Some Thoughts on Pastoral Care by a Consultant Pastor

My Story

　　Having graduated from HKBTS in 1990, I went first to study in the Master of Theology Program in Duke University Divinity School and then in the Doctor of Philosophy Program in The University of Edinburgh after ministering for eight years. I obtained my Ph.D. in 2005 and began teaching in my alma mater the following year.

　　I intended to concentrate on teaching in order to train more servants of God; unexpectedly owing to the needs of the church, I was already invited to be a consultant pastor of a local Baptist church during my first year of teaching. In the following seven years, in addition to full-time teaching at HKBTS, I also served in succession as a consultant pastor in three Baptist churches. It was due to the resignation of the church pastors in these three communities of faith that they needed a more experienced pastor to be their consultant. My main duty was to shepherd the pastoral co-workers and the deacons. In other words, these three churches faced, to varying extent, crises in church shepherding and leadership.

　　I had served as a consultant pastor for two terms in the first church for about four years. At that time, the church pastor resigned. There were still three pastoral co-workers in the church and a consultant pastor was needed to lead and shepherd these co-workers and the deacons. Later, in my second term of service, God called a HKBTS alumnus who had twenty years of shepherding experience overseas to come back to Hong Kong to be the church’s pastor and therefore I could resign. In that period of time, my greatest challenge was to reorganize the relationship among the pastoral co-workers and monitor the individual workers’ pastoral performance.

　　My ministry in the second church lasted for nine months. As the church found a pastoral successor, it was time for me to resign.

　　I have served in the third church for nearly two years. I recall when I first met the church’s representative, I became aware that four pastoral co-workers would resign one after another. That would mean that several months later, the church would have a pastoral vacuum. Facing such a situation, I was afraid. What came to my mind was: “What has actually happened in the church?” Then I asked myself: “What can I actually do? How can I do it? Who are you to think that you can solve this problem?” From this comes a more basic question: “Given such a situation, why do you accept the offer?” Nevertheless, I somehow accepted the challenge.

　　In the twinkling of an eye, I have served as a consultant pastor for seven years. In this period of time, God has enabled me to see His leading and grace to the churches and from this I have gained a little bit of experience. Anyway, “seven years” is a period imbued with theological symbolism. Perhaps, it is time for me to do some initial consolidation of my pastoral experience as a consultant pastor and through which I can do a bit more thinking on the theology and practice of pastoral care.

Concluding My Experience

　　The commonality of these three communities is that they are “complete strangers” to me. I have had no relation with members of these churches, not having any knowledge, not to mention any understanding of any of them. Therefore, two big problems emerged at once: How actually could I begin to know them? How could I shepherd them?

　　As I recall my shepherding experience of the pastoral co-workers and the deacons, I could summarize my ministry focus in three aspects: fellowship, prayer, and teaching. Readers may find this surprising: why is that fellowship precedes prayer? In fact, according to my personal experience, all three are indispensable and of equal importance, like a rope made up of three strands of thread interwoven together. Any one of these strands of thread is not the center or nucleus of the whole rope. This idea comes from the late Baptist theologian, James William McClendon, Jr., who constructs his theology with one rope consisting of three strands of thread. ¹

1. Fellowship

　　As mentioned above, the commonality of the three communities is that they are “complete strangers” to me. In other words, we originally did not know each other and were fully unrelated. Therefore, to achieve the “zero breakthrough”, the primary pastoral objective was to come to know each other and build up a relationship. Owing to the very heavy teaching workload in the Seminary and also the constraint of time and physical strength, I always had to invite brothers and sisters to come to the Seminary to have supper first before having a formal meeting. This would enable all group members to come to know one another over the table and table fellowship has become an indispensable shepherding time. As for meeting with pastoral co-workers, to have dim sum together in a Chinese restaurant is a pretty good choice. Of course to have sincere sharing and to have the prayer session in the office with individual pastoral workers are also crucial. And so, no matter whether it is dim sum or table fellowship at supper time, they are extremely important in shepherding individual brothers and sisters, deacons and pastoral co-workers because it all begins with building relationships.

2. Prayer

　　Ever since becoming Christian, we have been taught the importance of prayer. Therefore, in our mind we know that prayer is absolutely necessary. Yet, how about our practice of prayer in our daily lives? In retrospect, whenever I communed with individual pastoral co-workers or deacons, the final prayer session would always be the sweetest moment, representing our submission and entrusting the matter to God, and a testimony of unity. It is especially true when we were confronted with some difficult problems and there would inevitably be long and heavy discussion. Sometimes, we even found it helpless but the final prayer session when everyone was praying with the same heart was our “trump card” and also our way out. This is based on a “faithful” conviction: as long as we are faithfully serving God, He holds the result in His hand because “it is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful” (1 Cor 4:2). The responsibility of a farmer is to plant faithfully as to whether the plants will grow is beyond his control. We do not have to worry but just have to entrust it to God because He is faithful.

　　Hence, no matter whether meeting with individual brothers or sisters, sharing life’s ups and downs, or having a formal meeting with the whole deacon board, prayer is absolutely not a “formality” before the meeting coming to an end. Instead, it is when we entrust our lives and the matter under discussion to God and fully submitting ourselves to Him, we will find that it is the “breathing moment” of our lives as we allow the Holy Spirit to breathe oxygen into our lives, and, in particular, it gives an expression to the practice of confessing “Christ is Lord”.

3. Teaching

　　Whenever there is good fellowship and moment of prayer among brothers and sisters, teaching will naturally take place. In fact, most of my teaching to brothers and sisters and pastoral co-workers takes place over the table in our fellowship. One of the most unforgettable experiences was when I took up the offer to be the consultant pastor of a community in the midst of a pastoral crisis. I began to have table fellowship with different groups of brothers and sisters in succession so as to understand how each one of them felt and looked at things, trying to grasp what most people thought and to analyze the symptoms of the predicament. Most important of all, I tried to share with them from the perspective of the Christian faith and my own personal experiences. After that, I had the opportunity to have supper with a brother alone at HKBTS and during that time I shared with him the teaching of Christian faith on confession, forgiveness, and reconciliation. I encouraged him to just fulfill his duty faithfully and put God’s teaching into practice. We then entrusted the result to God. In so doing, we would not feel ashamed before God. Thank God that this brother took the initiative to suggest that he was willing to give his testimony in the following church’s communion service when he would apologize to the congregation for his past attitudes and behaviors, begging their forgiveness and seeking reconciliation.

　　Undeniably, his decision and the choice to re-build the relationship among brothers and sisters—re-build the church—have a key role to play. The Holy Spirit first moved him, changed him, and worked among brothers and sisters in the church, and then the road to rebuild the church gradually emerged; this is truly a practice of “binding and loosing”. We can see a beautiful picture: how the Holy Spirit moves the human hearts and the human’s responses. To John Howard Yoder, when the action of God and the action of human meet, this is a sacrament; Baptists call this an ordinance. ²

Theological Reflection

　　How to shepherd pastoral co-workers and church leaders? Dietrich Bonhoeffer has written a book on pastoral care (the Chinese translation version has recently been published) ³ which can give us some insight.

1. The Mission of Spiritual Care

　　In the first lecture, Bonhoeffer began by saying, “The mission of spiritual care falls under the general mission of proclamation.” Spiritual care is a kind of proclamation and is part of the office of preaching. Just as what Paul says in 2 Timothy 4:2, “Preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction.” Bonhoeffer specifically points out the difference between spiritual direction and spiritual care. The former “is carried out on a plane between two people, one of whom subjects himself to the other” whilst spiritual care “comes down ‘from above,’ from God to the human being.” As this is the proclamation of the word of God, God Himself will fulfill it. Therefore, “in the midst of all anxiety and sorrow we are to trust God. God alone can be a help and a comfort.” ⁴

　　Bonhoeffer holds that spiritual care is necessary for the following four reasons. First, a person “grows callous toward hearing the Gospel through unknown and secret sins.” Second, “the sermon from time to time only strengthens impenitence.” Third, “the sermon cannot call sins by name and thus is powerless to expel them.” Finally, “the oral expression of the parishioner is essential but it does not transpire in the sermon.” ⁵ Therefore, Bonhoeffer concludes his first lecture with this statement: spiritual care “uncovers sin and creates hearers of the gospel.” ⁶ Later, in his eighth lecture “Confession as the Heart of Spiritual Care”, he goes a step further in the discussion. We can see that the goal of all spiritual care is “the confession that we are sinners.” The most specific expression of this is man’s act of confession. In other words, “the confessional is the essential focus for all spiritual care”; ⁷ spiritual care is to make a person know that he has sinned through the word of God so that he can repent.

2. Spiritual Care by the Pastors

　　The main responsibility of a consultant pastor is to build up the lives and the team of pastoral workers so that the whole team can achieve solidarity. To Bonhoeffer, the relationship between pastors is decisive for the church. Without solidarity, animosity and hatred between pastors is destructive for the church. ⁸ Therefore, he reminds us that pastors “should intentionally seek spiritual care about the responsibilities of the office” because a pastor also needs another person to care for his own soul. Indeed, “only one who has been under spiritual care is able to exercise spiritual care.” ⁹ This makes me think of the seminary of the Confessing Church, the Preacher’s Seminary in Finkenwalde, Germany. James W. McClendon, Jr. describes that Bonhoeffer demanded students to do one thing — each student was required to choose a fellow student of the same gender and make a private confession of his sins to this person in preparation for the common Eucharist. ¹⁰ Bonhoeffer required himself to do the same as he regarded it as a communal exercise in following Christ. In this way disciples watched over, corrected, and cared for one another. This gave expression to the very need and importance of spiritual care among shepherds themselves. This is also the core path in building the lives of shepherds and the teamwork of the pastoral workers.

　　To conclude, seven years of being a consultant pastor have enriched my shepherding experience. Again and again, I can see that there is a divine, mystical triangular relationship: God is working among me and brothers and sisters; if we are willing to open ourselves under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, God will do great things to enable us to mutually experience the transformation and growth in our lives and that the church will be built up. May glory be to the Triune God!

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¹ James William McClendon, Jr., Ethics: Systematic Theology, vol. 1, 2nd edition, revised and enlarged (Nashville: Abingdon, 2002), 45-79. Chinese readers who want to know more about McClendon’s concept of the three strands of thread can read the introductory article in the Chinese version of the book published by Hong Kong Baptist Press, 2012, pp xix-xxvii.
² John Howard Yoder, Body Politics: Five Practices of the Christian Community before the Watching World (Nashville: Discipleship Resources, 1994), 1. In other words, sacrament or ordinance is not confined to the worship service but find its expression in our daily lives. Therefore, our lives are a form of worship.
³ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Spiritual Care, trans. Zhuang Yu-xin (Taipei: Campus, 2013).
⁴ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Spiritual Care, trans. Jay C. Rochelle (Philadelphia: Fortress press, 1985), 30.
⁵ Bonhoeffer, Spiritual Care, 32.
⁶ Bonhoeffer, Spiritual Care, 32.
⁷ Bonhoeffer, Spiritual Care, 60.
⁸ Bonhoeffer, Spiritual Care, 65-66.
⁹ Bonhoeffer, Spiritual Care, 66-67.
¹⁰ McClendon, Ethics, 201.