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| Reflections on Being vs. Doing in Pastoral Counseling by C. Roy Woodruff |
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| Roy Woodruff / Pastoral Counseling |
| Wednesday, 01 October 2008 14:38 |
 It is both an honor and a delight to have been asked to be a columnist for this WEOI on-line publication. I am grateful for this opportunity to share reflections, perspectives, and questions related to our discipline of pastoral care and counseling. The WEOI leadership has done a remarkable job of continuing the legacy of Wayne Oates, a man who was pivotal in the professional development of so many of us, as well as in carving out a profession in ministry that combines theological integrity and clinical competence. I am pleased to share in this endeavor of continuing education that relates to the being and doing of pastoral caregiving.A concern that I felt during my last few years as Executive Director of the American Association of Pastoral Counselors has continued to rotate through my thoughts since I retired from that position. To paraphrase an old axiom, you can take the person out of pastoral counseling, but you can’t take pastoral counseling out of the person. My concern, and the core of what I want to share here, relates to how pastoral counselor formation takes place, with the starting point focused as much on being a pastoral counselor as doing pastoral counseling. Wayne Oates began his teaching and writing as a professor in the School of Theology at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, defining his own brand of practical theology. Those of us who studied under him and his faculty colleagues were learning pastoral care and counseling within a larger context of theological, Biblical, and other ministry studies. There was constant dialogue between these disciplines as we struggled to integrate identity with practice, being with doing. A question that kept us challenged was what makes pastoral counseling pastoral, focusing on being pastoral rather than just doing pastoral functions. Ed Friedman, rabbi, pastoral counselor, family systems therapist and author of Generation to Generation wrote, “I do not believe that what makes pastoral counseling pastoral is whether we have packaged our psychology in Scripture . . . . It has always seemed to me . . . that what makes pastoral counseling pastoral is whether we, the pastors, have listened to Scripture! If so, then to the extent we function and grow within the context of our own souls (a lifetime project) and abet the emergence of our own selves (by a willingness to face life’s challenges and oneself), our spirituality and our tradition will spring naturally from our being.” I love Ed’s phrase, listening to scripture. This involves an internal integration, as well as learning an inscriptive rather than a prescriptive clinical use of scripture that is associated with what has become known as Christian Counseling. It also requires an internalized, working knowledge of holy writ! Doing extends from being, not the other way around. I see the primary challenge of pastoral counselor formation now to be the expansion in context for academic work and early clinical training. Whereas pastoral counseling as a discipline was created in a theological seminary context, and good programs still reside there, its primary locus in regard to numbers of students has shifted to college and university graduate settings where there is great diversity of identity and values, with a strong emphasis on doing, i.e. getting the counseling degree and preparing for licensure to practice. While many of these programs include coursework in spirituality, and offer a number of advantages, they cannot begin to provide the total immersion found in a theological/spiritual academic community of seminaries and schools of theology. This is not a matter of being a good or bad reality. It is simply a major shift that significantly impacts the identity and nature of the profession, changing it, for many, from ministry to practice. Ordination, and even ecclesiastical endorsement, is no longer integral to the identity of many pastoral counselors. So, how do we replace those internal points of reference? As AAPC Executive Director, I had to speak often in the context of government and mental health programs about the role of pastoral counselors in the national mental health care delivery system. Who are we and what do we do? Initially, this was a challenge. Over time, however, it got easier as people began to understand and endorse both who we are and what we do. By the time I retired I seldom heard the question. Yet, it never felt that the matter was fully settled for us. It was enormously helpful when we developed the tagline to the association’s name, Professionally Integrating Psychotherapy and Spirituality. The question remains, however, as to whether that integration begins with the internal process of being or the external process of doing. Perhaps that question can only be truly answered on an individual basis. Gaining depth in our being and breath in our doing are both lifelong matters of integrity and competence, and both are essential. We seem to have reversed, however, at least to some extent, our starting point. This makes continuing education that focuses on matters of being, as well as skill development in functions of doing, extremely important. It is easier to teach skill development than it is to help shape an identity, but we must not neglect this essential area of professional formation. It is important to know how to do pastoral counseling, but the primal issue, I believe, is how to be a pastoral counselor. My favorite quote about Jesus comes from the early church father Ireneaus, who wrote, Who he was, he appeared to be; and who he appeared to be, he really was. This kind of congruence of the inner and outer self is the goal of pastoral counselor formation. It is the embodiment of integrity which engenders trust and promotes healing and reconciliation. It is not an obsessive preoccupation with the self. It is just the opposite. It is being comfortable enough with who we are that others become comfortable with what we do.
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Newsflash
A new feature of the Oates Journal is the publication of Special Issues, which gather four to six articles around specific topics. Upcoming Special Issues of the Oates Journal will include:
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