.”

Pastor, how do you prepare your members for Monday’s alarm clock?

It is easy for armchair theologians to over-exalt the activities of 9 to 5, and talk as if Christians can build eternity now. Never mind Ecclesiastes. In theologically sound circles, ironically, the greater danger is not triumphalism, but a graying out of the next world. Never mind heaven.

No, don’t go those ways, pastor. Your church needs a picture of Bunyan’s Christian stumbling yet steadfastly clambering toward the celestial city, hands stretched forward, eyes fatigued but fixed on the horizon.

Still, the eternal life does begin now for the Christian. And faith helps us see that we participate in the character of the creator through our work. The sharpened pencil says that he is a God of planning and intentions. The populated spreadsheet speaks to his analysis and oversight. The choreography of traffic lights communicates his affirmation of order. The clean sheets on the hospital bed say that he is a God who leans down with compassion. And then of course God rests to relish the good work of his hands.

What a joy and privilege it is to work, and so speak if only in whispers of our generous and delegating God, even as you make the donuts. Maybe an extra dollop of frosting says it more loudly?’

Journal of Biblical Counseling 26, 2 (2012)

The latest issue of the Journal of Biblical Counseling is now available online in its entirety as a pdf (here), containing the following pieces:

David Powlison

From the Editor’s Desk: In It for Good

Featured Articles

Timothy S. Lane

Godly Intoxication: The Church Can Minister to Addicts

Winston T. Smith

What’s Right about Sex?

David Powlison

How Does Scripture Change You?

Counselor’s Toolbox

Aaron Sironi and Michael R. Emlet

Evaluating a Person with Suicidal Desires

Paul David Tripp

What to Say to a Teenager in Crisis

Lives in Process

Anonymous

My Virtual Refuge

Anonymous

Active Love: A New Way of Living

Book Reviews

9Marks eJournal 9, 3 (May-June 2012) on Apostolic Pastoring

The latest issue of the 9Marks eJournal is now available as a pdf here.

In the Editor’s Note, Bobby Jamieson writes:

‘Here’s what we have in mind: pastors who care deeply about the progress of the gospel beyond their local churches. Pastors who encourage, disciple, and partner with other pastors. Pastors who lead their congregations to link arms with other likeminded local churches for evangelism, church planting, and more. By “apostolic,” we don’t mean someone who is personally commissioned by Jesus to bear witness to the resurrection (Acts 1:21-22). Instead, we mean someone who shares some of the apostles’ priorities and concerns, even though he doesn’t share their office.

‘Here’s the bottom line: Jesus hasn’t called our churches to fulfill the great commission alone. So look up, look out, and see what encouragement and unexpected fruit God may have in store for you as you work to bless other pastors and churches.’

Richard J. Mouw on Pastors Understanding the Working Lives of their Congregations

There’s a short piece in ‘Faith & Leadership’ (here) by Richard J. Mouw on congregants longing for pastors to understand their work lives.

Mouw writes of speaking to a businessman who was asking for ‘more sensitivity to the kinds of complexities he faces on a daily basis’, and suggests that his pastor ‘could respond to this need in helpful ways without becoming an expert on corporate finance’.

Mouw recommends that a church leader could have lunch with someone to find out what they were facing that day, perhaps even visiting their place of work to get a sense of the environment, to experience something of their workaday world. He also mentions the significance of congregational prayers: ‘simply mentioning the fact that there are businesspeople who need prayer support for their complex challenges can be an encouraging gesture.’