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Dissertation Approval Sheet
This dissertation entitled
ENRICHING PASTORAL COUPLES’ MARRIAGES IN THE SEVENTH-DAY ADVENTIST CHURCH IN AUSTRALIA
Written by
TRAFFORD ARTHUR FISCHER
and submitted in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Ministry
has been accepted by the Faculty of Fuller Theological Seminary
upon the recommendation of the undersigned reader:
______Bryan Craig
______Kurt Fredrickson
Date Received: September 2, 2014
ENRICHING PASTORAL COUPLES’ MARRIAGES IN THE SEVENTH-DAY ADVENTIST CHURCH IN AUSTRALIA
A MINISTRY FOCUS PROJECT SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY FULLER THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY
IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE DOCTOR OF MINISTRY
BY
TRAFFORD ARTHUR FISCHER AUGUST 2014
ABSTRACT
Strengthening Pastoral Marriages in the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Australia Trafford A Fischer Doctor of Ministry School of Theology, Fuller Theological Seminary 2014
The goal of this study was to outline how pastoral couples in the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Australia might strengthen their marriages. This is deemed to be an imperative considering the pain and loss of a broken marriage, and in particular a pastor’s marriage. It is argued that this endeavour will find a greater chance of success when the pastoral couple’s commitment to marital enrichment is supported by the Seventh-day Adventist Church administration and the church members. Through an examination of the Scriptures, this study identifies intimacy in a marital union to be God-designed and blessed by Jesus Christ. Married couples who identify as Christian will recognise that their marriages are to be a statement about the love of God for his Church. This love is to be a self-sacrificing love just as Jesus gave himself in love to his Church. Pastoral couples who set out to enrich and empower their marriages and commit to bringing them towards the love of Jesus will find greater empowerment to minister to their churches. Research in the social sciences reveals that genuine marital love will find its richest meaning through emotional intimacy. The study outlines how pastoral couples might find opportunities within the church setting to experience emotional intimacy, and how these opportunities can be made richer through supportive ministry from their administrators and members. The study also provides strategies for initiating this three- part ministry into the Seventh-day Adventist Churches in Australia. The study concludes that while not all churches might choose to take up this initiative, nor might all pastoral couples choose to make a commitment to strengthen their marriages, or all church administrators commit to supporting their pastoral staff in their marital journey, the project is worthy of investigation and inclusion in the SDA Church ministry program.
Content Reader: Bryan Craig, DMin
Words: 296
To Caryl, who knows so well the journey to marital intimacy
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION: THE MINISTRY CHALLENGE 1
PART ONE: THE MINISTRY CONTEXT
Chapter 1. COMMUNITY AND CHURCH CONTEXT 10
PART TWO: THEOLOGICAL REFLECTIONS
Chapter 2. LITERATURE REVIEW 52
Chapter 3. THEOLOGY OF MARRIAGE AND RELATIONAL INTIMACY 86
PART THREE: PRACTISE
Chapter 4. GOALS AND PLANS 118
Chapter 5. IMPLEMENTATION PROCESS AND EVALUATION 136
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 152
APPENDICES 162
BIBLIOGRAPHY 175
iv
INTRODUCTION
Over the last four decades research into the lives of clergy in Australia has revealed that a high percentage of pastors are experiencing burnout, stress, a lack of job satisfaction, and many are walking away from their churches and careers. These pastoral life-issues are not exclusive to any one denomination. Studies across various faith groups continue to point to high levels of personal pain in the lives of their church pastors.
These issues that confront pastors mean there will be stress in minister’s personal relationships. Burnout and physical stress do not travel alone, and pastors who face work- stress are at high risk for emotional and relational stress in their marriages. Stress in marriage can in turn lead to further stress at work. Pastors caught in this cycle of pain will often lose their effectiveness as church leaders and limit their potential ministry to their congregations.
Pastors in the Seventh-day Adventist Church are not exempt from both ministry stress and loss of relational connectedness.1 Research on SDA pastors in Australia is minimal to non-existent in regards to marital breakdown but anecdotal reports strongly suggest there is common ground with other faith groups when it comes to loss of intimacy and marital stress among pastors. Ministry in the SDA Church does not provide an automatic barrier to marital pain or separation and divorce.
The consistent findings regarding pastoral burnout, loss of ministry focus and broken marriages point to an urgent need for a specialised ministry to pastors and their
1 Wherever the abbreviation SDA or Adventist occurs, the reader should understand it to refer to Seventh-day Adventist. 1
spouses. Every pastoral couple needs to be informed, resourced, and encouraged in their joint journey towards marital intimacy. Pastors of experience, regardless of how many years of marriage, need support in their marital relationships. Pastors also need to be kept aware of new and ongoing research that might assist them in building long-term marital intimacy with their spouses.
As a pastor who has been in full-time ministry since the beginning of 1976, I have seen many pastors lose their desire to sustain their ministry and several who have been unable to remain committed to their first marriage partner. In 2012 four pastors in the
Sydney area separated from their spouses, and other pastors in different states of
Australia have also divorced. No pastor or pastoral family should have to face the pain and loss that is associated with marital breakdown.
While marital stress and loss of intimacy has a significant negative effect on the pastoral couple and their family, it also impacts on the members of the church. Members of all ages who have been influenced for good by their pastor will inevitably experience disillusionment and a deep sense of loss over their pastor’s marital breakdown. A church leader’s separation or divorce is very rarely a private matter.
Statistics relating to marriage breakdown might specify a particular number of marital failures, but they do not include those marital relationships that are less than ideal.
The divorce statistics indicate only those marriages that do not survive, but there are marriages that are just limping along; there are clergy couples who might be secretly desire an end to their marriage but lack the courage or resources to make the break; there are pastors who regard their marriages as tenuous and fragile but work hard to present an image of success and happiness; there are marriages that are suffering but no one knows. 2
While employed as a pastor in the Adventist Church for almost thirty-seven years,
I have not experienced any strong desires to walk away from my marriage. However, the challenge of sustaining intimacy has been difficult and at times tenuous. The demands and expectations of ministry pulled me away from my home and marriage. My wife has informed me that in my early years in youth ministry in Sydney I was away from home for seventeen consecutive evenings in a row. The need to be considered by my employers as successful and to be regarded as a hard-working pastor drove me to excessive and inordinate hours of ministry and placed my marriage and family at risk. Marital intimacy was second to work intimacy. Success in ministry outweighed success in marriage.
My discussions with fellow-pastors indicate that I am not alone. So many pastors are driven to succeed at any cost. They consider their ministry to their church, or churches, as having precedence over any other aspect of life that demands their time or energy. They buy into the belief that their spouse will always be there and all they need to do to be successful in ministry is to concentrate on their work and their partner will faithfully follow along. While this view may not be verbalised -- it may even be denied -- experience suggests otherwise.
However, pastors who live with marital stress and relational loneliness will experience a deep sense of depersonalization, distance and disconnection in their relations with others. They may especially be vulnerable to the appeals of the emotionally needy and find common ground in their shared journey of loneliness. Inappropriate relationships often emerge when pastors are experiencing marital stress and emotional burnout. Marital unfaithfulness may not be too far away.
3
The thesis of this project is that pastoral couples will find relational renewal and deeper levels of marital satisfaction and intimacy as they discover and practise strategies found in Scripture and in the research in the social sciences, and as they find sensitive support for their marriages from their church administrators and their church members.
The Church cannot build successful marriages: only the couple can do that. But the journey to marital satisfaction and longevity can be enhanced and enriched if the church members and administration are able to provide appropriate, sensitive support. No amount of information on marriage, quality resources, attendance at marriage enrichment events, or support from church leaders and members will ensure or guarantee the success of a pastor’s primary relationship, but they may play a major role in assisting them reach that goal.
This project does not set out to point to the inadequacies of previous church-based attempts to enrich clergy couples’ marriages. Nor does the project set out to suggest that the particular strategies outlined in this project are the only correct ways to enrich pastoral couples’ marriages. This project suggests that, to be effective, any input into the process of enriching SDA pastoral marriages must include the SDA Church administrators and the church members, as well as the pastoral couple. A pastoral couple’s commitment to growth and renewal will only have limited success while administration remain ignorant of the need for support or are unwilling to commit to the enriching process, and church members remain uninterested in the part they can play in supporting the pastoral couple’s walk towards marital intimacy.
Chapter 1 examines the ministry setting for clergy couples in the Adventist
Church and how their ministry-arena might impact on a couple’s search for marital 4
intimacy. It refers to writings from Adventist and other Christian authors highlighting the numerous demands and challenges that leave pastoral couples vulnerable to isolation and separateness from the very sources that can keep them anchored in their marriage.
Reflection is given to the well-recognised and accepted challenges that are somewhat unique to the pastor’s role that add further demands on his time and leaves him susceptible to strained relationships and emotional burnout.
The chapter also comments on the issues for the spouse of the pastor as he/she shares in church ministry. Many partners of pastors describe themselves as a single parent as their pastor-spouse spends countless hours away from the marital home. They call for more investment in the marriage: more commitment, more focus, and most of all, more time.
Pastors often find friendships within the church non-existent at worst or tenuous at best. Strong intimate friendships that have been clearly shown to benefit physical and emotional health have not been readily available to the pastor. Some pastors have been taught that friendships within the church will lead to favouritism and lack of necessary pastoral neutrality, while others struggle with having sufficient time so necessary for the development of a solid friendship. Comments are given to the significance of the lack of such supportive friendships for the development of intimacy between clergy couples.
Church member’s expectations of how the pastor should minister to their needs are reviewed as well as the implications these expectations have for pastoral couples.
Church members can often be ignorant of the demands they place on their pastor. While they rightfully desire a strong and vibrant church, their calls for consistent pastoral input
5
into every aspect of church life as well as their personal and family lives might only be adding inordinately to their pastor being overwhelmed in ministry.
Chapter 2 examines selected writings pertinent to the development of a specific and dedicated ministry to enrich pastoral marriages. It begins with an assessment of the writings of two authors who highlight several specific issues for pastors that are not included in Chapter 1, including the risks pastors face in a work-environment that offers numerous opportunities for inappropriate liaisons, and how pastors can be tempted to find intimacy in the wrong places: through sexual promiscuity, sexual abuse, or pornography.
Strengthening a pastor’s marriage might act as a deterrent to these significant negative outcomes.
This is followed by a review of a number of authors who highlight the need for human intimacy, and how intimacy can be especially found in a marriage where both partners share a desire to grow and sustain a high degree of marital connectedness.
Recent research in the social sciences has pointed to the imperative for emotional connection in marriage. Emotional intimacy is clearly emerging as a non-negotiable in healthy and satisfying marriages, and pastors who live in an arena of high demands and undefined boundaries will particularly need to be attuned to the necessity for emotional intimacy in their marriage.
A small selection of the vast amount of literature that offers strategies for enhancing couple relationships is reviewed in Chapter 2. There are innumerable opinions and beliefs about what makes marriages work best: some based on intuition, some on guesswork, and some solidly founded in research and in Scripture. Marriage educators
6
and marriage enrichment facilitators will need to be discerning in what they provide to pastoral couples who seek support and nurturance for their marriages.
Chapter 3 outlines a theology of marriage and human intimacy that provides a scriptural basis for the project. It includes an assessment of the negative impact of loneliness in human relationships and how God provided humans with the desire and the ability to seek out primary relationships that might help negate the post-Edenic reign of human loneliness and its consequences. The biblical picture of love in marriage is reviewed, especially as revealed in the words of Jesus and in Paul’s epistles.
Consideration is also given to the biblical directive for a ministry buoyed by friendships and its implications for pastoring practises in the Adventist Church. As already noted, friendships generally appear to be a tenuous issue for pastors. Concerns over the need for neutrality towards members can lead a pastor to avoid friendships with church members. The pressure for high levels of pastoral performance, lack of time, and a pastor’s heavy involvement in evening appointments can exacerbate the issue even further. However, pastors are human, and SDA ministers need friendships. Jesus compelled his disciples to work in pairs: a practise worthy of emulation by SDA pastors.
A pastor who is supported by friendships with his peers, both inside and outside the church, will experience a greater degree of emotional and physical health and be better able to sustain an energised marital relationship.
The chapter concludes with reflections on the high place marriage holds in the
SDA Church’s beliefs and values. The Church considers marriage to be a God-designed initiative and finds in marriage a symbol of the God-man relationship. Marriage, therefore, needs to be protected. This need for boundaries around the marriage 7
relationship is reflected in the way the Church designs policies and procedures for those pastors who fail to sustain sexual faithfulness in marriage. While this is honourable, the
Church fails to provide adequate opportunities for pastoral couples to enhance and enrich their marriages. This practise needs to be changed. The SDA Church needs to find a greater desire to strengthen marriages rather than focusing on punishing those who fail in their marriage, and follow through with a clear focus in policy and practise that will assist in strengthening and enriching the personal lives of their pastoral staff.
The significant implications of strong pastoral marriages for church administrators, pastors and their spouses, and church members, are reviewed in Chapter
4. It outlines the strategic goals for the project, including growth in church administrator’s awareness of the role they might play in strengthening and supporting pastors and their marriages; providing selected pastors a specific occasion for experiencing enrichment through a marriage enrichment weekend; a transformation in church-members’ views and attitudes about marriage and marital connectedness, and encouraging the Adventist faith-community to raise marital intimacy for pastors onto a higher level of importance. The chapter also includes a description of the specific strategies for the provision of a marriage-enrichment program and the resources developed for the pastoral couples, the administrators and the church members.
The study then provides comment on the major implications that emerge from the ministry event. It outlines a number of recommendations for strengthening pastoral marriages in the SDA Church and the development of marital intimacy. Reflection is given as to how the study may have been strengthened and how similar events in the future might be carried out more effectively. 8
PART ONE
THE MINISTRY CONTEXT
CHAPTER 1
COMMUNITY AND CHURCH CONTEXT
The Adventist Church pastor and her spouse are placed in a ministry environment rich with opportunities for personal and couple happiness and satisfaction. This same environment also brings significant challenges to the pastoral marriage that can arrest personal joy and intimacy to the point where the ministry couple may feel torn by spilt loyalties and personal loneliness, losing their first love. This chapter describes a number of key issues and concerns that consistently challenge a pastoral couple’s search for intimacy in marriage. It commences with a description of selected issues of particular concern to the pastor, followed by references to those issues that might confront pastoral spouses. It also reviews issues that confront the pastor and spouse as a couple, with attention given to concerns that emerge from within the church.
The pastor and his spouse minister in a unique and challenging environment that can so readily distract them from the need to form a strong and robust marriage characterised by intimacy and respect. Many of the issues and concerns that confront pastoral couples are shared by ministry leaders in all denominations. The chapter
10
therefore includes numerous references to research conducted on clergy outside of the
SDA faith community. These findings are offered on the recognition that SDA pastors do not have a monopoly on those aspects of ministry that impact so markedly on clergy marriages.
The Pastor
One of the first issues that will confront a pastoral couple is the challenge to find an appropriate balance between work and home. Genuine marital intimacy will only characterise those marriages where the couple have dedicated sufficient time for it to grow and flourish. If an SDA pastor is ignoring his or her marriage, it will not be due to malice or mindlessness. It will be far more likely because the pastor is struggling to find sufficient time to complete the myriad number of assigned ministry tasks.
The Seductive Nature of Work Success
Not only do pastors wish to complete their tasks in ministry, they wish to complete them well. They want to be considered successful, effectual, and worthy of their remuneration. The greater number of pastors will therefore be driven to reach a high level of achievement and perform at their very best. This urgency to perform well may be driven by a desire to please their administrators, or their church members, their peers or family members. They may also have a deep desire to please God and to bring Him glory
(John 15:5). However, this desire to do well in ministry can become an overriding drive that places their key relationships at risk. This may be especially true for men.
11
Rachel Cinamon and Yisrael Rich explored differences between and within genders in their views of the importance of life roles and the implications for work– family conflict. They assigned the descriptor “work” profile to those participants who ascribed high importance to the work role and low importance to the family role, and
“family” profile to those participants who attributed high importance to the family role and low importance to the work role. They found that women were underrepresented in the “work” category, more women than men fit the “family” profile, and more men than women fit the “work” profile.1
It can be argued that in broad terms men tend to be more readily attracted to their work while women find greater fulfilment in their home-life. Men find it easier to “do” rather than “relate.” They like to be able to observe their achievements and see their successes, possibly more easily achieved in the definitive nature of the workplace than in the somewhat undefined, relational world of marriage and family-life. While men desire and cherish their personal relationships, they generally tend to find a greater sense of value and personal worth in their work.
A further indicator as to why male pastors may minimize their involvement in marriage and home-life can be found in the literature relating to the absence of fathers in parenting over the last few decades. David Blankenhorn suggests that “fathers were considered to be of secondary importance to mothers and perhaps even unnecessary.”2
1 Rachel Gali Cinamon and Yisrael Rich, "Gender Differences in the Importance of Work and Family Roles: Implications for Work-Family Conflict," Sex Roles, Dec 2002, 47, 11-12: 531-541 http://link.springer.com/article/10.1023%2FA%3A1022021804846 (accessed October 18, 2013).
2 David Blankenhorn, Fatherless America: Confronting Our Most Urgent Social Problem (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1995), 2.
12
Referring to trends in America in the 1990s, Blankenhorn stated, “Men in general, and fathers in particular, are increasingly viewed as superfluous to family life.”3
Australian research revealed similar trends and raised similar concerns. Bill
Muehlenberg stated, “Whether caused by divorce and broken families, or by deliberate single parenting, uninvolved or uncommitted fathering, more and more children grow up without fathers.”4 Steve Biddulph suggests that father-hunger is now widely seen “as the most important concept in male psychology”.5 In a report on the National Strategic
Conference on Fatherhood held in Australia in 2003, Warwick Marsh states: “Almost everyone who came to the conference agreed that the restoration of fatherhood in
Australia was one of Australia’s most pressing social problems.”6
A male pastor may therefore be easily convinced that his church-based ministry is providing him a greater degree of social and personal reward than his relationships at home. He may come to believe his role at home is somewhat superfluous, or at least of lesser value than his work at the church. He will therefore be inextricably drawn into the temptation to spend inordinate hours at the church and minimize his time at home with his spouse and family.
3 Ibid.
4 Bill Muehlenberg, "The Facts of Fatherlessness," Fathers In Families, Fatherhood Foundation http://www.fatherhood.org.au/resources/FathersinFamiliesLR.pdf (accessed October 25, 2013).
5 Steve Biddulph, Manhood, 3rd ed. (Sydney: Finch Publishing, 2002), 30.
6 Warwick Marsh, "Senate Select Committee on Men's Health 2009," Dads4Kids Fatherhood Foundation http://www.fatherhood.org.au/resources/Senate%20Inquiry%20Men's%20Health%/ 2013Mar09.pdf (accessed October 25, 2010).
13
However, Melissa Abercromby’s research revealed that women are also struggling with issues around balancing work and home life. Abercromy found that women are more likely than men to report high levels of role overload and caregiver strain. She continues,
This is because women devote more hours per week than men to non-work activities such as childcare, elder care and are more likely to have primary responsibility for unpaid labour such as domestic work. Furthermore, other studies show that women also experience less spousal support for their careers than their male counterparts. Although women report higher levels of work- family conflict than do men, the numbers of work-life conflict reported by men is increasing.7
The desire and drive to be successful in the pastorate as well as sustaining a satisfying life at home will be an ongoing issue for both male and female pastors. Their sense of personal worth will be positively influenced as they find success either at work or home, and negatively influenced in the same environments. It will require significant commitment by both partners to work through these issues and find ways that provide both spouses a sense of personal worth and satisfaction as well as adequate opportunities for growing in marital intimacy.
High Sense of Calling and Dedication to the Church The SDA pastor takes up a position in ministry not simply on her own volition but in response to God’s initiative and God’s call. This perception of being specifically chosen by God to minister on his behalf can easily lead to stress in numerous areas of the marriage as couples grapple with the responsibilities and demands in the home and at the
7 Melissa Abercromby, "A Report on the Importance of Work-Life Balance," http://www.bia. ca/articles/ AReportontheImportanceofWork-LifeBalance.htm (accessed October 18, 2013).
14
church. The tension between being called by God to work and being loved by a spouse to be at home can have a profound impact on pastoral couple’s relational stability and satisfaction.
The potential impact of the call to ministry can be noted in references found in the
SDA Minister’s Manual. This manual specifically states that a call to the Gospel ministry is a uniquely personal call and must come only from Christ. The authors state, “The true minister for God is not self-called. As with the apostle Paul, the initiative is not the individual’s, but the Lord’s. Paul did not choose; God chose. Paul’s choice was whether or not to respond to God’s choice.”8 The same manual states, “You may choose a profession, but the ministry cannot be invaded that way, for the ministry is more than a profession: it is a calling. . . . A call to the gospel ministry is a call not to be a sociologist or a public performer, but an ambassador for Christ. A call to anything less is not a call to the ministry. This call demands a full-time, life-consuming devotion.”9
SDA pastors take up a profession that in many ways is unlike any other. It is a
God-appointed role and task. On one hand this appointment can imbue them with confidence: they can have the assurance that they have been set-apart by God for a special work. On the other hand the knowledge that their appointment not only calls for faithfulness to their church leadership but especially to their God can be a heavy burden
8 Ministerial Association, Seventh-day Adventist Minister's Manual (Silver Spring, MD: The Ministerial Association, 1992), 17.
9 Ibid. See also SDA Minister’s Manual, 1992, 76: “Regardless of the means by which the Lord initiates it, His call becomes an all-absorbing passion, a relentless drive that leads its possessor to proclaim: ‘Necessity is laid upon me. Woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel!’ (1 Cor 9:16). The conviction becomes a ‘fire in the bones’ that will not be denied expression (Jer 20:9).” 15
to bear. The intensity of focus and demanding responsibility is clearly implied in the descriptive words in the manual quoted above: the ministry demands a full-time, life- consuming devotion. As W. J. Blacker states, “The ministry is more than a vocation, it is more than a profession, it is more than a career, it is more than a position; it is a calling, it is a commitment, it is a life.”10
The SDA Church has valued and appreciated the writings of Ellen G. White. She was heavily involved in guiding the Church in its beginnings and many members still believe she was a recipient of the gift of prophecy provided by the Holy Spirit to guide the Church in all aspects of its mission and ministry. In relation to the role and position of the pastor, she writes,
The minister who is a co-worker with Christ will have a deep sense of the sacredness of his work, and of the toil and sacrifice required to perform it successfully. He does not study his own ease or convenience. He is forgetful of self. In his search for the lost sheep, he does not realise that he himself is weary, cold and hungry. He has but one object in view - the saving of souls.11
She further states that the minister “stands as God's mouthpiece to the people, and in thought, in word, in act, he is to represent his Lord. . . . Today God chooses men as He chose Moses to be His messengers, and heavy is the woe resting on the one who dishonours his holy calling, or lowers the standard set for him in the life and labours of the Son of God.”12
10 W. J. Blacker, "The Charge and Welcome to Newly Ordained Ministers," Ministry XLV, no. 5 (May 1972): 15.
11 Ellen G. White, Gospel Workers (Washington, DC: Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1915), 16.
12 Ibid., 20. 16
A man or woman who accepts the call to ministry in the SDA Church and takes his or her calling seriously accepts a demanding and potentially all-consuming role that cannot be taken lightly. This emphasis on the call of the pastor for the highest degree of commitment to the Church and its mission may play a very real role in creating stress on the pastoral marriage. Pastors who believe that the call to ministry comes directly from
God will inevitably feel a strong desire to minister at their highest possible capacity and may risk their primary relationships to ensure they measure up to what they perceive to be the standards that define God’s call to be a pastor.
An example of these standards can be found in the charge presented to pastors at their ordination: “Your entire energy, time, talents, are to be directed to your work. There is no turning back. No side lines are to divert your attention or dilute your influence.
Your conduct must be an example and your integrity beyond question.”13 Miroslav Kis adds more to the picture: “Every fiber of the minister's body, every pulsation of his energy, every moment of his time must be God's, if His agenda is to be followed.”14
The highly committed and dedicated pastor will inevitably feel a need to prove he/she has been called by God and is genuinely dedicated to these high levels of performance expected by God and the Church. This need to prove authenticity is referred to in the SDA policy guidelines regarding the ministerial intern. A graduate in theology from any SDA training college is not immediately ordained to ministry but is expected to complete a period as an intern under the supervision of a more senior pastor. During this
13 Blacker, 14.
14 Miroslav Kis, "Sexual Misconduct in Ministry: A Biblical Sketch of Pastoral Identity (Part 1)," Ministry 76, no. 1 (January 2004): 9.
17
time they are provided a ministerial license (as opposed to credential’s received at ordination) to designate that their ministerial training is incomplete. With reference to the need to prove their genuine response to a call and a desire to take up a permanent place in ministry, the Minister’s Manual states, “Granting a ministerial license is not a commitment on the part of a Conference15 that ordination is ultimately assured. It merely provides the opportunity for licentiates to prove their calling.”16
The awareness that pastors need to prove their legitimacy during the time of internship can place considerable stress on young couples beginning in ministry. The need to prove they are true to the cause and able to be relied upon to meet the Church’s expectations can drive young pastors to work over and above their limits and risk couple- time that helps build intimacy. This is especially significant considering John Gottman’s research showing that half of all divorces in the United States occur within the first seven years of marriage.17 A desire to measure up to a life-long call from God may become even more under focus after the ordination ceremony where the pastor is set apart for his specific ministry to the Church.
15 The SDA Churches in a given state or territory governed by an administrative committee, e.g., North New South Wales Conference, Greater Sydney Conference. A Union is a collection of Conferences in a given area, e.g., The Australian Union Conference (AUC) includes all the States and Territories of Australia. A Division is a collection of Unions, e.g., the South Pacific Division includes the AUC as well as the Trans-Australian Union Conference, the Papua New Guinea Union Conference, and the Trans-Pacific Union Conference.
16 SDA Minister’s Manual, 72.
17 John M. Gottman and Nan Silver. The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work. (New York: Three Rivers Press, 1999), 7.
18
Ordination Regarded as Being Set Apart for Specific Ministry
The SDA Church regards ordination as a marker or indicator that a pastoral intern has successfully demonstrated an appropriate response to a specific call by God to be a minister of the Gospel and has the necessary social and spiritual skills to take up this high calling. The Minister’s Manual states:
The licensed minister is ordinarily ordained to the gospel ministry after he has satisfactorily fulfilled a period of pastoral/evangelistic service during which time he has given evidence of his call to the ministry. The spiritual rite of ordination constitutes the official recognition by the Seventh-day Adventist Church of his divine call to the ministry as a life-commitment, and is his endorsement to serve as a minister of the gospel in any part of the world.18
While ordination therefore acts as a recognition by the Church that an intern is now a legitimate pastoral leader, it is also a recognition that he/she has been set-apart in some special way. This act of ordination as a setting apart is further noted in the Minister’s
Manual:
While all Christians render spiritual service, the New Testament portrays an organised church, administered and nurtured by persons who are specially called by God, set apart by the laying on of hands to a particular service. . . . Ordination, an act of commission, acknowledges God’s call, sets the individual apart, and appoints that person to serve the church in a special capacity.19
While this act of setting apart may play a role in highlighting the specialised,
God-shaped role of the pastor, it may also play havoc when it comes to the pastor’s
18 SDA Minister’s Manual, 75.
19 Ibid., 75-77. See also, “The setting apart of men for the sacred work of the ministry should be regarded as one of the most vital concerns of the church. . . . The proofs of a man's divine call must be clearly evident before the church sets him apart by ordination.” Ministerial Association of Seventh-day Adventists, "Qualifications for the Ordination of Ministers", General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists http://www.ministrymagazine.org/archive/1955/01/qualifications-for-the-ordination-of- ministers (accessed June 4, 2013).
19
marriage, separating the pastoral couple from the very ones who can provide support on both a personal and couple level. As individuals they face the risk of being lonely and vulnerable in the belief they are separate from the common person and potential support- people in their community. As a couple their marriage can be bereft of mutual support and encouragement from others in the faith-community as they stay apart and distant in a lonely ministry.
Paul and Libby Whetham’s conclusion on this issue speaks in a profound way to the SDA Church: “We are proposing a way of being church where leaders are no longer set apart but are more integrated as interdependent parts of the congregation under the
Headship of Christ. This will mean a paradigm shift in the way we think church for all of us.”20 The SDA Church will need to continue to give study to the issue of ordination for pastors and ensure any symbolic “marker” they employ as a designation denoting the pastoral call does not at the same time separate them from one of the most important sources of support for their marriage, the local faith-community in which they minister.
Lack of Defined Work-hours and Broad Job-description
The pastor often experiences the pastoral role as a twenty-four hour, seven day-a- week commitment. A legitimate question that often remains unanswered for the pastor is, when am I off-duty? Ivan Blake states that “never before have pastors struggled more
20 Paul and Libby Whetham, Hard to Be Holy (Adelaide: Lifeboatstories.com, 2000), 56.
20
with too much work, too many unsolvable problems, far too much stress, and too little job satisfaction.”21
The pastor will be called to the hospital at various hours of the night for emergency prayer with anxious or grieving parents for a sick or dying child; they will be required to attend youth-camps or hiking trips during national holiday periods such as
Easter, Christmas and New Year that are traditionally reserved for family-focused celebrations; they may be called out to intervene in a family-dispute just as their daughter’s birthday party is about to commence, or on the evening of their wedding anniversary. As a fifty-two year-old priest noted: “People really don’t know much about the life of a priest, except that they expect them to be always available and to attend immediately.”22
These demands on the pastor place significant stress on the pastoral marriage.
Pastoral spouses can easily believe they are second-rate in the priority of their partners and need to line-up behind the church members for attention. This can lead to anger and frustration and drive the pastor’s spouse to seek attention and a sense of worth from other sources.
Pastors are not only time-poor, they also face a wide range of tasks. Whetham and
Whetham refer to a survey of Australian clergy regarding their perceptions of their role.
The range of jobs provided in the pastoral responses included educator (training, and instructing and leading study groups); evangelist (converting others to faith); organiser
21 Ivan Charles Blake, "Pastor for Life," Ministry 82, no. 7/8 (July/August 2010): 6.
22 Whetham and Whetham, Hard to be Holy, 6.
21
(organising and supervising the work of the parish and the congregation); pastor (visiting and counselling); preacher (delivering sermons and expounding the Word of God); priest
(conducting worship and administering the sacraments); scholar (reading, studying and writing); and social reformer (involved directly in attacking social injustices).23
The same writers refer to results found in The National Church Life Survey
(NCLS), a survey of 4,500 clergy in Australia across all denominations. They state, “It is evident from the results that leaders carry out a wide range of roles. Further, it is clear that leaders have different perceptions of what their roles should be, compared to what they actually are.”24 The NCLS indicated that 43 percent of senior ministers/pastors/ priests feel they waste time on tasks not central to their role. Further, higher levels of burnout were discovered where congregations and leaders disagreed over the pastoral role, or where there was disagreement between leaders’ actual role and desired role. “The question of role is clearly a vexed one.”25 Randy Thompson states the issue with clarity:
The temptation for the church is to make their pastor into something he or she isn’t, and the temptation for the pastor is to play that role to keep everyone happy. Unfortunately, reality regularly exposes this little conspiracy for the unreality it is, and everybody ends up frustrated and (very) unhappy. When that happens, it isn’t the church that gets fired and is forced to move away, it’s the pastor.26
Confusion and anxiety over the pastor’s role and how that role can be best expressed within the pastor’s ministry skill-set will be felt within the pastoral marriage.
23 Ibid., 5.
24 Ibid., 6.
25 Ibid.
26 Randy Thompson, "If It Seems Like Your Pastor Is Crazy," http://www.internetmonk.com/ archive/randy-thompson-if-it-seems-lie-your-pastor-is-crazy (accessed December 12, 2012).
22
The drive to be everything for everybody cannot be sustained, but pastors try hard to succeed, maybe too hard. While this diversity of role is immersed in the expectation that a pastor will always act and behave in a Godlike manner, the tension and stress will inevitably seep into and contaminate their marital intimacy.
Lack of Training in Couple-relationships
Pastoral education and training for pastors at college level in the SDA Church in
Australia has traditionally been bereft of content on human relationships, especially intimate relationships. While preparation for conducting Bible studies or evangelistic series may have been exemplary, there was very little teaching in the area of marriage and couple intimacy. In the late-1970s an introduction to basic pastoral counselling was offered to students and then expanded in the late-1980s to include a broader research basis. However, much of the emphasis in the traditional theological training has been didactic in nature and very little emphasis has been given to the emotional component of human relationships.
Pastors currently employed in the SDA Church who received their training during the 1970s and 1980s are therefore only minimally aware of the basics of human relationships and will only have grown in their awareness and knowledge of marital intimacy if they have independently pursued it as a personal or professional interest. This has left a generation of pastors hampered and limited in their ability to enrich and grow their own marriages as well as the marriages of their church members. Their lack of knowledge and experience in relational skills has inevitably meant numerous marriages that were intimacy-challenged and in need of strong yet sensitive care were unable to 23
receive the support so necessary for growth in love. Pastoral spouses who would have benefited from a more sensitive and astute partner have been left lonely and emotionally vulnerable.
An informal survey of forty-one SDA pastors in the Greater Sydney Conference helps to illustrate the very real need for more training in marital intimacy.27 The pastors completed a short questionnaire that asked for their response to a number of issues facing pastors, including the need for more training in building couple-relationships. The results clearly indicated that, for this group of pastors, there was a very real need for more training in assisting couples to build stronger relationships in their churches. By implication, it may also indicate a recognition of the need to strengthen and enrich their own marriages.
The Pastor’s Spouse28
H. London and Neil Wiseman make this assertion in relation to the important role of the pastor’s spouse:
Through 2000 years of Christian history, the role of the minister’s mate has changed often, and it continues to change rapidly. Even in a single ten-or–fifteen- year period, variations have often moved from caring companion to hearth keeper to resident sacrifice to spiritual sustainer to ministry partner to energetic helpmeet to institutional church leader to deputy pastor. But whatever direction the
27 Writer’s personal survey, 24th June, 2013. The survey used a Likert Scale with a range of 1 – 5, where 1 indicated the issue as most significant and 5 the least significant. To the issue of “lack of training in couple-relationships,” nine pastors marked 1, fourteen marked 2 and nine marked 3, while only six marked 4 and three marked 5.
28 While a variety of faith persuasions have embraced women’s ordination, the SDA Church continues to debate the issue and has yet to authorise the ordination of female ministers. The church has authorised female ministers to be commissioned, but not ordained. Therefore any references to the pastor’s spouse will generally be to the male pastor’s wife.
24
minister’s wife’s role tilts at any moment of human history, it always involves a position of trusted support for the work of the ministry. And it is always an invaluable asset in the service of the kingdom.29
Unfortunately this “position of trusted support” also brings with it a wide range of frustrations and personal challenges. While the pastoral spouse can be a source of support to the pastor, research suggests they are often either placed on a pedestal or disregarded and ignored. Some pastoral spouses choose to be heavily involved in their partner’s ministry, while others keep a protective distance. At whatever position the spouse chooses to align him or herself, there are significant factors that will confront and challenge the couple’s marital stability and levels of marital satisfaction.
High Role Expectations
James Cress suggests that only the naïve would assume that there are no expectations for a pastor’s wife. He states, “One of the greatest areas of stress for many pastoral families are the high level of expectations placed on the pastoral family, particularly the wife and children.”30 He further states,
Such expectations include, but are not limited to, being an example to the believers, a winsome influence to unbelievers, a source of help to those seeking counsel, a model parent with exemplary children, a listening ear to complaining members, a receiver and deliverer of messages, a conduit of information, a life lived in public view, a willingness to provide music, leadership, food, or advice – often at short notice – an ability to cope on a tight budget without complaining, and expectations of attendance at every church function. The list can be extended.31
29 H. B. London Jr. and Neil B. Wiseman, Married to a Pastor's Wife (Wheaton, IL: Victor 1995), 22., quoted in Susie Hawkins, From One Ministry Wife to Another (Chicago, IL: Moody Publishers, 2009), 19.
30 James A. Cress, “Selective Disobedience,” Ministry 71, no. 6 (June 1998): 28-29.
31 Ibid. 25
Roland Croucher refers to research by the Alban Institute, Washington D.C., that demonstrates stress and burnout among clergy wives is as high as for pastors. He states,
“As resident ‘holy woman’ she’s a walking target for everyone’s unconscious expectations of what such a saint should be. There’s no one providing pastoral care for most clergy wives. Clergy families are often on the move, and such relocations are stressful. Parsonage living for many isn’t easy. On controversial issues she must stay silent.”32
Expectations for pastoral spouses emerge from three sources: the congregation, denominational leadership, and their own perceptions and beliefs. Polly Roberts found that both clergymen and their wives identified the demands of the congregation “as their greatest problem or concern.”33 She also notes that “research has found a significant negative linear relationship between perceived church expectations and clergy wife marital satisfaction.”34 Further, a study of divorced clergy wives identified “pressures to fulfil an expected role model as the top stress factor that contributed to the divorce.”35
Sarah Wessels highlights the expectation-issues in these words: “Though others may expect her to derive her sense of self from the role-prescription her husband, the
32 Rowland Croucher, "What Pastor's Wives Wish Their Husbands and Churches Knew About Them," John Mark Ministries http://www.jmm.org.au/articles/8202.htm (accessed June 4, 2013).
33 Polly Sheffield Roberts, "Alleviating Stress in Clergy Wives: The Development and Formative Evaluation of a Psychoeducational Group Intervention," Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University www.scholar.lib.vt.edu/theses/available/etd-04272004-134248/unrestricted/RobertsDissertation2.pdf (accessed June 4, 2013).
34 Ibid.
35 Ibid.
26
congregation, and society at large have for her, she may become dissatisfied, frustrated, anxious and even angry as she becomes more of what everyone wants her to be and less of what she really is.”36
Marilyn Oden reports on her qualitative research among a group of 200 clergy spouses who were invited to write anonymous letters expressing the things they would like to say to their congregations if there were no fear of reprisal. The concern most frequently expressed in the responses was “the issue of unrealistic expectations.”37 Oden noted that problems over role expectations increase when the spouse is employed. She also noted that “when clergy spouses try to limit their activities at church they frequently feel that the congregation does not understand their reasons.”38
Relating to the Pastoral Call
Rachel Lovingood and Jennifer Landrith outline four common response types that describe the reactions of pastoral spouses to their partner’s call to ministry. The first response is that of a spouse who believes they have had a clear call of their own to ministry, and because of this calling, have prepared themselves for this role. They are very involved together in ministry as a couple.
36 Sarah Jane Wessels, "Care for the Pastor's Wife, Too!" http://www.ministryhealth.net/ mh_articles/ 219_sv_care_pastors_wife.html (accessed June 8, 2013).
37 Marilyn Brown Oden, "Stress and Purpose: Clergy Spouses Today" http://www.religion- online.org/showarticle.asp?title=311 (accessed June 4, 2013).
38 Ibid.
27
The second describes a more general response to the calling. These spouses believe God has called them to ministry but are uncertain as to what specific area. Like the specific call, these spouses are confident in themselves and how they are to minister.
They have prepared themselves for ministry but not necessarily as the wife of a pastor.
They are open to whatever area God calls them.
The third response describes the spouse who is surprised by the call. These are spouses who were married to a partner in a different profession when they were then called into ministry. These are partners who feel called to their partner. Because of this change in career, they sometimes feel unsure about their place in ministry and feel inadequate to fill the role. Most have not prepared for this role but step into it believing that if God called their spouse then they may be called as well.
Fourthly there is the impersonal response to the call. These spouses do not feel called to ministry and see the pastorate as their spouse’s job and not their own. Rachel
Lovingwood and Jenifer Landrith note, “Many of these partners do not desire to work alongside their partner and may resist any involvement in church life.”39 The spouse’s reactions and feelings toward their partner’s call to serve the church have clear ramifications for not only the effectiveness of the pastor’s ministry to the church but also for their levels of satisfaction in their marriage. A pastor who is partnered to a spouse who rejects the concept of a shared calling may find it difficult to maintain an effective ministry and an intimate relationship, and the spouse will find it difficult to sustain high
39 Rachel Lovingwood and Jennifer Landrith, In Our Shoes: Real Life Issues for Minister's Wives by Minister's Wives (Nashville, TN: Lifeway Press, 2008), 13, quoted in Debra D. Benoit, “The Changing Role of the Pastor's Wife in todays Evangelical Church” (DMin diss., Lynchburg, VA: Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary, 2010), 23.
28
levels of support and intimacy in the marriage when he/she feels angry about their partner’s choice of career. Disappointment, guilt, frustration and anger will no doubt shape much of the marital dialogue and mould relational conflicts.
In the early part of the twentieth century, White addressed SDA pastors and alluded to the risks of an uncommitted clergy partner and the potential impact on ministry. “The wife of the minister of the Gospel can be either a most successful helper and a great blessing to her husband or a hindrance to him in his work. It depends very much on the wife whether a minister will rise from day to day in his sphere of usefulness, or whether he will sink to the ordinary.”40
Lovett Weems Jr. and Joseph Arnold refer to a study that found a spouse’s feelings factored into a pastor’s decision to leave the ministry, and in a further study, one- third of one hundred and thirty-one clergy who left the ministry noted that the wife or family was unhappy.41 Roberts refers to research that found clergy wives who share a sense of spiritual calling with their husbands have more contentment in their roles as pastors’ spouses. However, “clergy wives who view their husbands mainly as professionals are more likely to reflect ambivalence and resentment towards their role as clergy spouses.”42
40 Ellen G. White, The Adventist Home (Hagerstown, MD: Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1952), 355.
41 Lovett H. Weems Jr. and Joseph E. Arnold, "Clergy Health: A Review of Literature," Lewis Centre of Church Leadership http://www.gbophb.org/userfiles/file/health/CFH/FTL_Clergy_Health _lit_Review.pdf (accessed June 4, 2013).
42 Roberts, "Alleviating Stress in Clergy Wives: The Development and Formative Evaluation of a Psychoeducational Group Intervention.”
29
Cultural shifts in women’s roles in the work force have only added further stress and tension to pastoral marriages. This is highlighted by Roberts who states that
“traditional roles and values related to gender, marriage, parenting, home, employment, and church routine continue to resonate amidst an environment of change, with accompanying confusion and uncertainty.”43 Lisa Cullen notes the same issue: “The basic job description for pastor’s wives hasn’t changed in a century. But pastor’s wives have.
The rise of megachurches, dual-career couples and women’s independence have complicated the role and in some cases intensified the frustrations.”44
Robert’s research also points to the dynamic nature of the roles of clergy spouses and calls for understanding and sensitivity to the challenges this places on clergy marriages: “Definitions of pastor, preacher, preacher’s wife, parsonage family, husband, wife, mother and father are no longer fixed or one-dimensional. Ministers, spouses and churches need guidance and support as they grapple with new styles of family life and unfamiliar patterns of relationships.”45
On Public View and Scrutiny
Public and private space in ministerial families can blend in an uneasy mix that is detrimental to the marriage. Numerous readings on clergy marriages highlight the
43 Ibid.
44 Lisa Cullen, "Think Your Job Is Tough? Try Being a Pastor's Wife" http://www.business. time.com/2007/03/29/think_your_job_is_tough_try_be/#ixzz2VDdNMsia (accessed June 4, 2013).
45 Roberts, "Alleviating Stress in Clergy Wives: The Development and Formative Evaluation of a Psychoeducational Group Intervention."
30
distorted nature of relational privacy and the lack of time and space alone for connecting together and renewing marital love and affection. This can be especially difficult for the pastor’s spouse.
Robert’s research revealed the negative impact of family boundary intrusiveness on pastoral marriages. She refers to a multi-denominational study revealing that 30 percent of clergy wife participants named a goldfish bowl existence as the most difficult component of their family situation.46 She also noted that a lack of privacy affects marital satisfaction in clergy wives as well as clergy wife role satisfaction, and that intrusiveness negatively affects clergy wives competence in family functioning.47 From a South
African perspective, Wessels states, “Members of a congregation often think of the parsonage as their property and regard the pastor’s time as belonging to them. After all, it is their offerings that pays the pastor’s salary. And in South Africa the manse usually belongs to the congregation as well.”48
Weems and Arnold report that some family stress therapists have noted the ambiguous boundaries between work and home among many clergy. They specifically refer to a study of Episcopal clergy and their living arrangements. The study concluded that “Episcopal clergy who do not live in a church-owned rectory (i.e. they own or rent their residence) have higher levels of vocational satisfaction and work-life balance . . . .
46 Ibid., 39.
47 Ibid.
48 Wessels, "Care for the Pastor's Wife, Too!"
31
Those who own or rent their housing also have a lower level of organizational identification.”49
In the SDA Church in Australia it is quite common for the pastor to purchase or rent a home separate and away from the physical church, often in a different suburb or district. In some country areas pastors may care for several churches that may be hundreds of kilometres apart. This provides many pastoral marriages opportunities for privacy and personal space. However, like their urban based counter-parts, country-based pastoral couples still face the challenges associated with the rapidly growing impact of the digital age and the invasion of mobile phones, the internet, and the social media, such as Facebook and Twitter. While at first these may not appear to be as intrusive as the physical presence of an uninvited church member standing at the front-door of the clergy home, they may prove to be a significant negative influence on intimacy in marriage.
Single-parent Lifestyle
All couples who commit to a long-term relationship, irrespective of their roles or careers, will need to negotiate the amount of time they share together for mutual enjoyment and intimacy-building. The opportunities for shared time can be particularly difficult to create in the pastorate. Susie Hawkins provides this insight into the single- parent status of the pastor’s wife: “When she was at church, her pastor husband was no longer ‘hers.’ She couldn’t expect him to be at her side, and sometimes she didn’t see him
49 Weems and Arnold, "Clergy Health: A Review of Literature."
32
the entire morning. . . . He couldn’t sit with her in church or stand around and drink coffee with her, talking to her friends. He was ‘at work’ and this was his ‘job.’”50
Pastors who commit to evening visitations with their parishioners or attend the various church-based committees at night will also leave their partner vulnerable to loneliness, particularly when they have young children at home. Shared parenting becomes minimal and the demands for dealing with conflict, school assignments, household tasks, and home maintenance will often rest heavily on the shoulders of the spouse at home. As Cameron Lee and Kurt Fredrickson assert: “Evenings are frequently co-opted by church events, committee meetings, and unexpected crises. All this leaves the family feeling like they have to compete with the congregation for the pastor’s time – a battle they frequently lose.”51
Roberts reports on a number of research findings that highlight the stress of broken and interrupted family time for pastoral spouses and their families. Clergy wives, in a multidenominational study, identified time-demands as a negative stressor impacting marital satisfaction, parental satisfaction, and life satisfaction. She states, “These time burdens related to her or to her husband.”52 In a further study 44 percent of clergy wife participants identified the husband’s work schedule as a major problem, and 17 percent
50 Susie Hawkins, From One Ministry Wife to Another (Chicago, IL: Moody Publishers, 2009), 194.
51 Cameron Lee and Kurt Fredrickson, That Their Work Will Be a Joy (Eugene OR: Cascade Books, 2012), 174.
52 Roberts, "Alleviating Stress in Clergy Wives: The Development and Formative Evaluation of a Psychoeducational Group Intervention."
33
identified a lack of time for herself. Divorced clergy wives listed the minister’s lack of time commitment to her and the family as a stress factor that contributed to the divorce.53
The Pastor’s Marriage
Pastoral couples consistently report that their church members hold high expectations for their relationship. From the member’s perspective, the pastor’s marriage was made in heaven and must be, and will always be, an expression of holiness and sainthood. While their human side might be acknowledged, there is still a higher level of performance expected for the minister and her partner.
Placed on a Pedestal
Debra Benoit suggests this is particularly true for the traditional couple where there is an expectation that the pastor’s wife will try to be “the perfect example – never wanting anyone to see them in a negative light.” 54 The minister’s wife is put on a pedestal by the congregation to be admired and imitated. Benoit adds that she may feel the pressure to fill the role of the previous pastor’s wife “even if her talents and abilities are not the same.”55
53 Ibid.
54 Debra D. Benoit, “The Changing Role of the Pastor's Wife in todays Evangelical Church,” DMin diss., Lynchburg, VA: Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary, 2010, 20.
55 Ibid., 21.
34
Croucher states that “pastor’s wives are perceived to be a special ‘holy’ race – and some even act that way.”56 Roberts refers to research that identified social desirability, defined as “the perceived need of the spouse to always be seen positively by the congregation and community” as a variable affecting marital satisfaction.57 In a multi- denominational study of 321 clergy and spouses, “59 percent of the clergy wives cited unreasonable expectations of the congregation and the community as a disadvantage of being married to a pastor. Other researchers also identified negative impacts on clergy wives related to perceived pressure to be an exemplary role model.”58
Shared and Public
Clergy couples will often have to confront the public nature of their marriage. Lee and Fredrickson assert that,
Since the congregation pays a salary, pastors can be viewed as the hired hand, one who should be available at any moment, day or night. Understandably, church people want their pastors to be available in their time of need or crisis. From their perspective, their requests seem small. For pastors, however, each request stands in a long line with many others, and the demand can feel overwhelming at times.59
Joel Musvosvi describes this tension point over marital privacy in relation to the pastor’s public image and being under the congregational microscope. He suggests that ministers are often placed on a pedestal by a well-meaning congregation that leaves them “isolated,
56 Croucher.
57 Roberts, "Alleviating Stress in Clergy Wives: The Development and Formative Evaluation of a Psychoeducational Group Intervention."
58 Ibid.
59 Lee and Fredrickson, That Their Work Will Be a Joy, 174.
35
watched, analyzed, critiqued. This sense of isolation and scrutiny can carry over to the pastor's spouse”.60
While the idea of living in a glass house may not be the desire of a ministerial family, it seems an inevitable and necessary function of ministry. Being in ministry means being under behavioural inspection. In a document produced by The Centre for
Ministerial Care, the author notes that “Despite significant shifts in the way members of the clergy are viewed, there is still a strong feeling that the minister and his family members should be held to a higher standard of conduct than so-called ‘ordinary’ people.”61
Marital privacy can also be sabotaged by the fact that the pastor is often shared property. Croucher states, “Clergy wives ‘share their man’ with other women, and as pastors are the last ‘helping professionals’ to regularly visit women alone in their homes, there are unique temptations to cope with.”62 As Madeline Johnston states, “While the husband may find little time for his family, he pays a lot of attention to other women (by the nature of his job) and maintains an adoring public.”63
Zinaldo Santos speaks to the same issue, reminding readers that pastors do not have the luxury of avoiding women in the church; in fact a great part of the church’s work is done by women. Pastors are expected to be “friendly, respectful, elegant, and
60 Joel N. Musvosvi, "Being Mirrors in the Parsonage," Ministry 74, no. 12 (December 2001): 5.
61 The Centre for Ministerial Care, "Marriage and Family" http://www.cogcmc.org/pdf/marriage- and-family.pdf (accessed June 9, 2013).
62 Croucher.
63 Madeline S. Johnston, "Burnout in Clergy Families," Ministry 59, no. 6 (June 1986): 26.
36
polite when dealing with anyone, including women.”64 The pastoral couple need to negotiate this potentially troubling territory. The male pastor needs to provide effective ministry to the women in the church yet sustain a strong, intimate and close relationship with his wife. They need to develop a clear and sustainable understanding of how they will deal with Bible study appointments in the evenings and the numerous meetings and counselling sessions that the pastor needs to fulfil with one or more women in attendance.
Time Challenged
A consistent and repetitive concern for pastoral couples is the issue of insufficient time spent together. While a pastor may be highly committed to the marriage and have a genuine desire to be physically and emotionally available to her spouse, the pressures and expectations at the church and the desire to be there for everybody in need will inevitably lead to the issue of time emerging as a major conflict issue. As Whetham and Whetham state, “While meaningful relationships may clearly be a key, the problem is that many church leaders are too busy to have them.”65
This hunger for more us-time was well-illustrated at a meeting of SDA pastor’s wives at a convention in Brisbane in 2010 where a group of pastor’s wives were invited to respond to the question, “What’s the greatest need for my marriage just now?” Of the twenty-nine responses, twenty-two clearly indicated a desire for more time together with
64 Zinaldo Santos, "The Magnitude of the Pastoral Call," Ministry 75, no. 2 (February 2003): 30.
65 Whetham and Whetham, Hard to be Holy, 14.
37
their husband.66 While time itself does not ensure couple-intimacy, a lack of time together will certainly erode it. When couples initiate times together and use it to focus on aspects of their relationship, there will be a better chance they will ensure growth in relational intimacy.
Friendship Challenged
Research clearly indicates that human relationships are essential for emotional and mental health. Arch Hart suggests that without relationships humans wither and die, both emotionally and physically. “The quality of our life diminishes when there is no one to share it with – family, friends, or spouse. . . . We certainly were not designed to go through life emotionally disconnected.”67 James Lynch asserts that there is a biological basis for our need to form loving human relationships, and if we fail to fulfil that need, our health is in peril. “Loneliness and isolation can literally ‘break your heart.”68 The importance of relationships for human health received clearer focus in recent research by
James House, Debra Umberson and Karl Landis who showed that “social relationships, or the relative lack thereof, constitute a major risk factor for health—rivaling the effect of well-established health risk factors such as cigarette smoking, blood pressure, blood lipids, obesity and physical activity.”69
66 Writer’s personal survey, September, 2010.
67 Archibald D. Hart and Sharon Hart Morris, Safe Haven Marriage (Nashville, TN: W. Publishing Group, 2003), 50.
68 James J. Lynch, The Broken Heart (New York: Basic Books Inc., 1977), 14, 8.
69 James S. House, Debra Umberson, and Karl R. Landis, "Social Relationships and Health," Science http://www.sciencemag.org/content/241/4865/540.short (accessed June 4, 2013).
38
While pastors might be the first to accept these findings, they may be the last to make them happen. In fact loneliness is one of the most common reasons given for abandoning the ministry.70 Hannele Ottschofski states the issue with clarity: “Although pastors and their wives are just as human as everyone else, often I've heard counsel that we should not have close friends in our local churches. As if the pastoral couple is supposed to constantly give—give love, give time, give help, in various situations. When are we able to receive?”71
The busy and demanding work-load plays a part in creating friendship-anorexia, with day and evening work minimising opportunities for the pastor to mingle and get acquainted with others on a non-work platform. Further, much of the pastor’s time with others is ministry-focused rather than friendship-focused. He will often feel the need to put aside his own social needs and respond to others as pastor rather than as friend. While at the picnic, church social, camp-out and any other time the church members get together, the pastor will feel compelled to sustain the pastoral image and role.
Whetham and Whetham refer to Australian research that found church leaders had elevated levels of loneliness, “not only because their role is a unique one, but also because they often work alone and are isolated from their peers.”72 But the blame for pastoral loneliness might also lie in the pastor’s belief that they should avoid friendships in the church because they will develop favoured friendships that might create jealousy
70 Lee and Fredrickson, That Their Work Will Be A Joy, 35.
71 Hannele Ottschofski, "Friends – We All Need Them," Ministry 65, no. 12 (December, 1992): 14.
72 Whetham and Whetham, Hard to be Holy, 20.
39
and hint at discrimination. Benjamin Schoun adds that pastors who open up about their personal life with friends “could threaten the image and position of the pastor as a leader.”73 Fear over confidentiality can further restrict the freedom of a valuable friendship. Then there are pastors who, as Schoen reports believe that “relationships with some types of people are difficult to maintain because the parties have different beliefs, values, and needs. On top of all this, the problem of frequent moving casts its aura of temporariness about the relationships that do develop.”74
Loneliness appears to be a particular issue for clergy wives. Roberts refers to a qualitative study which demonstrated that clergy wives longed to have another pastor’s wife with whom to talk, “especially one sympathetic and more experienced.”75 Roberts found the research on clergy wives regularly identified a lack of social support as a negative impact, not only on their life satisfaction but also their marital satisfaction. In fact clergy wives “exhibited higher levels of loneliness than expected for their level of satisfaction in marriage.”76 Loneliness has also been shown to predict depressive symptomatology in clergy wives.77 Benoit states, “Many times it seems like everyone
73 Benjamin D. Schoun, "Can a Pastor Have Friends?," Ministry 59, no. 7 (July 1986): 8.
74 Ibid.
75 Roberts, "Alleviating Stress in Clergy Wives: The Development and Formative Evaluation of a Psychoeducational Group Intervention," 34.
76 Ibid.
77 Ibid.
40
else in the congregation has someone that they can turn to for counselling when they have a need – except the pastor’s wife.”78
Pastoral couples may also be considered outsiders in their congregations. When a pastoral couple arrive at a new church they are thrust into a church that already has well- established friendship groups and tight-knit circles of friends that can be very reluctant to allow new comers into the inner circle. There may also be a reluctance for some families to offer special friendship to the new pastoral couple because they had a very close friendship with the previous pastoral couple and feel a certain degree of loyalty towards their previous friendship. Some congregations may also consider the pastoral couple as just another pastoral-pair to arrive and soon leave: they are simply temporary care-takers and therefore it is not worth the effort to build a friendship only to have it end in a short period of time.
Ottschofski highlights that even befriending other pastoral couples to help deal with the issue of loneliness can be fraught with difficulty.
We are so busy in our own district that it is sometimes impossible to enjoy fellowship with neighboring pastoral couples. And when a friendship finally forms . . . it's time to pack our cases and move on again. Sometimes we realized who our real friends were only when we moved away! . . . Could it be that the church forces us into a mold to which we are expected to conform, and thus the only place we can be normal people is outside the church?79
Lee and Fredrickson point with insight to the fact that pastors are often treated as a different species of humanity. People will become ill at ease in conversations when the
78 Benoit, 58.
79 Ottschofski, 15.
41
pastor is around, as if the pastor can see into their private lives and draw attention to their sins. They state, “If people can’t be themselves around pastors, the reverse is also true: pastors can’t be themselves around others. They’re expected to be different: more spiritual, more patient, more loving, exemplary spouses and parents.”80
Larry Yeagley adds that ministers often find themselves misunderstood. “They have a vision for the church and creative ideas for making the vision a reality, but their ideas do not harmonize with the usual way of doing things. They get the sense that they are alone on a far-off island.”81
Relationships require time and commitment. However, many pastors consistently report being time-poor and over-committed. The Whethams place the onus of responsibility squarely on the pastor:
Relationships cannot be earnt; they have to be risked in reciprocal ways. . . . This takes time and commitment. It is a choice; a choice to risk or avoid intimate relationships. Thus many leaders end up lonely, not because of the demanding environment per se, but because they choose to put their time and energy into other pursuits and operate predominately from their role.82
With the research pointing so strongly to the devastating nature of loneliness and at-risk relationships, it is essential that pastors seek support and strength through interpersonal relationships, both inside and outside the church. While ever a church continues to foster separation between pastors and laity, and persists with the notion that church leaders will cope in their loneliness, the church and the pastors will be bereft of
80 Lee and Fredrickson, That Their Work Will Be A Joy, 35-36.
81 Larry Yeagley, "The Lonely Pastor," Ministry 74, no. 9 (September 2001): 26.
82 Whetham and Whetham, Hard to be Holy, 24.
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emotional health and healing. Both might continue to survive but will walk with a limp.
Pastors need to be given permission to seek out and foster healthy relationships so they can be enriched and enrich in return, and minimise the risk to their marital relationship.
The Pastor’s Church
A number of core stressors on pastoral marriages arise from the church membership and from church administration. Members in the pews and church administrators are not always alert to the potential impact their demands for performance and success place on pastoral marriages. Insensitive leadership and ignorant members can inadvertently overwhelm pastors and keep their marriages stressed and at risk for genuine marital intimacy. Leaders and members would be chagrined at any suggestion they might intentionally treat their pastors with disdain or neglect. However, they may simply not recognise how their demands or expectations impact on the lives of their pastors.
Lack of Understanding of the Magnitude of Marital Stress
Pastors minister daily to a congregation with diverse beliefs and opinions about how they might sustain a strong ministry and stay emotionally buoyant amidst the demands of pastoral life. While members may be genuine in their desire to be supportive of their pastors, many are unaware of the depth and complexity of relational ministry and are too quick to offer simplistic and shallow remedies, even if they do sound biblical and righteous. Blake makes reference to this issue. Referring to the alarming statistics
43
regarding pastoral resignations, he suggests a typical response from some members, and then correctly suggests its limits:
‘Why don’t these pastors give priority to developing their relationship with God through personal Bible study and prayer? That should strengthen them to face the many challenges, and they will be overcomers instead of being overcome!’ Never has there been a more sound opinion. A strong relationship with God, daily nurtured, becomes the key to faithful and fruitful pastoral ministry. But might the issue of the high turnover of pastors be more complex than walking closely with God?83
A pastor might walk with God, but he also wishes to walk with his spouse, and the walk of intimacy never appears to be a simple task. Marriage is a coming together of two separate and distinct individuals and all that they bring to their marriage from their families of origin as well as their individual histories and personalities. Intimacy therefore, demands from couples effort and focus, time and investment, and this includes pastoral couples – maybe especially pastoral couples. Not all church members, or administrators, understand this, indicated by the variety and intensity of their expectations on their pastors and spouses.
Expectations for Church Growth through Baptisms
While the headquarters of the Adventist Church in Australia has prepared its own vision and mission statement and associated strategic plans, each conference also prepares and distributes its own set of guiding statements for ministry. A review of these statements indicates that the SDA Church is very committed to its sense of mission and
83 Blake, 6.
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enlarging the Kingdom of God. This in turn is often expressed in terms of a specific strategic goal for a stated number of baptisms for each year or designated term.
What is clearly apparent is the lack of official statements or strategic plans in each of the conference and Division statements that speak to the imperative for strengthening pastoral marriages. While the Church would be quick to affirm the importance of keeping pastor’s marriages intact and stable, very little can be found in the documents that guide the Church’s annual operations in this arena. The Church has established a Family
Ministries Department with a pastor as leader in almost all conferences in Australia.
However, their ministry is primarily directed to the church members. They also share other portfolios which means their ability to specifically focus on clergy marriages is extremely limited, especially when these leaders have not received training in facilitating marriage enrichment programs.
While several conferences have taken the initiative to provide an annual weekend get-a-way for pastors and their families, these events provide minimal opportunities for pastors to focus on their marriage. One conference also provided two weekends a year for pastors and their spouses to be involved in a marriage-enrichment experience, but not all pastors took up this opportunity, and sadly, counsellors and therapists generally agree that the ones who may benefit the most from such experiences are the ones who usually choose not to attend.
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Expectations for a Broad-focused Ministry
While a number of pastors in the SDA Church are in leadership and administration, the greater number are general practitioners in the Church who are required to meet the diversity of members’ demands, even if they do have a special ministry area of personal interest. While members might correctly recognise that their particular pastor does not possess the gift of preaching, they still attend the morning service with the expectation of a solid sermon on Sabbath morning. Their pastor may not be skilled in communication at an emotional level, but they call the pastor when a family member is seriously ill or there is a death in the family. The pastor is expected to carefully oversee and control the financial details, maintain the building and the property, visit the members in their homes, work with the poor in the community, and attend the bi- monthly clean-up days at the church and school.
This diversity of demands takes on a larger spiritual dimension that intensifies their impact. As Santos states, “The present days, which are the last and most difficult ones in history, require a powerful ministry, a ministry of quality and uncompromised spiritual commitment. Our struggle is a spiritual one; God’s cause is spiritual. We must be spiritual men and women. The church expects to see pastors with this profile.”84
The plumber who takes up the role as church deacon attends the church clean-up days, as does the housewife who helps with the cleaning. But the plumber and housewife do not face the same expectations for spiritual discernment and spiritual guidance as does the pastor. The pastor might assist in laying pipes or wiping down the mouldy walls, but
84 Santos, 30.
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these acts take on a degree of spiritual focus because they are being performed by the pastor. The pastor’s work, no matter the function, will often take on a greater degree of holiness simply because he/she is the pastor. This is not ordinary work: this is pastor- work.
This expectation for a broad spread of ministry skills, all to be carried out with a spiritual dimension, can lay a heavy burden on pastors. It can be alienating, discouraging, and debilitating. The male pastor will tend to internalise his frustrations, speak to very few, including his spouse, and struggle on and do all he can to maintain a sense of personal control. The female pastor might share her frustrations with a friend or mentor but may also sustain a strong desire to be considered by her membership as resilient and strong, and will cover her personal pain with busyness and over-involvement in other’s lives. These actions have a real potential to wreak havoc on intimacy in marital relationships.
Expectations for Strong Pastoral Marriages
One of the pressures that clergy couples share across denominations is the expectation members have for the longevity and success of the marriage. Clergy couples are expected to model harmony and stability over the long term, often in spite of the numerous pressures that might impact on a typical marriage. As the authors from The
Centre for Pastoral Care state, “The obligation of ministers and their family members to serve as models in marriage and family life cannot be set aside or washed away.”85
85 Centre for Pastoral Care.
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Pastors in the SDA Church also experience this pressure to have successful marriages. Nothing about being an SDA suggests pastoral couples are exempt from the same marital pressures experienced by clergy from our faith communities. As Willie and
Elaine Oliver note,
The families of pastors are similar to other families, plus have the added pressure of being on display and under constant scrutiny. Because communities of faith are about accepting, developing, and maintaining trust in God demonstrated through the way believers live their lives, church members instinctively tend to look at the pastor’s family as a model of how to behave as a Christian. Since no one is perfect, the deficiencies within the parsonage are often magnified for no other reason than their position in church life as the “first family.”86
This expectation to be successful in marriage has special implications for the SDA pastor when considering the way the church operates in matters of reporting. The local church pastor reports to the Ministerial Secretary and the Conference President.87 Herein lies the problem: the pastor reports directly to the two administrators who are responsible for the allocation of pastoral staff. Any statement or suggestion that the pastor might be struggling with issues of intimacy in his marriage may jeopardise a call to a desired church or administrative position. It may also indicate a weakness in their skill-set that might place their career further in jeopardy. Pastoral couples may therefore be far more
86 Willie E. Hucks II, "The Life of the Pastoral Family: An Interview with Willie and Elaine Oliver," Ministry 85, no. 3 (March 2013): 6.
87 The ministerial secretary provides mentoring and support to the pastor and his spouse, as well as acts in an advisory capacity to the president to assist in the appointment of pastors to a specific church/s. The president is responsible for all administrative operations within the prescribed territory (Division, Union, and Conference).
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likely to sustain their less-than-ideal marriage and struggle on rather than risking a tainted report on their ministry.
Conclusion
During the history of the SDA Church in Australia, many pastoral couples have not only survived the demands and challenges of ministry but have clearly thrived, sustaining a degree of marital intimacy to be admired by observers both inside and outside the church. But many have not been so fortunate. While not all of the issues noted in this chapter may have played their part in bringing these marriages to an end, many of them will have been culpable.
Pastoral couples are struggling to manage the numerous challenges to their marital relationship. They are confronted by an endless number of tasks and have too little time to complete them. They find it difficult to create the time to nurture their love and affection and build their marital commitment.
They also have to negotiate their own expectations for their marriages and their ministry, and deal with their spouses expectations for the marriage and their place in ministry. They need to initiate opportunities for couple-time and couple-intimacy in a ministry setting often administered by church leaders who remain ignorant or insensitive to the needs for intimacy in marriage, and among members who regularly demand and expect their pastor to be constantly available and at the same time patient and understanding.
The Church might be very special to God, but it can be a demanding place for the pastoral couple. If they choose to stay in the Church and minister to God’s people, they 49
will do it best when they can sustain a vibrant and robust marriage. The SDA Church must therefore continue to give time, energy and resources at all levels to uphold and support pastoral couples in their search for marital intimacy.
It cannot afford to take this issue lightly. To fail to provide assistance to pastoral couples at the front lines of the church is to fail in its obligations to love in the way God invited his followers to love. Church administrators and members are not without resources to assist in strengthening pastoral couple’s marriages.
The following chapter makes reference to selected writings that provide valuable insights into the issues facing pastoral couples in the local church and how they can find ways to build and sustain a strong and vibrant marriage. It also highlights some of the issues that might emerge when pastoral couples lose the essential focus on their marriages and move towards inappropriate liaisons. Chapter 3 references selected scriptural texts that speak about marriage and how the “one flesh” relationship, established and ordained by God, can more effectively picture the sacrificial love of God.
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PART TWO
THEOLOGICAL REFLECTION
CHAPTER 2
LITERATURE REVIEW
A number of books and articles have assisted in shaping this project. This chapter highlights some of the contributions these writings have made to the study, commencing with references to specific issues that emerge in the ministry-arena in which pastoral couples build their marital relationship. It particularly addresses ways in which pastors might seek out inappropriate ways of meeting their needs for intimacy and what this might mean for their marriages and ministry. This is followed by reflections on selected writings that speak to intimacy in marriage, particularly emotional intimacy, and why pastoral couples need to invest in a strong emotion-focused marriage.
The final focus area makes reference to the plethora of writings that inform couples as to how they might build long-term relationships. It provides several examples that illustrate the diversity of suggestions for building strong marriages, offered by both researchers as well as writers who present from a more informal or a devotionally-based perspective. It then suggests there is a need for discernment and wisdom, guided by the
Holy Spirit, when designing and planning programs and resources for strengthening pastoral marriages.
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Hard to be Holy
Hard to be Holy, by Paul and Libby Whetham, explores the various demands on pastors that so often lead to high levels of burnout, stress, depression and loss of career.1
The thesis of this project is that these same stressors act as significant contributors to the demise of pastoral marriages, leaving them bereft of intimacy and vulnerable to separation and divorce. The Whethams’ state, “The constant demands and expectations made of them are often stressful and exhausting to the point where they have little time to foster relationships with God, family or friends. As a result their unique and busy role and lack of support make church leaders prone to burnout, poor relationships and potential sexual misconduct.2 While a number of references to Whethams’ research regarding the setting for pastoral ministry have already been made in Chapter 1, they also point to a number of additional issues that need to be highlighted.
Relationships
The Whetham’s primary thesis is that pastoral couples need to develop deep and meaningful relationships in order to survive the diversity and intensity of the demands of a life-time of church ministry. “This is perhaps the most critical factor in coping with such a stressful role.”3 By meaningful relationships they mean “a depth and quality of
1 Whetham and Whetham, Hard to be Holy (Adelaide: Lifeboatstories.com, 2000).
2 Ibid., 5.
3 Ibid., 13.
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relationship that enables people to intimately and reciprocally share their innermost thoughts, feelings, values and core beliefs that uniquely make them who they are.”4
An emotionally healthy marriage might best describe this kind of meaningful relationship. Ironically, however, for church leaders this important relationship is often impoverished.5 In a survey of counsellors who counsel clergy, marital difficulties was the most oft cited problem for which church leaders sought help. “Reasons cited for marital problems include long hours, infrequent leisure time which often does not coincide with most of society, low stipends, enmeshment of work and family systems, and expectations from the congregations and the couple themselves.”6
The pastoral couple’s marriage must therefore become an arena for special focus.
This relationship needs to be at its best. There are far too many issues that can eat away at marital intimacy in the pastoral home, and ongoing marital stress will minimise the pastor’s effectiveness and limit his ministry for God and the Church. One of the core challenges that confront pastoral marriages given attention in Hard to be Holy is the issue of inappropriate liaisons.
Inappropriate Liaisons
Pastors need to build and sustain strong, intimate marriages in order to best reflect the love of God for His Church (Ephesians 5:21), to find fulfilment and happiness in a
4 Ibid.
5 Ibid., 16.
6 Ibid. 54
long-term relationship, and to find renewal and strength to effectively minister to the diverse needs of the church and its members. A strong marriage might also act as a deterrent to a pastor’s involvement in inappropriate emotional and sexual relationships or behaviours, including sexual abuse and pornography.
The Whethams rightly point to the risk of inappropriate relationships for lonely pastors and devote a whole chapter to the issue of sexual misconduct. “Being starved of intimacy with both people and God, places many lonely church leaders in a vulnerable position. Many either leave, or get their needs met in some other way.”7 In a subsequent paragraph they add: “The sexual misconduct literature . . . identifies loneliness and a fear of intimacy as primary factors in sexual abuse.”8
The Whethams refer to US statistics, noting one survey that found that of the 300 church leaders across denominations, 23 percent admitted having done something with someone other than their spouse that they felt was sexually inappropriate. A further 12 percent admitted to having sexual intercourse with someone other than their spouse. They also make reference to another US study of 300 clergy where 33 percent confessed to sexually inappropriate behaviour with someone other than their spouse, and 13 percent said they had had sexual intercourse with a parishioner.9 While comparative statistics for
Australia are not available, the “increasing number of cases made known to counselling
7 Ibid., 24.
8 Ibid., 26.
9 Ibid.
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services, advocacy groups and more recently complaint committees within denominational bodies strongly support the evidence gathered in the States.”10
Sadly, any perceptions that clergy are more ethical than their secular counterparts may not be accurate. “Research among secular psychotherapists and counsellors in the
US indicate that 6-7 percent admit sexual intercourse with clients. This figure is almost half that of clergy.”11 Muriel Porter supports these observations, noting that a range of surveys suggest clergy are probably twice as likely to abuse as secular therapists.12
Porter also references a comprehensive report, published in 2002, that identified a psychological susceptibility in some clergy, in particular ‘narcissistic damage.’ The report defined narcissistic damage as “damage to the construction and functioning of the self that leads some people to adopt highly dysfunctional patterns of behaviour to regulate, conceal and relieve the pain of these distressed inner states.”13 The report continues: “It seems that some people with high levels of narcissistic damage utilise religious behaviour and other behaviours, including sexual behaviour, to mask and soothe the pain and shame of such damage. It is this combination, taken together or working
10 Ibid.
11 Ibid.
12 Muriel Porter, Sex, Power and the Clergy (Melbourne, Victoria: Hardie Grant Books, 2003), 116. At the time of writing, a number of royal commissions into clergy sexual abuse are being conducted in both national and state courts in Australia. See http://www.smh.com.au/national/abuse_inquiry; http://www.clergyabuseaustralia.org/; see also www.abc.net.au/melbourne/topics/community-and- society/child-abuse/?
13 Ibid., 116.
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alternatively, that may help to explain the high levels of sexually abusive behaviour within the church.”14
The report goes on to point out that the working environment for clergy is a highly dangerous one for any who suffer this psychological susceptibility. This is an important warning, especially when clergy have intimate access to people at their times of greatest need – death of a loved one, illness, psychological or relationship breakdown, anxiety, loss of a job – any of which can make the strongest pastor vulnerable for a time.
The report concludes, “The high levels of sexual abuse in the church can be explained by this combination: powerful but susceptible people with sexual and personal problems, in stressful jobs without boundaries, in an organisation without training (that is, specific to abuse) or supervision, in an ecclesiastical culture dominated by sexual shame and endemic secrecy.”15
This report, while not specifically directed to one specific denomination, must receive the focus it deserves in the Adventist Church. The Whethams are to be applauded for calling the Church to attention on this issue. Pastors need to develop an internal control built on a covenant of faithfulness to God that will guide their behaviour rather than being negatively influenced by inappropriate community and social norms.
The Whethams are also to be respected for pointing out the psychological and emotional barriers that exist between pastors and members that can contribute to a lack of
14 Ibid.
15 Ibid., 117.
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accountability from pastors. In many interactions between pastors and members, members share deeply and intimately with the pastor but the pastor does not share personal matters with her members. Dependency can easily be fostered and also abused.
The Whethams believe that “maturity and accountability can only fully develop as leaders become integrated into the congregations they serve and acknowledge that they are but one part of the whole. This will effectively reduce the power of their role.”16
The exact figures for clergy sexual abuse in the SDA Church will never be known. It is generally accepted that, for various reasons, sexual abuse is under-reported.
The SDA Church is not exempt from this serious challenge to its integrity, and the
Whetham’s call for pastoral honesty and faithfulness, and Porter’s insistence on pastoral education and training, clearly point to the urgent need for specialised support for pastors.
Pastors and their spouses need to learn how to sustain appropriate marital boundaries and find sexual intimacy alone in the confines of the marriage. This only highlights the imperative for strengthening pastoral couple’s primary relationships.
Pornography
While the Whethams do not address concerns over pornography as strongly as they do for sexual misconduct, they present the issue as a serious matter that needs to be addressed in churches. The impact of pornography on marriage has received significant study over recent years that supports the Whetham’s concerns. Ana Bridges asserts that as pornography has become increasingly accessible, “it has played a more prominent role
16 Whetham and Whetham, Hard to be Holy, 30. 58
in romantic relationships and in shaping sexual norms.”17 She states there is a genuine cause for concern:
Young men and women who report higher pornography use and from earlier ages engage in more risky sexual behaviors. Compulsive pornography use is hurting some marriages and increasingly playing a role in divorce. Although there is growing recognition of its potential for harm, therapists are largely untrained in the many ways pornography use can impact individuals, couples, and families.18
An examination of all the issues that emerge in the research into pornography and its impact on marriages are well beyond the scope of this project, but the research consistently highlights the negative impact of pornography on intimacy in couple relationships. Vivian Chan states that, based on the on-going research, the following topics “are the most prominent in regards to internet pornography consumption and marital relationships:” online sexual pursuits as a predictor of marital distress, separation and divorce; decreased sexual satisfaction; decreased sexual intimacy; infidelity; and other issues such as overspending and debt.19 Bridges lists among the effects of the use of pornography “an increased negative attitude to women, decreased empathy for victims of sexual violence, a blunted affect, and an increase in dominating and sexually-imposing behavior.”20
17 Ana J. Bridges, "Pornography's Effects on Interpersonal Relationships," Department of Psychology, University of Arkansas http://www.socialcostsofpornography.com /Bridges_Pornographys_Effect_on_Interpersonal_Relationships.pdf (accessed July 10, 2013).
18 Ibid.
19 Vivian Chan, "The Impact of Pornography on Marital Relationships," The Wishingwell Counselling Service http://www.wishingwellcounselling.com/family/the-impact-of-pornography-on- marital-relationships/ (accessed July 10, 2013).
20 Bridges, "Pornography's Effects on Interpersonal Relationships." 59
Thaddeus Birchard reports that pornography can be used addictively to “control painful affect, to avoid feelings of loneliness, and to ward off the dread of non-being.”21
He believes that the use of pornography serves to blunt the effect of narcissistic woundedness that is at the root of addictive behaviours. Birchard also suggests that some
“who are drawn to religion as a coping strategy for their narcissistic damage may also be vulnerable to the use of pornography.”22
Clearly the pastor is at risk for involvement in, and possibly addiction to, various forms of pornography. The potential negative results for intimate relationships in marriage continue to be clarified and sharpened through research. The Whethams believe
“the situation is urgent. The ever increasing clergy attrition rate and incidence of sexual abuse suggest that something must be done to effectively deal with these issues.”23 They affirm the imperative to form “emotionally healthy relationships.”24
Hard to be Holy provides a strong basis for thinking about the way pastoral marriages need to function in the arena of the Church. There are distinct and challenging forces unique to church-life that can easily drive the pastoral couple to a lonely and empty marriage. The strength of Hard to be Holy lies not only in its clear, forthright approach to stating these issues facing clergy in Australian churches, but in its call for
21 Thaddeus Birchard, "'The Snake and the Seraph' - Sexual Addiction and Religious Behaviour," Counseling Psychology Quarterly 17, (2004): 82, quoted in Judith K. Balswick and Jack O. Balswick, Authentic Human Sexuality: An Integrated Christian Approach (Downers Grove IL: InterVarsity Press, 2003), 279.
22 Ibid.
23 Whetham and Whetham, Hard to be Holy, 33.
24 Ibid., 34. 60
change. In relation to this study, it clearly notes the need for both the ministry couple and the church to take ownership for growth and renewal, and ‘church’ includes both members and administrators. They correctly assert that the way forward means redefining church and church leadership that allows for greater integration and interaction between leaders and members which will provide essential support for pastoral relationships.
We need to move away from a separation model to a more integrated and accountable one where church structures and leaders reflect more inclusive and interactive practises. In doing so, not only will clergy relationships be enhanced but the Spirit of God will also be released to speak to the whole body. These interactive processes are essential if we are to test out and elaborate our spiritual meanings and grow in maturity.25
A Promiscuous Profession
An insightful three-page, unpublished paper entitled A Promiscuous Profession,26 by an Australian marriage therapist, Doug Sotheren, adds further clarity to the issue of sexual misconduct by pastors and highlights the need for genuine intimacy in marriage.
Sotheren defines marriage as an “exclusive relationship involving one man and one woman for life. It is to one’s marriage partner one is meant to give at a human level the deepest forms of love as the love of Christ for His bride the Church.”27 However, the pastor is also the representative of the local church, and the pastor in a special way is wed to this church. “This is not some earthly profession, the pastor has a calling, a unique position in the plan of God. The well-being of the church must be his primary purpose in
25 Ibid., 73.
26 Doug Sotheren, "A Promiscuous Profession."
27 Ibid., 1. 61
serving God. Confused? Good, so are many Pastors and in my experience their confusion is often exceeded by the confusion of their wives.”28
A pastor is clearly vulnerable to both nonsexual and sexual promiscuous relationships. These relationships, by virtue of their non-exclusivity, undermine a pastor’s ability to remain a person with a sense of self and self-responsibility. “This can result in the loss of the capacity for a meaningful marriage. There is a danger of the Pastor becoming nonperson who becomes a prostitute meeting the imagined needs of an endless line of depthless people.”29
Sotheren provides a model of potential relationships in a church setting as a series of interlocking triangles. When these triangles are working well each set of relationships between two enhances the growth and potential for learning from the third, but when they are poorly defined and not working well, they become a series of triangles in which two sides are constantly vying for the love and loyalty of the third. “It is these triangles that in the field of personal relationships open the door to possibilities of promiscuity without responsibility.”30
Sotheren provides examples of the various relationships which the pastor may experience in the church. For Sotheren, the primary relationship is expressed in the
Pastor–God–Spouse triangle. Sotheren suggests that these triangles are not fixed, but are
28 Ibid.
29 Ibid.
30 Ibid. 62
in constant movement as each point can move into closeness with or separateness from the other (See figure 1).
Figure 1. Relationship Triangles in the Church
In figure 2, Sotheren illustrates how the pastor moves away from his spouse. He may do this in the belief that he is getting closer to God and the service of God in the church. People outside of this relationship may not notice this distancing: “in the community eye he maintains a public show of attention and closeness to his wife.”31
31 Ibid., 2. 63
Figure 2. Stressed Pastor-Spouse-Church Triangle
Sotheren asserts that almost every choice will be conflictual while ever the sides of the triangle are considered to be in competition. For example, it is the church that provides the money for the provision of the marriage, yet it is the church that is often seen as taking away from the closeness or free time in the marriage. His thesis is that the pastor-church-spouse triangle is the one most open to the potential of promiscuous behaviour and, in a poorly differentiated pastoral marriage, “can lead to break down with affairs with the church as fantasy mistress or in the extreme with members of the church
(what someone has called extra menical affairs).”32
Sotheren’s contribution to this study lies in placing the ownership of sexual abuse and affairs with the perpetrator. He states that,
In almost all cases, affairs result from the attempt to avoid facing or dealing with some painful issue. In the public eye affairs are sold as the result of the irresistible
32 Ibid. 64
attraction of some third party that happens in the way of the unsuspecting spouse. In fact the affair partner is chosen to assist the ‘affairee’ to avoid some painful aspect or choice within themselves or their relationship.33
For Sotheren, promiscuous behaviour is the direct result of a need to establish a sense of connection and release without the threat of rejection or loss. This “need to re-establish a lost sense of one’s own value or purpose in one setting by intense involvement in another is easily available to the pastor.”34 The implications for the pastoral marriage are obvious:
“the more you as pastor and wife can be clear about yourself within your relationships the better you will build a mutually satisfying relationship with each other and all the people and organisations with which you interact.”35
A healthy and vibrant marriage can be the very best symbol of God’s love for His
Church. A pastor’s marriage can in very unique ways provide a picture of how God might intend love and respect to be played out in a committed relationship. But this relationship can be easily strained and stretched beyond its limits. The impact of a pastor’s broken marriage is immeasurable. A Promiscuous Profession correctly challenges pastors, church administrators and church members to be vigilant as well as intentional about strengthening pastoral marriages. A failure to do so will continue to leave pastors exposed to the risks of promiscuous liaisons and the resultant pain and damage to the church.
33 Ibid.
34 Ibid., 3.
35 Ibid. 65
Intimacy in Marriage
If there is any clear message in the contemporary writings on marriage, it is the emphasis on the need for emotional intimacy. In the 1950s and 1960s marital educators emphasised the need for clarity on the respective roles in marriage: if couples could be clear and accepting of their rightful male and female roles their marriages would be more likely to be successful. In the 1970s and 1980s there was a greater emphasis on communication and conflict resolution skills. Again, couples could be assured of a better chance to marital success if they could simply master the basics of good communication and successfully resolve conflict.
More recent research demonstrates the important role of emotional connection for marital longevity and happiness. Researchers continue to show that emotional intimacy speaks to the very heart of the marital union. Jack and Judy Balswick note that the primary reasons people marry in modern times now have to do with romantic attraction, self-fulfilment and ego need gratification, and suggest that the expectation bar has been raised to include a high level of personal satisfaction. They state, “In modern marriage, marital success is gauged by emotional and psychological factors. This change has had an enormous impact on marriage expectations.”36
A number of publications provide valuable insight into how intimacy might be understood and nurtured in successful marriages and are specifically referenced in this chapter. Each of these works report research in the social sciences that point to the
36 Jack O. Balswick and Judith K. Balswick, A Model for Marriage (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2006), 16. 66
significance of emotional intimacy in marriage. They also provide a number of strategies for enhancing primary relationships that will assist in building and growing relational intimacy and strengthening the chances of a long-term, happy marriage.
Searching for Intimacy in Marriage
In Searching for Intimacy in Marriage,37 Bryan Craig not only identifies the centrality of emotional intimacy in marriage but correctly suggests that marriages will be enriched and renewed when couples specifically integrate intimate ways of thinking and behaving into their relationship. He describes his approach as Emotionally Focused
Marriage Education, because it sees “the emotional connections between marriage partners as the primary pathway through which intimacy, understanding, and a sense of closeness develop in marriage. It targets emotion not only as the gateway to marital growth and development but as the most effective avenue to bringing about change in the relationship.”38
Craig asserts that a failure to understand and connect at the emotional level is “the major reason many marriages struggle to survive.”39 He is supported in this view by Sue
Johnson who points to the deep-seated nature of intimacy in the human heart, and considers an emotional attachment as a survival-imperative experienced from birth through to death. She states that an emotional connection in a primary relationship is the
37 Bryan K Craig, Searching for Intimacy in Marriage (Washington, DC: General Conference Ministerial Association, 2004).
38 Ibid., 15.
39 Ibid., 93. 67
emotional priority, “overshadowing even the drive for food or sex.”40 Sharon Morris-May suggests that couples marry in the hope of having an emotionally connected relationship, and fight for this connection: “Husbands and wives so long and thirst for this kind of relationship that they will do anything for one – bitterly argue and fight, even divorce, in hopes of finding one with someone new.”41
Craig highlights the potential difficulty for SDA pastors to be open to discovering and acknowledging the need for emotional connection in marriage due to their immersion in Christian history. The SDA Church has generally been suspicious of emotions and usually regarded them as saboteurs of the intellect, creating obstacles to responsive and holy living. The Church has upheld the importance of rational decision-making when seeking and following Christ: the Christian walk is all about accepting the truth and this is a matter for the mind, not the fickle and untrustworthy realm of emotions. This mind- set is often reflected in ministry to individuals, couples and families where, in times of special need and crises, comfort is provided with a biblical text and a prayer with no recognition or care for any associated emotional pain. It is also reflected in pastoral support for marital stress: the answer will often be sought in a cognitive approach without recognising or dealing with the emotions.
Craig is of the belief that couples often know very little about their emotions,
“mainly because they have not learned how to effectively identify, own, connect with,
40 Sue Johnson, Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2008), 15.
41 Sharon Morris-May, How to Argue So Your Spouse Will Listen (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2007), 7. 68
and process their own emotional responses. Consequently, many relationships flounder or at best plateau or stagnate, rarely achieving a satisfying level of intimacy.”42
Craig also correctly asserts that a couple’s marriage will only experience renewal and growth when the couple themselves take the initiative and make a concerted, mutual investment in their relationship. Couples need to recognise the ease with which intimacy can be so easily squeezed out of their marriage through the demands of work and family- life.43 Marital intimacy is not a component of marriage that is achieved by proxy: it is not something that comes by default or by transfer from another marriage. It can only emerge as the couple themselves seek after it and make it their priority.
Pastoral couples in the SDA Church therefore need to be made aware of the crucial role of emotion in marriage and how it is the key to intimacy and connection. Any marriage enrichment event designed for pastoral couples will need to include material that will help the couples generate an awareness of their personal and couple strengths and assist them in developing an understanding of how the emotional bonding process works. It can also be an occasion to highlight ways couples can generate powerful new emotional events and experiences that will build and enhance their marriages.
42 Craig, 13.
43 A woman’s personal anecdote illustrates this too-common story for many married couples: We put everybody else first, our customers and children – we gave everything to them, always assuming we had a strong relationship. We were a good team as we handled all the ups and downs in our lives but we were more like business partners running our family and the restaurant. As I look back now, I can see that our lives had gotten more and more separated. We had settled into a comfortable routine and the intimacy got lost along the way. Annemarie, in Sandra Kimball, "After the Affair," 50 Something, October/ November 2012, 23. 69
While not specifically drawing attention to the role of church administration in strengthening pastoral marriages, Craig does state that the church must play its part in the process of strengthening pastoral couple’s levels of intimacy. It is the church that “must seek to strengthen marriages by working constructively and redemptively with those who fall short of the divine standard. It must be committed to encouraging marital partners to realize more and more the relational potential inherent in their relationship.”44
Craig outlines a number of specific strategies that need to be included in a marriage enrichment event for couples. Effective marriage educators will use an approach that is simple, direct and pragmatic. It will need to show couples how to make their marriage work. It will present an optimistic view of relationships and marriage that instils hope and confidence for the future, and use the current emphasis on emotion and feelings to show how these do not supplant reason but constitute the dynamic heart of marriage.
They will shift the focus from the individual and show how meaning, acceptance, and values are most powerfully found and reinforced through kinship and community, and the place where cohesion, mutual support, and the bonds of love, commitment, and responsibility are forged and held together.
They will also affirm the importance of ‘the autonomy of self’ and show how marriage requires a balance between separateness and connectedness. They will enable couples to hear each other’s story through showing respect, empathy, admiration, trust and affection and by creating a joint narrative that is embedded in emotional connectedness with others in community and a living connection with historical biblical
44 Craig, Searching for Intimacy in Marriage, 38. 70
traditions. They will recognise that post-modern couples are open to the spiritual dimensions of life. They will also expose the culture of consumerism and assist couples to see that “a self-centred ethic needs to be addressed if emotional connections need to be made.”45
The strength of Craig’s book lies in its clear delineation of emotional intimacy and the role emotion plays in sustaining long-term marriages. He correctly points to the fact that while couples might take up any number of suggestions as to how they can build their marriage, a failure to find an emotional connection will leave their relationship devoid of the one crucial element that can mean the difference between marital mediocrity and marital fulfilment. His scriptural-based conclusions provide a solid foundation on which to design and build a marriage enrichment program that may play a significant role in supporting and strengthening the pastoral marriage.
A Model for Marriage
In their book, A Model for Marriage,46 Jack and Judy Balswick suggest a
Trinitarian Model as a basis for finding clarity within the confusing range of self-focused views of contemporary marriage. They define Trinitarian theology as a conceptualisation of God as “three in one, a unity of three distinct divine persons in relationship.”47
Marriage, therefore, can be considered “as a unity formed by two distinctly differentiated
45 Ibid., 45-46.
46 Balswick and Balswick, A Model for Marriage. (Downers Grove, IL: InerVarsity Press, 2006).
47 Ibid. 71
spouses. . . . God has created us to be in a mutually reciprocating relationship as two unique selves in relation to God and to each other.”48
The Balswicks then build on this model, suggesting there are “four trustworthy, biblical, guiding principles” that contribute to a deeply fulfilling marriage: covenant
(commitment and unconditional love), grace (acceptance and forgiveness), empowerment
(mutuality and interdependency), and intimacy (known and being known).49 A couple’s journey towards intimacy will find its greatest fulfilment when immersed and centred in covenant, grace and empowerment. The Balswicks suggest that a focus on intimacy alone will diminish and limit the marriage’s potential and leave it vulnerable and fragile. It is the ever deepening cycle of mutual reciprocity that lies at the heart of genuine intimacy:
“spousal intimacy strengthens marital commitment, increases grace-full loving and fosters empowerment, contributing to even deeper levels of intimacy.”50
Core to the Balswicks’ model is the concept of differentiation and differentiated unity. They describe differentiation as the development of a secure self, validated in
Christ. Differentiated unity refers to two secure spouses, distinct and unique in themselves, discovering belonging and connection in and through marital unity.51 For the
Balswicks, a couple’s marital strength lies in their ability to be both separated and together, distinctly different and yet strongly united. The couple who have a sense of being both individuals in the marriage and at the same time being an “us” – a joint union
48 Ibid., 12-13.
49 Ibid., 13.
50 Ibid., 73. 51 Ibid., 13. 72
of two individuals – will especially find marital fulfilment when they consider their marriage as a covenant, not a contract, their love is shaped by grace and mutual empowerment, and they commit to know and being known. For the Balswicks, “the ultimate motivating force behind marital intimacy is the longing to be fully known in the safety of covenant love. Spouses intuitively understand that revealing their innermost selves, even their darkest interior, is part of intimate knowing. The secure belonging that comes from knowing each other in profound and endearing ways enhances intimate connection.”52
Best practise for marriage educators and those who provide marriage enrichment events for couples will therefore lie in the provision of a safe environment for couples to explore their sense of shared commitment; their degree of mutual acceptance, understanding and forgiveness; how they convey and receive support and nurture, and how they experience emotional intimacy. The Balswicks contribution rests in their reminder that intimacy alone will not ensure the success of a marriage. A marriage with intimacy but no commitment will be an insecure marriage and lack the assuring anchor of trust; intimacy without grace will be a marriage bereft of the certainty of acceptance, and intimacy without empowerment will be a marriage marred by dependency and confused boundaries.
The Balswicks challenge readers to refrain from isolating intimacy from the other components of love and considering intimacy as simply a fleeting sexual union of two people. Intimacy is a combining of hearts in a total, trust-based connection that in some
52 Ibid., 75. 73
unique and profound way symbolises the union of the Trinity. Marriage educators and marriage-enrichment providers cannot afford to eliminate this core biblical principle in their presentations or resources.
Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work
John Gottman’s research, described in his book, Seven Principles for Making
Marriage Work,53 has made a profound contribution to the field of marriage enrichment over the last decade. His method of analysing the relational practices of married couples in a laboratory setting and then tracking their marriages over many years has provided him and associated researchers the ability to assess the habits and ways-of-relating of both successful, long-term marriages as well as couples who fail to sustain their marriage.
He refers to these marriages as the Masters of Marriage and the Disasters of Marriage.
Gottman claims his research now provides him the ability to predict with a ninety- one percent accuracy whether a couple will stay happily together or lose their way.
“These predictions are not based on my intuition or preconceived notions of what a marriage ‘should’ be, but on the data I have collected over years of study.”54 Gottman contends that an emotionally healthy marriage tends to be successful because couples are more in touch with their emotions and better able to understand how to honour and respect each other and their marriage.
53 John M. Gottman and Nan Silver, The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work (New York: Three Rivers Press, 1999).
54 Ibid., 2. 74
Gottman outlines six key indicators that a marriage is in trouble, and then lists and describes seven principles that successful couples use to build and sustain their marriages and keep them alive and vibrant. “Happily married couples aren’t smarter, richer, or more psychologically astute than others. . . . They have what I call an emotionally intelligent marriage.”55 Gottman states that emotional intelligence has rightfully gained recognition as an important predictor of marital success. “The more emotionally intelligent a couple – the better able they are to understand, honour and respect each other and their marriage – the more likely they will indeed live happily ever after.”56
A reference was made early in this chapter regarding the previously held belief among therapists that marriages would do well if the couple was successful in resolving their differences and conflicts, especially if they used effective communication skills, such as active listening. Gottman describes this as “the biggest myth of all.”57 He states,
By forcing couples to see their differences from each other’s perspective, problem solving is supposed to take place without anger. . . . Since marriage is also, ideally, a relationship in which people feel safe being themselves, it might seem to make sense to train couples to practise this unconditional understanding. Conflict resolution is certainly easier if each party expresses empathy for each other’s perspective. The problem is that it doesn’t work.58
Gottman refers to research demonstrating that after couples practised active listening techniques they were still distressed.59 The couples who did seem to benefit
55 Ibid., 3.
56 Ibid., 3-4. See also Morris-May, 24. “Creating and sustaining an emotional connection with your spouse is the most important goal of your marriage.”
57 Gottman and Silver, 8.
58 Ibid., 9-10.
59 Ibid. 75
relapsed after one year. One study demonstrated that only 38 percent of couples see an improvement in their marriages after completing a series of therapy sessions using conflict resolution skills. Gottman states, “We now understand that this approach to counselling doesn’t work, not just because it’s nearly impossible for most couples to do well, but more importantly because successful conflict resolution isn’t what makes marriages succeed.”60
Marriage educators and marriage enrichment facilitators would be wise to heed
Gottman’s research. While he accepts that positive communication and the ability to successfully resolve conflicts adds much to a sense of satisfaction in marriage, Gottman is able to report they are not the magic formula that many have accepted as the secret to a happy marriage. “The key to reviving or divorce-proofing a relationship is not in how you handle disagreements but in how you are with each other when you are not fighting.”61
As noted earlier, Gottman reveals six common behaviours of couples whose marriages fail. These practises may periodically appear in happy marriages, but when they become a regular part of a couple’s daily routine, they will move towards loneliness in their marriage and eventually drift apart. They will drift into a relationship subsumed in negativity and hurtful emotions.
60 Ibid., 11. See also Morris-May, xiii: “Conflict resolution and communication skills don’t pump life back into an ailing marriage, and they don’t help couples trust each other. These techniques are helpful, but they don’t enable couples to feel safe, loved, valued and understood.”
61 Gottman and Silver, 46. 76
Gottman’s refers to his six signs as harsh start-up; the four horseman of the apocalypse – criticism, contempt, defensiveness and stonewalling; flooding; body language; failed repair attempts, and bad memories.62 Pastoral couples will be far better equipped for their marital journey if they are familiar with these six practises that
Gottman indicates are the roads to marital failure. There is very real merit in learning from the mistakes of others. While it is essential that couples learn strategies to enhance and enrich their relationships, knowing what does not enhance and enrich will be of inestimable value as well.
Gottman goes on to list the seven principles that he believes describe the habitual practises of couples who provide evidence of sustaining, and enjoying, a long-term, happy marriage. These couples are not exempt from trial or conflict, but they have learnt how to sustain their intimacy and build positive sentiment that anchors them in their marriage. They have learnt to find definitive ways of expressing their love and respect for each other, not only on special occasions but right through the intricacies of their daily lives.
Gottman described as the Masters of Marriage those couples who practised the seven principles, which he entitled, enhance your love maps; nurture your fondness and admiration; turn towards instead of away; let your partner influence you; solve your solvable problems, overcome gridlock, and create shared meaning.63 Gottman proposes
62 For a more detailed description of The Six Signs of a Marriage in Trouble, see Appendix A.
63 For a more detailed description of The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work, see Appendix B.
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that couples who successfully integrate and sustain the first three principles in their marriages will build positive sentiment override (PSO), which is a sense of positive regard for each other with high degrees of respect and honour. Couples who fail to achieve these three principles will have marriages characterised by negative sentiment override (NSO) “in which even neutral or positive messages are perceived as negative and the person is hypervigilant for negativity.”64
Gottman claims that it is not possible to change NSO to PSO, except by changing the quality of the couple’s friendship. “People are in negative sentiment override for good reason: they see their partner as an adversary, not a friend. To change that state, we need to build that couple’s friendship.”65
While these statements might refer more specifically to practices in the clinician’s room, marriage educators and marriage enrichment programmers can successfully bring them into the educational arena. Couples in marriage enrichment programs would value from opportunities to assess their levels of friendship and learn and practise those strategies that might allow them to successfully build a deeper knowledge and awareness of who they are and how they are in the marriage. This will in turn better prepare them to deal with any conflict while sustaining a more positive view of their marriage, which in turn will play a significant role in building and nurturing their couple intimacy.
64 John Gottman and Julie Schwartz Gottman. Bridging the Couple Chasm Level 1. (Seattle, WA: The Gottman Institute, 2012), 34.
65 Ibid. 78
Developing a Ministry to Pastoral Couples
A cursory view of the writings that present strategies for enriching marriages will reveal an overwhelming number of possibilities and options.66 An article by Robyn
Parker entitled, Why marriages last: A discussion of the literature,67 is offered as illustration. Parker explores the reasons provided by researchers as to why couple’s marriages might be happy and successful. A full description of Parker’s report is beyond the scope of this project.68 However, a list of factors that influence the success of marriages found in Parker’s research includes the following:
Ability to change and adapt to change in the face of extraordinary social change; ability to live with the unchangeable; assumption of permanence; trust; balance of dependencies (power); enjoyment of each other; cherished, shared history; luck; the emotional benefits; spouse is a best friend; liking spouse as a person; marriage as a long term commitment; marriage as a sacred institution; agreement on aims and goals; spouses becoming more interesting to each other; wanting the relationship to succeed; sharing important fundamental aims, goals and values; differences of opinion and the lack of consensus was not interpreted as damaging to the relationship; making efforts to achieve and maintain an acceptable balance of separateness and togetherness; a spouse who was caring, giving, showed integrity and humour; having similar opinions and philosophies; the expression of affection, and taking pride in their spouse's achievements; containment of conflict; mutuality of decision-making; quality of communication; relational values of trust, respect, understanding and equity; sexual and psychological intimacy, and don't look for, or try to create, the perfect spouse.69
66 A web-search using the words ‘strengthening marriage’ produces about 9,640,000 results, and a search for ‘strengthening clergy marriages’ reveals about 2,550,000 results.
67 Robyn Parker, "Why Marriages Last: A Discussion of the Literature," Australian Institute of Family Studies, Research Paper 28 http://wwwaifs.gov.au/institute/pubs/RP28.html (accessed July 10, 2013).
68 Parker lists and describes well over 100 different factors for successful marriage emerging from her literature review.
69 Parker, "Why Marriages Last: A Discussion of the Literature."
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Parker recognises that couples in enduring marriages report the same sorts of troubles and difficulties as other couples and will point out aspects of their own marriages that are not ideal. However, “the distinguishing feature of these relationships is the sense and primacy of 'coupleness': that both spouses are committed to nurturing and sustaining the marriage, and both have the goodwill necessary to learn and engage in the behaviours that keep alive the emotional connection that brought them together in the first place.”70
This conclusion by Parker adds strong support to this project, firstly through the recognition that each partner needs to invest in the marriage and be prepared to nurture and sustain the relationship, and secondly, that the couple need to commit to discovering and practising those strategies that build and keep the emotional connection in the marriage. Strong and vibrant marriages will inevitably be those where the couple have been intentional about making their marriage successful. They do not rely on luck or drift along in the vain hope that it will all work out for good. “Most long-married happy couples would likely attest to the effort involved in creating and sustaining their marriage over such long periods.”71
Parker’s review covers a wide selection of research-based findings into marriage and as such provides a valuable resource for those who may wish to prepare marriage enrichment events and marriage education programs, both inside and outside the church setting. What is essential is that program leaders focus on those strategies and processes that encourage and facilitate “couple-connectedness” and allow for a sustained, long-term
70 Ibid., 23.
71 Ibid. 80
experience of emotional intimacy. These are the core points of focus that will shape the best enrichment programs for couples who wish to enhance their marriages.
Over many years the SDA Church, through its publication Ministry, has provided a wide range of articles offering guidelines for building marital relationships. These articles, written by a variety of pastors and administrators from various faith persuasions and from a somewhat less research-based platform, offer advice and suggestions to pastoral couples with the goal of assisting them in building marital satisfaction and marital longevity. For example, Willie Hucks II suggests that pastoral couples need to recognise marriage, not as a fifty-fifty proposition, but as a hundred-hundred proposition.
Hucks states, “Marriage must be lived in the context of total giving of one partner to the other – selflessly expressing oneself for the complete joy of the other.”72 He also encourages husbands to consistently display true leadership; learn to sincerely say “I’m sorry,” avoid trying to change their spouse into someone she is not; and remember that the spouse should always remain more important than the congregation.
Joel Musvosvi states that the pastor needs to clearly understand that he is not first of all his wife’s pastor and then her husband, and a wife must equally recognise that she is her husband’s spouse first before she relates to him in any other light. “There must be no room for platitudes and pedestals in their relationship with one another.”73 He also adds that the pastoral couple’s first obligation “is to love, to cherish, and to be available
72 Willie E. Hucks II, "Marriage: An Earthly Microcosm of Heaven," Ministry 84, no. 7 (July 2012): 5.
73 Musvosvi, 5.
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to each other with an undying commitment to their own marriage. It is important that ministry flow out of their togetherness and not vice versa.”74
In a bold assertion, Kay Kuzma claims that a husband can make his wife feel like the most special person in the world: all he has to do is put Kuzma’s twelve suggestions into practise, and the wife “will feel like a million and your marriage satisfaction will make your life brighter than gold!” 75 Kuzma’s twelve suggestions are: “Sacrifice for her; listen to her; touch her; be with her in public; say kind things about her in public; share her responsibilities; let her know you admire her; show respect; be an understanding father; open doors of possibility for your wife; take time to be alone with her; be the spiritual leader of your family.”76
While the sentiments and tone of each of these articles can be found in similar articles in Ministry, none make reference to the role that either the congregation or church administration might play in supporting pastoral couple-intimacy. All the articles reviewed focus primarily on guidelines, rules, and strategies couples might follow to achieve happiness. These might be considered valuable to some readers, but others may see them as simply a collection of opinions expressed by untrained practitioners with little or no basis in social science research. Marriage enrichment programs built on such material may therefore be less than ideal, shallow, and limited in the ability to bring about substantial change and growth in couple connectivity.
74 Ibid.
75 Kay Kuzma, "Twelve Ways to Cherish Your Wife,” Ministry 62, no. 8 (August 1989): 11-13.
76 Ibid. 82
Conclusion
Pastoral marriages do not have the luxury of being formed and shaped in a perfect environment. This project is built on the premise that the church can be one of the most difficult places for a pastoral couple to find sufficient opportunities for building and nurturing their relational intimacy. While pastors and their spouses might yearn to be relationally whole, numerous challenges that can be found in their churches inevitably pull them apart and potentially leave them lonely and isolated.
Pastors minister to church members with very diverse needs and they will feel compelled to do everything they can to fulfil these expectations, even if it requires relinquishing their own needs. They can easily be tempted to spend excessive hours to ensure they appear to be hard workers, committed to ministry, and to be successful. Male pastors may especially be driven to succeed at any cost because work can be their most significant indicator of who they are as a person. This drive to succeed can leave pastoral couples at risk for establishing inappropriate and ineffective physical and/or emotional connections with other church members or people in the community. They may also become immersed in various forms of pornography or sexual addictions.
The Whethams and Sotheren provide valuable insights into how this risk might be realised, and correctly point to the imperative for establishing a strong primary relationship. This relationship must be built if pastors are to effectively deal with the debilitating effects of loneliness and isolation that can so readily infiltrate their ministry.
Marriage is a God-shaped gift that can so easily drift into a meaningless and empty burden unless both couples commit to building and sustaining it over the long-term.
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Craig and the Balswicks clearly explain that it is the emotional connection that especially describes the heart of a marriage. While marriage partners may share common goals and values, interests and dreams, they will fall short of genuine marital connectivity whenever they fail to build emotional intimacy. Further, this intimacy will not exist in a vacuum, but will be best grown in a marriage built on covenant and characterised by empowerment and grace. Intimacy is much more than the joining of bodies: it is the union of hearts as well. Pastoral couples who desire the best marriages will seek out ways to ensure they show genuine love and mutual respect for each other in their every-day interactions, and commit to empowering each other and showing grace through forgiveness, patience and forbearance.
While couples might hope for a vibrant and successful marriage, hope alone will never provide them the skills they need to succeed. Gottman’s findings provide pastoral couples with very clear, research-based strategies for building a robust marriage.
Gottman not only provides details of what to avoid in marriage that will lead to loneliness and despair, he outlines strategies which describe the habits of successfully married couples that can be replicated and repeated. The value of Gottman’s principles for making marriage work is that they are not simply based on intuition or happen to be just good guesses, but are solidly founded in the lives of hundreds of long-term married couples.
In light of the plethora of marital advice so readily available in written, digital or auditory format, clearly illustrated in Parker’s review, marriage educators and marriage enrichment providers will need to be discerning and discriminatory in what advice they provide to pastoral couples. This calls for a working-knowledge of biblically-based 84
principles of marriage and a Holy-Spirit guided use of sound, social-science research.
Whetham and Whetham, Sotheren, Craig, the Balswicks, and Gottman provide more than an adequate basis for building an effective marriage enrichment event that may assist pastoral couples in the SDA Church strengthen and enrich their marriages, and provide a guide for church administrators and church members in being effective providers of support and nurture for their church pastors.
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CHAPTER 3
THEOLOGY OF MARRIAGE AND RELATIONAL INTIMACY
Scripture is quick to introduce the imperative for building intimate relationships.
Genesis 2 records God’s declaration, “It is not good for the man to be alone” (Gen 2:18
NIV). Loneliness was clearly not a part of God’s original plan for human existence. God designed humanity to be in relationships and to experience couple-intimacy. This chapter presents a theological perspective on selected aspects of marital intimacy. The chapter will also review the importance of marriage in the SDA Church.
Relational Connectivity and the Issue of Loneliness
Debra Umberson, Jennifer Montez and others have clearly linked loneliness to negative effects on both the physical and mental health of individuals.1 Julianne Holt-
Lunstad, Timothy Smith and J. Bradley Layton reviewed 148 studies that link death with
1 Debra Umberson and Jennifer Karas Montez, "Social Relationships and Health: A flashpoint for health policy." Journal of Health and Social Behaviour 51 (2012): 54-66. See also “Commission on Children at Risk,” Hardwired to Connect: The New Scientific Case for Authoritative Communities, Institute for American Values: 1-84. http://www.americanvalues.org/search/item.php?id=17 (accessed June 12, 2007)
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social relationships and found that “people with stronger social relationships had a 50 percent increased likelihood of survival than those with weaker social relationships.” 2
Further, when comparing loneliness with other death risk factors such as cigarette- smoking, high blood pressure, and alcoholism, loneliness was found to lead toward death as much as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. The researchers also found that the effect of social relationships on human health is the same, regardless of age, gender, initial health status or cause of death. “It would seem that we are social beings and if we are not able to express that, for reasons within our control or not, we start to die a little.”3 Hart states,
Research confirms the importance of human bonds. Without relationships humans wither and die, both emotionally and physically. The quality of our life diminishes when there is no one to share it with – family, friends, or spouse. . . . Everything about us was designed to live in close community and interaction with others. We certainly were not designed to go through life emotionally disconnected.4
This need for an emotional connection is especially significant when considering marriage. Debra Umberson and Jennifer Montez demonstrated that “marital history over the life course shapes a range of health outcomes, including cardiovascular disease, chronic conditions, mobility limitations, and depressive symptoms.”5 Couples who fail to build an emotional connection and whose marriage is characterized by ongoing,
2 Julianne Holt-Lunstad, Timothy Smith and J. Bradley Layton," Social Relationships and Mortality Risk: A Meta-analytic Review." http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/ info%3Adoi% 2F10.1371%2F journal.pmed.1000316#ack (accessed April 12, 2014).
3 Ibid.
4 Hart and Morris, Safe Haven Marriage, 50.
5 Debra Umberson and Jennifer Karas Montez, Montez, "Social Relationships and Health: A flashpoint for health policy." Journal of Health and Social Behaviour, 51 (2010): 54-66. http//www. ncbi.nim.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3150158/ (accessed April 12, 2014).
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unresolved conflict and emotional alienation are not only vulnerable to physical stress and illness but also to relational loneliness, and ultimately separation and divorce. While marriage is not the sole antidote to divorce: singles need to deal with the same issue - couples committed to sustaining their physical and emotional health as well as their desire for marital longevity need to give careful thought to how they might build and enrich their emotional intimacy and protect against the destructive nature of loneliness.6
Loneliness and Relational Connectivity in Genesis
The biblical record that describes human creation (Gen 2:18-25)7 clearly shows
God designing a helper for Adam not from the animals (Gen 2:19-20) but from his own hand. As Garland and Garland note, “Genesis makes clear that when God saw it was not good for man to be alone, he created a companion for him with whom he could be intimate.”8 Mignon Jacobs believes that God’s act in creating Eve suggests “work, basic existence, and beauty are not sufficient for the well-being of the human; and, an existence
6 Brandon points to the inadequacy of regarding marriage or sex as the only answer to loneliness. Both singles and marrieds need to find intimacy in non-sexual friendships. Guy Brandon, Just Sex: is it ever just sex? (Nottingham: Inter-Varsity Press, 2009), 87.
7 All Scripture quoted is from the New International Version, unless otherwise noted.
8 Garland, Diana S. Richmond and David E. Garland, Beyond Companionship - Christians in Marriage. (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2003), 29.
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constituted by uniqueness and solitude is not the ideal for the human.”9 Walter
Brueggemann adds, “The well-being of the man requires a fresh creative act of God.”10
Colin Gunton observes, “It is only when he can rejoice in the fellowship of one who is a true other-in-relation that he is able to transcend the merely individual state that is a denial of human fullness.”11 Henri Blocher concurs with the view that being “human” means to be in relationship. He states,
By this divine reason of the creation of the woman, Scripture could not underlie better the degree to which solitude contradicts the calling of humanity. From the very beginning, the human being is a Mitzein, a being-with; human life attains its full realization only in community . . . . Every human individual, being either masculine or feminine, must abandon the illusion of being alone. The constitution of each of us is a summons to community.12
This sense of a deep relational connection finds its best model in God-as-Trinity.
Jack and Judy Balswick have particularly shaped this concept. As the Balswicks state,
We propose Trinitarian theology as a model for human relating. The relationship between the three members of the Holy Trinity – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – is simultaneously distinctiveness and complete unity. . . . We believe this is a rich analogy for human relationships: achieving unity while maintaining distinctiveness. As distinctly unique persons, we open ourselves to each other through the encounter, making a place for unity.13
9 Mignon R. Jacobs, Gender, Power and Persuasion: The Genesis Narratives and Contemporary Portraits (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2007), 37.
10 Walter Brueggemann, Genesis: Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1982), 47.
11 Colin Gunton, The One, The Three and Many: God, Creation and the Culture of Modernity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993) 216, quoted in Judith K. Balswick and Jack O. Balswick, Authentic Human Sexuality: An Integrated Christian Approach (Downers Grove IL: InterVarsity Press, 2008), 30.
12 Henri Blocher, In the Beginning: The Opening Chapters of Genesis (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Books, 1984), 96-97.
13 Judith K. Balswick, and Jack O. Balswick, Authentic Human Sexuality: An Integrated Christian Approach, 75. 89
Matthew Covington supports this view: “Humanity was created for relationship, even intense relationships. Our capacity to give and receive love reflects . . . the fundamental capacity for love and relationship that is the very nature of Almighty God –
God who is the eternally related Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”14 William Kynes adds that a “canonical understanding of this creation of sexual differentiation within our essential unity as human beings supports the connection with the triune nature of God himself as
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”15 Being made in the image of God provided man and woman with the capacity to connect and find in each other the unity they needed to be fully human. To be alone was to be outside the parameters of what God considered best.
God bestowed the gift of intimacy and love between two humans as it was found in the persons of the Trinity.
Man and Woman as “One Flesh”
The woman was not only made for man, she was also made from man (Gen 2:21-
23). Adam’s response to this creative act is to perceive her as the “bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.” (v. 23) Verses 24 and 25 then describe key aspects of that original marriage and provide a pattern for marriage for future generations. At the core of this
God-shaped marriage is the act of becoming “one flesh” (Gen 2:24). While this term
14 Matthew Covington, “God so Free, and so Bound in Holy Union,” Journal for Preachers 36 (No 4 Pentecost, 2013):16-18.
15 William L. Kynes, “The Marriage Debate: A Public Theology of Marriage,” Trinity Journal 28 (No 2, Fall, 2007): 187-203.
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(basad chad) might at first suggest simply a sexual union, there is a deeper meaning.
Adrian Thatcher asserts that the term speaks to the entire union of the man and the woman. They become “a new and distinct unity,” completely different to the ‘union’ found in a family or race of people.16
Gordon Hugenberger infers that marriage is a more complete union than simply a sexual one by stating that “‘they became one flesh’ refers to the familial bondedness of marriage.”17 Guy Brandon believes that the Hebrew language used in Genesis 2 (basar –
‘flesh’ and echad – ‘one’) and other usages, as in Duet 6:4; Gen 29:14; Judges 9:2; and 2
Samuel 5:1, imply that ‘one flesh’ “is more than just a close relative – it is the same flesh.”18 Brandon adds, “This one flesh status can be made and broken fairly easily, but that constitutes a shocking trivialization or distortion of the creation principle.”19
For the Balswicks, Adam and Eve’s sexual nature “moves them toward each other for a deeper level of knowing one another in the meeting. Their distinctive differences engage them in an emotional and sexual oneness they cannot find in themselves alone.”20
“Thus marriage becomes the central and typical expression of our creation as male and female, especially fit for the most intimate of human personal relationships.”21
16 Adrian Thatcher, Marriage after Modernity (New York: New York University Press, 1999), 78.
17 Gordon P. Hugenberger, Marriage as a Covenant: Biblical Law and Ethics as Developed from Malachi (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1994), 163.
18 Brandon, 200.
19 Ibid.
20 Balswick and Balswick, Authentic Human Sexuality: An Integrated Christian Approach, 63.
21 Kynes, 191. 91
Craig notes that the phrase, “they shall be one flesh” is better translated “they shall become one flesh” suggesting that “marriage is a process of becoming – a relationship that grows, deepens and strengthens over time.”22 Marriage is never static but dynamic. All couples adapt and change as they pass through the various stages of marital life. The key for the successful couple is to keep “being one.”
The task of staying emotionally connected finds its first challenge in the loss of the original “one flesh” experience, as described in Genesis three. In verse 7 the author records that “the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked,” indicating a marked change from their innocent state as noted in Gen 2:25 where they
“were both naked, and they felt no shame.” Their realization that they were naked indicates a change in their relational status with their Creator, and with each other. There is a loss of openness and a new realization that they were in some way vulnerable and exposed. “So they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves” (Gen
3:7). They attempted to cover their new sense of vulnerability with fig leaves – a futile act considering their Maker had so recently formed them and knew their every detail.
Adam and Eve then “hid from the Lord God among the trees” because they were afraid (Gen 3:8-10). In their new found fear and loss of innocence, they searched for a personal sense of security through defensive blame. When Adam was invited to respond to God’s query as to how he knew he was naked and whether he had eaten of the forbidden fruit, he replied, “The woman you put here with me – she gave me some fruit .
22 Bryan K. Craig, Searching for Intimacy in Marriage, 28.
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. .” (Gen 3:12). Adam clearly places the blame on Eve. In response to God’s similar query to Eve, she also finds herself looking for a cause. She replies, “The serpent deceived me . . .” (Gen 3:13.)
Scripture provides in these verses a description of a number of issues that confront married couples, including clergy couples. Firstly, couples in relationship will need to deal with being vulnerable. Post-Edenic intimacy will always be challenged by relational ‘nakedness’ where couples are required to confront being exposed to each other, physically, emotionally, spiritually and socially. Couples need to face being open and honest with each other at the risk of discovering the uncomfortable ‘unknown.’
Genuine intimacy requires such vulnerability.
Secondly, like Adam and Eve, couples who struggle with openness and honesty
‘hide’ from each other. Couples who feel shame, guilt, or anxiety when physically or emotionally naked in their marriage will inevitably seek out a refuge. They might feign illness or create physical and emotional space that provides them opportunities to avoid a deep sense of connectedness. They may immerse themselves in their work or sporting interests, or become heavily involved in service to the needy in the community. Members of the clergy might spend inordinate hours at the church office, in visitation, or in evangelistic endeavours. Such acts may be honourable but might also be attempts to hide from their partner.
Thirdly, the fear of being discovered as less than expected leads a couple towards self-made coverings. Couples who feel a need to hide from each other will design their own ‘fig-leaves’ to keep them at a distance from their partner. They may build protective walls of anger, emotional and/or physical distance, or addictive behaviours in order to 93
avoid closeness and intimacy. Clergy couples who find intimacy difficult will find a ready excuse to stay unavailable through their immersion in church-work.
Fourthly, couples will find an easy defence against being exposed by passing blame. Male clergy can avoid responsibility to accept their partner’s attempts to connect more effectively by finding fault and failure in their partner’s behaviours and accuse or criticize them, passing the issue back to them. Clergy wives who might seek a closer relationship with their marital partner might use blame and criticism as an attempt to draw near but inevitably create further distance. As Craig asserts,
The Edenic couple now experienced disconnectedness, a loss of integrity, and a distortion of their gender identities. The delicate alignment, the joy of interdependence, was disrupted, and the dance of intimacy spoken of so concisely and meaningfully was now replaced by the dance for intimacy. Human innocence had been destroyed by the intrusion of self-interest, defensiveness, and denial, and the balance and unity in the marriage partnership were severely affected. Adam and Eve had lost the “oneness” which they had known with their Creator-God and with each other (Gen 3:6-24).23
The Genesis record therefore describes both the original plan for marriage and the potential results of a broken relationship with God and each other. While God clearly designed humans to connect, and especially designed the human heart to find a unique and profound sense of connectedness in a union as husband and wife, humans are also at risk of experiencing loneliness in this very same union. Marriage was a unique union provided by God to combat soul-destroying loneliness, but it is in marriage that couples might experience their deepest sense of loneliness. Clergy couples who wish to build
23 Ibid., 33.
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their best marriages will remain aware of any negative beliefs and practises that mirror those of Adam and Eve and find new ways to build intimacy and minimise loneliness.
Relational Intimacy as Taught by Jesus
Scripture declares that “in Him (the Son) all things were created . . . . All things have been created through him and for him” (Colossians 1:16, 17). Jesus made the clay used to mould Adam, and from His side made Eve (Gen 2:21, 22), and then “brought her to the man.” (Gen 2:22). He was intimately familiar with the journey into their partnership. He not only made them: he joined them as one.
When Jesus was questioned about divorce, He locates his reply in this unique creation act: “So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate” (Gen 1:27; Gen 2:24; Matt 19:6). With these words, Jesus declares that marriage is much more than a human contract; it is a Divine ‘joining.’
Marriage is a God-act and as such needs to be regarded over and above a simple man- made arrangement.
Thatcher points out that by this single comment Jesus adds several new meanings to the prevailing understanding of marriage at the time, and especially the term “one flesh.’ Firstly, the ‘attaching’ or ‘cleaving’ of the man to his wife is a deep personal union which actually creates a new identity for each of them. Each is who he or she is in relation to his or her partner. Secondly, the union is a permanent one. Thirdly, “the union
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achieved by the man and the woman is achieved by the action of God.” 24 Fourthly, divorce is excluded from the reign of God, and fifthly, polygamy is also excluded.
William Loader adds that Jesus’ appeal to Genesis “is oneness, and so, as in
Genesis, on intimacy and companionship, including sexual intimacy.”25 Thatcher adds clarity to the picture of marriage as it may be found in the mind of Jesus. He states,
The Genesis one-flesh text means a lifelong union where each partner loves the other as that partner loves himself or herself. In starting out in faith to love the ‘other’ as one loves oneself, one engages in an adventure which embodies the love of God revealed in Christ, finds the face of Christ in the face of one’s partner, and shares with him or her that love which Christ shared with the Church.26
Sexual intimacy is clearly a component of the one-flesh union. Stephen Barton states that our “sexuality is sacred. . . . It bears the stamp of the divine nature. It is a means for us to glorify God and to share that glory with our fellow human beings.”27
However, it needs to be immersed in a far broader understanding of the wholistic union that describes marriage, and interpersonal relationships. As Brandon puts it:
We need to find ways of rediscovering and fostering true intimacy, in which people can understand their identities not by trying to look inside themselves in isolation from others, but as individuals who have come to know themselves through relationships, with God and with other people. We need to recognise that the key to our sexual freedom, and indeed to our whole personal development,
24 Thatcher, 79.
25 William Loader, Sexuality in the New Testament (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 45.
26Thatcher, 97.
27 Stephen C. Barton, “Glorifying God in your Body (1 Cor 6:20): Thinking Theologically about Sexuality,” in Religion and Sexuality, eds. Michael A. Hayes, Wendy Porter and David Tombs (Roehampton Institute London Papers 4, Studies in Theology and Sexuality, 2 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998), 373-374.
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does not lie within ourselves, but in getting relationships right with God and with other people.28
Jesus reminded his listeners that this one-flesh union was inseparable. Man was not to separate what God had joined together (Matt 19:6). Any separation that took place was only a concession by God because of human “hardness of heart,” (Deut 24:1, 2), “but it was not this way from the beginning” (Matt 24:7, 8). This high standard set by Jesus was in sharp contrast to the contemporary teachings where divorce was common and marriage did little for the role and status of women.
Clearly, while Jesus chose not to marry, he condoned, blessed, and stood for an intimate, one-flesh union. He compares his own mission to a wedding: “How can the guests of the bridegroom mourn while he is with them?” Matt 9:15). It is also clear that he saw marriage in broader kingdom terms. Leaving one’s family behind, even literally, was a regular act of Jesus’ followers. His disciples left everything and went after him; the need to bury family members appeared to be insufficient reason not to immediately follow him; and “whoever does God’s will” is a brother and mother to Jesus (Luke 9:57-
60; Matt 8:19-22; Mk 10:17-31; Matt 19:16-30; Luke 18:18-30). As Kynes notes,
Marriage therefore needs to be viewed not as an end in itself but as a part of God’s broader salvation acts, “understood in the entire redemptive-historical flow of the biblical story.”29
28 Brandon, 196.
29 Kynes, 189.
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Intimacy and Marriage in the Gospels
The Bible was not intended as a training-manual on the topic of marriage. While both the Old and New Testaments make references to marriage and sexuality, no biblical writer addresses the topic of marriage in a structured form. In the Gospels, the primary statements about marriage arise out of a question to Jesus from the Pharisees about the grounds for divorce (Matt 19:3-12; Mark 10:2-12). Jesus said nothing about how a one- flesh marriage should be lived out, how a couple might prepare for marriage, decide on birth control, sort out roles of husband and wife, or how to strengthen a marriage.
What Jesus did address was the need for love. It was core to his teaching and ministry to both his disciples and his followers. It was the greatest commandment in the law – to love God and then to love the neighbour (Matt 22:36-38): “there is no commandment greater than these” (Mk 12:31). This love was to be extended to enemies, and to those who do not love first (Luke 6:27, 32). Further, this love was to be unlike that of the Pharisees who loved the most respected places in synagogues and marketplaces and who meticulously tithed herbs and spices but failed to show justice and respond to the love of God (Luke 11:42, 43; 16:14). The love that Jesus called for was to be a far greater love. “As I have loved you,” Jesus said, “so you must love one another.” (John
13:34). This kind of love is the mark of a true disciple (John 13:35).
John further enriches the picture of the love Jesus commands of his followers by quoting him directly: “My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you,” and
“This is my command: Love each other” (John 15:12, 17). Jesus did not leave his listeners to wonder what sort of love this might be: “Greater love has no one than this: to
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lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (John 15:13). In addition, Jesus specifically prayed to his Father with the request that this kind of love, the sacrificial giving-love of his
Father, might be seen in his people: “I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them” (John 17:26). This was the love that his followers were to
“remain in” (John 15:10).
While it might be rightly argued that Jesus was not specifically addressing married couples with these words, it would be a mistake to suggest his command to love was therefore irrelevant to marriage. In fact they may be taken to be at the very core of the marriage relationship. In Western cultures in general, and in the Australian culture in particular, couples marry the one they love. Genuine lovers who wish to express their love and affection in a God-shaped marriage believe that love is the reason why they leave the parental home and unite with their partner (Gen 2:24). Western marriage ceremonies will inevitably include statements about the need for love in a marital union, and while vows of commitment expressed in marriage ceremonies may vary between the different Christian faiths, they include expressions of love and commitment.
This being so, Jesus’ words provide married couples some potential challenges when it comes to expressing love. If the followers of Jesus are to love others and neighbours as much as they love themselves, and this level of love is also to be extended to enemies, then this kind of love must be expressed to the closest and most intimate
‘other’ or ‘neighbour’ – the husband or wife. This expression of love can never rise to the same level as the Father’s love for the Son nor the Son’s love for the Father, nor even the way the Father and Son loved the world (John 3:16), but Christian couples in love will 99
take it as a model and an ambition in their journey towards intimacy. This kind of love is central to all of Jesus’ teachings and can be taken as a directive for contemporary clergy couples who seek an intimate marriage and wish to reflect the love of God. Bernie and
Karen Holford suggest that “as we learn to love our partner with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, we learn what it means to love God with all that we have. And the more we love God with our heart, soul, mind and strength, the more richly we can love each other.”30
The Need for Love as Outlined in the Epistles
The New Testament epistles provide a number of key teachings and instructions on marriage and family life in New Testament times. A complete review of all of the relevant passages is well outside the parameters of this study. Paul’s references to marriage need to be considered in the context of his time and also in the setting of an emerging New Testament Church made up of Jews and Gentiles with diverse backgrounds, beliefs, customs, and traditions. As a pastor, Paul was attempting to build a unified Church when, in his thinking, time on earth was short and the return of Christ was imminent (1 Thess 4:13-18). Raymond Collins notes that Paul’s instruction recorded in
Ephesians and Colossians “is a plea for social order within the Christian household as it made its way in the Greco-Roman world of the last first century C.E.”31
30 Karen Holford and Bernie Holford, “How your marriage helps you grow more like God,” Ministry, July 2012, 6-9.
31 Raymond F. Collins, Sexual Ethics and the New Testament: Behaviour and Beliefs (New York: The Crossword Publishing Company, 2000), 154.
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A cursory reading of Paul’s call for wifely submission found in his letter to the
Ephesians (Eph 5:22-33) might suggest that the wife needs to heed the husband’s rebukes, obey his wishes and demands, fulfil his needs, and follow his lead in all things.
But as Diana and David Garland assert, “The ideal is not masculine rule and feminine compliance but mutual surrender in commitment to Christ and to the needs of others.”32
In Ephesians 5:22 the wife is instructed to be subject to her husband. No verb occurs in the Greek text of verse 22. It reads, literally, “Wives to your own husbands as to the
Lord.” The verb “be subject” must be supplied from 5:21: “be subject to one another out of reverence to Christ.” This verb is also found in 5:24. The verb “be subject” might be taken to complete the thought begun in 5:18b-21: “be filled with the Spirit . . . giving thanks to the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God the Father. Be subject to one another out of reverence to Christ.” Since 5:22 must be read in light of 5:21, the wives’ subjection takes on new meaning.
Paul is suggesting that the wife is not simply demanded to be an underling to the husband, but her submission is to be a part of the call to be a Christian. Mutual submission is an attribute or behaviour of all those who are filled with the Spirit and is to be exhibited in every Christian regardless of race or gender. Followers of Jesus are to be subject to one another in the love of Jesus. Kynes believes that “Paul’s words here emphasise responsibility, not rank; they speak of sacrifice, not selfishness; they set forth duty, not dominance. Loving sacrificial service, not self-interest or personal gain, is to be
32 Garland and Garland, Beyond Companionship - Christians in Marriage, 33.
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the guiding principle of the Christian husband. Here the marriage relationship has taken on a distinctly Christological shape.”33
The Garlands note that “this exhortation to be subject to one another reiterates a theme found throughout the teaching of both Paul and Jesus that Christians have been called to serve others and not to assert their own rights (see Rom. 12:18b; 15:1-3; 1 Cor.
10:33-11:1; Gal 5:13; Phil 2:3-4; and Matt. 23:11-12; Mark 10:42-45; John 13:14-15).”34
The Ephesians 5 texts (5:20-33) suggest that Christians are obliged to surrender self as
Jesus did, and that if all Christians are to be subject to one another, the wife’s subjection to her husband is not a role unique only to her. Further, wives are to be subject to their husbands “as to the Lord.” This does not mean that the wife is to submit to her husband as if he is the ‘lord’ – that would be idolatry. The Garlands add, “‘As to the Lord” has to do instead with the motivation of her submission. We are responsible to Christ in all aspects of life, including the intimacy of marriage.”35
Paul’s instruction to the husbands in Ephesians also needs to be clearly understood for appropriate marital relations. The description of the husband as “the head” of his spouse needs to be set within the previous message that all believers are to submit to one another. The meaning of “head” is not “ruler” or “chief,” but the husband is head of the wife “in the same way” that Christ is the head of the Church (see Eph 1:22; 4:15).
The headship of Christ is not only a source of life and vitality for the Church (Eph 1:22,
33 Kynes, 193.
34 Garland and Garland, Beyond Companionship - Christians in Marriage, 34.
35 Ibid.
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23) as well as development and growth (4:15-16), but is the head as “servant.” Jesus did not come to be served, but to serve (Matt 20:28). Christ came to serve the Church – he gave himself up for her” (Eph 5:25) -- and it is this kind of love that the husband is to extend to his wife.
The Church as a Crucible for Love and Intimacy
Thatcher states, “The mutual love in the Christian vision for marriage does not come from nowhere: in its formation, realization, growth and perpetuity, it is an icon of the covenant love of Christ for the Church.”36 God’s “bride” – the Church – is prepared for her wedding through washing, and made attractive by being “radiant” and “without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish” (Eph 5:26, 27; Ezek 16:8-14). God desires to be
“one” with his people (John 17:21), and while such a union is a mystery to Paul, he sees
God “joined” to his Church (Eph 5:32). God has “reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation” (Col 1:22).
The mystery of the marriage of God and his Church may be best considered in the broader revealing of the mystery of God’s plan found in the ministry of Christ (Eph 1:9;
3:3; 4:6; 6:19). In Christ, all things have come together and found unity – Jew and
Gentile, man and woman, slave and free (Eph 1:10; 2:13). Through his “flesh,” he creates in himself “one new humanity out of the two” (Eph 2:15). “In him the whole building is
36 Thatcher, Marriage after Modernity, 93.
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‘joined together’ and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord” (Eph 5:21). God is clearly in a marriage with his people, unified “as one,” desiring an intimate, loved-based relationship.
At the heart of God’s ministry in Jesus is His love. As Peter Jones notes, “This
God, we might say, is not merely in essence love but lovingness. That is, God expresses love relationally and even experiences love reciprocally. This loving God sent his only
Son into the world (v. 9b). So agape is not all about oneself, even God-self, but a self- giving to others.”37 (p 181)
George Knight suggests that Christians who love one another not only demonstrate that God dwells in them but that they “’complete’ or ‘perfect’ the circle of
His love.”38 (p 141). He believes this concept of love as an act of completion can be found in the later letters of John. He adds, “Thus the flow of thought in 1 John 4:7-12 is that God’s love originates in Himself (4:7, 8), was revealed in the Gift of His Son (verses
9, 10), and is made complete on His people (verse 12).”39
God’s compassionate love for Israel, even though they were adulterous in their union with the gods and the people of the surrounding nations (Jer 3:6-9; 5:7; 7:9; 29:23;
Ezek 23:37; Hos 4:13, 14) points to the need for grace and compassion in marriage. God never abandoned Israel but returned again and again, and his judgements on Israel were
37 Peter Rhea Jones, 1, 2 and 3 John, Smyth and Helwys Bible Commentary, Gen ed. A. A. Culpepper (Macon, GA: Smyth and Helwys Publishing Association, 2009), 181.
38 George R. Knight, Exploring the Letters of John and Jude: A Devotional Commentary (Hagerstown, MD: Review and Herald Publishing, 2009), 141-142.
39 Ibid.
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consistently tempered with grace. Jesus consistently administered this same grace in his ministry, especially to those who were considered to be on the outside of contemporary
Jewish circles of respectability – prostitutes and Samaritan women as examples (John 4).
Paul called for compassionate grace in his churches, compelling believers to love one another and provide support and nurture to all. He said to the believers in Rome: “Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves” (Rom 12:9); to those in Corinth he said that love is to be patient and kind, not envious or boastful, but unfailing (1 Cor 13; 4, 8); and to those in Colossae he exhorted them to clothe themselves
“with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience” (Col 3:12).
God’s Church is therefore to be a crucible of love. It is to be place shaped and moulded by the grace-filled, self-sacrificing, love shown consistently by God and His
Son through history. Whenever God’s followers come together in unity, they will choose to be a Church where love for others will abound.
The Church therefore has a role to play in showing compassionate grace to couples in marriage. A “devotion to one another” can be well expressed in love and support to clergy couples who are beginning in their marital journey and who may need sensitive encouragement and nurture. Kindness, love and compassion needs to be shown to clergy couples under duress and stress due to financial difficulties, family breakdown, or illness and death. God’s covenant love especially needs to be extended to clergy couples who believe they have no other option but to end their marriages. As Craig notes,
“The church today is called to uphold God’s ideal for marriage and at the same time, be a
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reconciling, forgiving, healing community that shows understanding and compassion when brokenness occurs.”40
Intimacy in Marital Relationships
In his record of the early Christian Church, Luke describes Christians as being
“one in heart and mind” and “sharing everything they had” (Acts 4:32), suggesting that the believers experienced a deep sense of harmony, unity and equality. This sense of being one in harmony and equality begins to describe the kind of relationship God wants for His people, especially those in intimate marriages. The love of God has been made known in the person of Jesus, and it is his ministry in love that provides directives for couples in their search for relational harmony and unity, and the willingness to share themselves in love. For Thatcher, the “experience of care, companionship and passion of one’s partner may be the clue to the experience of the caring, companionate, passionate
God.”41
God’s personal gift of Jesus -- a sharing of everything he had, and his desire to be one with his people, reminds married couples that genuine love will be an intimate love expressed in giving. As Natalie Weaver states, “A Christian theology of marriage requires a concept of love that is more sustainable and enduring than a passive concept of love that simply ‘happens.’ Charity, the love modeled by Jesus in the New Testament, is
40 Craig, Searching for Intimacy in Marriage, 38.
41 Thatcher, Marriage after Modernity, 228.
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precisely the kind of enduring and sustainable love that is the foundation of a Christian theology of marriage.”42
God’s love is always an act of giving. God loved the world so much that he ‘gave’ his only Son (John 3:16). Paul declared that the wages of sin is death but the ‘gift’ of God is eternal life (Rom 3:23). This act of love as giving can be seen in the way Jesus gave himself to his people in word, in touch and in healing.
Jesus’ Call for Relational Connectivity
Jesus, knowing the vulnerability of human life, gave his time, his love, and his healing power to bring human connections towards a greater degree of wholeness. He personally experienced human love and care, and reciprocated expressions of love and affection. At the time when Lazarus was sick, the sisters sent a message to Jesus saying,
“Lord, the one you love is sick” (John 11:3). Later, when Jesus saw Mary and those who had come to comfort her were weeping, he “was deeply moved in spirit and troubled,” and wept along with them (John 11:33, 35). He also wept over Jerusalem because the people failed to accept his claim to be the Messiah and his gift of mercy (Luke 19:41), and personally experience his mercy, love and grace.
Jesus never modelled an aloof or emotionless connection with people. He looked at those he wished to teach and encourage, and he touched so many of those he healed
(Matt 19:26; Mark 10:21, 27; Matt 8:3; 17:7; 20:34; Mark 1:41; Luke 5:13). He was so
42 Natalie K. Weaver, Marriage and Family: A Christian Theological Foundation (Winona, MN: Anselm Academic, 2009), 19.
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immersed in the communal life of the people that he allowed himself to be jostled by the crowd (Luke 8:45), and on occasions had to separate himself only because of the huge numbers of people (Matt 13:2). Jesus knows the human heart and expressed through his own life and in his teaching the imperative that hearts get connected in close and personal relationships.
The Call for Time-apart
The Psalmist declared that God knows the human heart from conception (Ps
139:13). God also knows the emotional and physical limits of his people. In Jesus, God seeks to restore and rebuild human inadequacy and brokenness. Jesus declared, “I have come to heal the broken-hearted” (Isa 61:1; Luke 4:18), and to care for the physically and spiritually sick (Matt 9:12; Mark 2:17; Mark 5:26). He also offers to all, well or unwell, the “abundant life” (John 10:10; 1:4).
Reference has already been made to the fact that loneliness destroys life and limits the full potential of human functioning. Loneliness, or the lack of assurance that there is someone who cares, can have debilitating effects on the human body and on the capacity to effectively relate to others. Intimacy, the antidote for loneliness, is therefore not achieved in isolation. The very nature of intimacy requires an “other,” but it also requires time. Intimacy will always be less than ideal whenever it is given less time that what is required to develop to its full potential. The deeper levels of sharing and connecting that describe true intimacy emerge out of time spent together where a couple
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can experience trust and acceptance and opportunities to disclose their wishes, dreams and fears.
Jesus’ Insistence on Rest and Renewal
Scripture records that Jesus took opportunities for time apart to find rest and renewal. Mark records that “very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off into a solitary place, where he prayed” (Mark 1:35). Jesus took time for refreshment and rejuvenation with his Father. Mark records that Jesus said to the disciples “come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest,” because
“so many people were coming and going that they didn’t even have a chance to eat”
(Mark 6:31).
Clergy couples who desire a growth in their love for one another find an imperative for action in these words of Jesus. A time away from people is essential for couple growth and the survival of love. A constant “coming and going” with people is an emotional and physical drain on human resources and will not only impact on the physical and emotional health of the pastoral couple but will inevitably test their relational intimacy.
Time with people clearly needs limits in the pastoral setting. While pastors may be emotionally invigorated at times through preaching and teaching and being involved in the social life of the church, there will come a time when it becomes an emotional, physical, spiritual and relational hazard. Jesus, so deeply immersed in the emotional and
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social needs of the people during his ministry, practised the habit of time apart and in so doing provided clergy couples a model to follow.
The Ministry as a Place for Pastoral Connectivity and Shared Service
Time spent apart for building intimacy and connectivity in marriage can also be an important practise for pastoral couples to share with other pastors. As noted in Chapter
1, pastoral couples can find church ministry a lonely profession. The pedestal-effect and concerns over close friendships with members can leave married clergy feeling socially isolated. Pastors and their spouses would do well to create opportunities to meet together for fellowship and renewal whenever appropriate. Pastors based in the cities might find more regular opportunities for social exchange with fellow-pastors than those pastors based in the rural areas.
Administrators who oversee ministry in rural territories in Australia need to be cognizant of this issue for pastors who are appointed to those regions where social interaction with fellow-pastors is limited. Isolated clergy couples need to recognise their need for friendships and seek out opportunities for fellowship with pastors of other faiths.
Building and sustaining strong friendships are essential in light of the data on the negative impacts of loneliness noted at the beginning of this chapter. This need to find strength and support through fellowship together as pastors and pastoral couples may be found in a model of ministry established by Jesus.
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Jesus’ Call for Two-by-two Ministry
When Jesus appointed his twelve disciples to evangelise the surrounding villages, he sent them out two-by-two. “Calling the twelve to him, he began to send them out two by two and gave them authority over impure spirits” (Mark 6:7). Jesus follows this practise with a larger group of disciples, as recorded by Luke: “After this the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them two by two ahead of him to every town and place he was about to go” (Luke 10:1). Mark records Jesus’ further instructions to take no bread, bag, money, or extra shirt, and to avoid multiple accomodations and those who show no hospitality (Mark 6:8, 9).
While Mark nor Luke make specific comment on this act of Jesus, his instructions to minister in the community with minimum resources might be taken to mean that personal well-being does not lie in things but in connections with others. His instructions to work in tandem speak to the importance of psychological and emotional support, and as such, provides an appropriate model for local church ministry. When possible, administrators might consider how they can more effectively care for the social and emotional needs of the pastors under their jurisdiction by appointing two pastoral couples to a church or churches. While the financial implications might be significant, the practise of joint ministry must be given attention.
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The Importance of Marriage in the SDA Church
The SDA Church holds marriage in high regard, including it in its listing of the Church’s
28 Fundamental Beliefs.43 It considers marriage to have been divinely established in
Eden and affirmed by Jesus to be a lifelong union between a man and a woman in a loving companionship. Further, for Christian believers, marriage is regarded as a commitment to God as well as to the spouse. Mutual love, honor, respect and responsibility are considered to be the fabric of this relationship, which is to reflect the love, sanctity, closeness, and permanence of the relationship between Christ and His
Church (Gen. 2:18-25; Matt. 19:3-9; John 2:1-11; 2 Cor. 6:14; Eph. 5:21-33; Matt. 5:31,
32; Mark 10:11, 12; Luke 16:18). In the Adventist Church’s official statement on marriage, the authors declare:
Marriage was divinely established in Eden and affirmed by Jesus Christ to be both monogamous and heterosexual, a lifelong union of loving companionship between a man and a woman. In the culmination of His creative activity, God fashioned humankind as male and female in His own image; and He instituted marriage, a covenant-based union of the two genders physically, emotionally, and spiritually, spoken of in Scripture as "one flesh."44
The importance of marriage for the SDA Church is further reflected in the concluding sentence of its official statement on marriage. The statement conlcudes, “To this biblical view of marriage the Seventh-day Adventist Church adheres without reservation, believing that any lowering of this high view is to that extent a lowering of
43 See http://www.adventist.org/beliefs/living/marriage-and-the-family/
44 http://www.adventist.org/information/official-statements/statements/article/go/0/marriage/30/ (accessed May 11, 2014).
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the heavenly ideal.”45 White considered marriage “one of God’s sacred ordinances, guarded by his holy precept.”46
The SDA Church, the Pastor, and Marital Breakdown
While the SDA Church holds marriage in such high regard, it also recognizes that not all marriages achieve permanency. God may indeed join a husband and wife, but the couple may not be able to keep it joined and seek a separation or divorce. The SDA
Church has traditionally taken Matthew’s exception clause for divorce (Matt 19:9) to mean adultery or fornication.
However, the Adventist Church accepts that the New Testament word for fornication includes certain other sexual irregularities (1 Cor. 6:9; 1 Tim. 1:9, 10; Rom.
1:24-27). The SDA Church manual states, “Therefore, sexual perversions, including incest, child sexual abuse, and homosexual practices, are also recognized as a misuse of sexual powers and a violation of the divine intention in marriage. As such they are just cause for separation or divorce.”47 The same manual states,
Even though the Scriptures allow divorce for the reasons mentioned above, as well as for abandonment by an unbelieving spouse (1 Cor. 7:10-15), the church and those concerned should make earnest endeavors to effect a reconciliation, urging the spouses to manifest toward each other a Christlike spirit of forgiveness and restoration. The church is urged to relate lovingly and redemptively toward the couple in order to assist in the reconciliation process.48
45 Ibid.
46 Ellen G. White, E. G. (1991). Counsels for the Church (Nampa, ID, Pacific Press Publishing Association, 1991), 133.
47 SDA Minister’s Manual (2010), 152.
48 Ibid. 113
The Church acknowledges that a couple in a broken marriage will need to look to
Jesus Christ to restore the relationship to its original ideal, as noted in the Minister’s
Manual: “God seeks to restore to wholeness and reconcile to Himself all who have failed to attain the divine standard (2 Cor. 5:19). This includes those who have experienced broken marriage relationships.”49 Again, as provided in the statement of Fundamental
Beliefs: “although some family relationships may fall short of the ideal, marriage partners who fully commit themselves to each other in Christ may achieve loving unity through the guidance of the Spirit and the nurture of the church.” 50
However, while the SDA Church accepts a broader view of sexual inappropriateness other than just physical adultery as grounds for divorce, and recognises the need to minister in grace to those who may err, it holds a strong stance against pastoral failure in the sexual arena. A pastor who fails to sustain sexual faithfulness in marriage in the SDA Church will not only be removed from membership but may also have his ordination annulled and be unable to return to any form of church-based ministry as a pastor.51 In an article in Ministry, Philip Hiroshima states that “because of the
49 Ibid.
50 Seventh-day Adventist Church, "Fundamental Beliefs, No 23: Marriage and the Family." http://www.adventist.org/beliefs/living/marriage-and-the-family/ (accessed May 12, 2014).
51 For an alternative SDA view, see David Solomon, “Does God believe in restoration? Part 2,” Ministry, October 2013, 14-16; and Roger Nixon, “The Pastor after a moral crisis,” Ministry, August 1997, 26-27.
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potential liability to the referring church or conference, the conference will generally terminate the pastor's employment and, possibly, annul the ordination.52
This ruling may not find support from all church members or administrators but currently stands as a church directive. The Ministers Manual states that a pastor may be removed from office by conference committee action without the individual’s church membership being affected. It declares that “When a pastor is removed from church membership and subsequently restored to membership as a layperson, the pastor’s membership restoration does not mean restoration to the ministry.” 53
The Seventh-day Adventist Minister’s Handbook distinguishes clearly the forgiveness of sin and re-employment in pastoral ministry. "While violation of the seventh commandment makes pastors ineligible for employment in pastoral ministry, they need and can experience God's forgiving grace and love. The church should seek to restore and nurture their spiritual and family relationships." 54 Miroslav Kis writes,
At the time when a minister's credentials are withdrawn and the pastor departs his post of duty, it is not wise to make any indication about the pastor's possible return to any form of church work. There are several reasons for this: (a) No one can be certain how much damage has been or is being done, nor how long and how complete the recovery will be; (b) God desires that His ministers lead not by executive power, clever methods, or impressive charisma but much rather by example "in speech and conduct, in love, in faith, in purity" (1 Tim. 4:12, RSV); (c) the former pastor must put all his energies to work on recovery and healing.55
52 Philip Hiroshima, “Sexual Involvement with Parishoners,” Ministry 72, no. 11 (November 1999): 26.
53 SDA Minister’s Manual (2010), 33.
54 Ibid., 56.
55 Miroslav Kis, “Dealing with a Fallen Pastor?” Ministry 77, no. 1 (Janurary 2005): 13.
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These references point to the importance of marriage for the SDA Church and its strong desire for all pastors to be faithful in their commitment to their spouses. Their ruling that a pastor can no longer be employed in any pastoral role after sexual unfaithfulness places the pastoral marriage under intense focus. It certainly encourages pastors to sustain a life-long faithfulness to their partners.
The SDA Church’s high regard for marriage, its call for pastoral integrity and marital faithfulness, and the potential devastating effects of a sexual indiscretion on the clergy couple, other parties involved, and the church membership, highlights the very real need for the church to invest in clergy couple relationships. To teach and hold as biblical truth that marriage and sexual intimacy is a gift of God as well as his ideal for couples, but then fail to support and nurture pastors in this expression of the love of God leaves the church open to the criticism that it is hypocritical at best and negligent at worst. The church cannot uphold the teaching of marriage without upholding those it assigns to preach and model marriage. Providing opportunities for clergy couples to build and sustain intimacy, in all its breadth of meaning – physical and sexual, spiritual, social, and especially emotional – is an imperative the church cannot side-step or avoid.
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PART THREE
PRACTISE
CHAPTER 4
GOALS AND PLANS
This chapter considers the implications of strong pastoral marriages for church administrators, pastors and their spouses, and the church members. It presents guidelines for introducing a three-part approach to strengthening pastoral marriages and how the plan can be incorporated into the regular life of SDA Churches in Australia. The chapter includes a description of the strategies for establishing the ministry event and methods for making appropriate evaluations.
Theological Implications for Enriching Pastoral Marriages
A theology of marriage draws a number of key aspects of the divine-human union into focus. As noted in Chapter 3, the authors of Scripture did not choose to reflect on marriage in any organised fashion. Their references were often expressed in poetry, as analogy, or in reply to a specific query by an individual or group. What is clear is that the
God-designed marriage is best described in the creation account in Genesis 2. It is here that Scripture reveals God’s creative act of forming man and women and uniting them “as
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one.” Additional insights into marriage are found in Proverbs, the Song of Songs, the
Prophets, and in the narratives about Abraham, David, Hosea and others.
The Gospels report the words of Jesus who, when asked about divorce, took his listeners back to the creation account to locate God’s ideals for marriage. The readers of
Paul’s and Peter’s letters found advice about marriage that provided them a clearer picture of what a Christian marriage should look like. They described how couples who were committed to the Christian Church could more accurately reflect the love of God.
For many Christians, the description of the consummate marriage is that marriage to occur in the future when God returns to seek his Bride, the Church, and invites all to attend the wedding feast (Rev 21:9-27; 22:17).
A number of conclusions about a Christian marriage can be drawn from these biblical references to marriage. Firstly, Gods plan for marriage is founded in the original creation story as reported in Genesis 1 and 2. It was in Eden that God provided the breath of life to man and then created a woman as his companion. Secondly, the need for companionship emerges out of God’s revelation that “it is not good” for a man to be alone. Loneliness was incompatible with a relational God. While all God’s people are made in his image and are recipients of his love regardless of their marital status, the marriage relationship provides unique opportunities for emotional and sexual intimacy.
The third conclusion is that the woman was made “from the side of man,” taken to mean that she was to be his equal. She was not a servant or slave to be dominated or taken for granted, but was, like Adam, made in the image of God and fully whole in her independence from man. Fourthly, the relationship between Adam and Eve portrays in part the inter-relatedness between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The unity of the 119
Trinity is found in the unity of a man and woman in marriage. The fifth conclusion is that
Adam and Eve’s failure to sustain their relationship with God as it was originally established led to a new kind of relationship marred by distance, alienation, blame, and vulnerability.
Sixthly, the broken relationship was never fully repaired, and will not be repaired until the return of Christ. However, the healing ministry of Jesus is available to all who ask for his assistance. Under his blessing, broken and hurting marriages can be healed and the couple can find new ways of relating that will more accurately reflect the nature of God. The seventh conclusion is that the marriage relationship within the Christian
Church is to be considered an image for the relationship between Christ and his Church.
In particular, the love the husband has for his wife is a statement to the Church of how much God loves his “Bride.” The way in which the wife submits to the husband provides a picture of the way in which the Church submits to the leadership of Jesus, and the way in which Jesus submits to the Father.
A further point is that the “one flesh” union, created when a man and woman leave their parents and join in marriage, brings into existence a totally new relationship.
The couple build a mutual dependence on each other while still maintaining independence. This new relationship becomes an “us,” a “we,” as opposed to being a
“me,” and an “I.” The relationship will be marked by love, patience, honour, respect, and forgiveness. It will also be marked by honesty and an openness to each other. There will be a shared commitment to invest in each other’s lives, including the commitment to sharing in sexual intimacy. This sexual intimacy will be regarded as a symbol and an expression of their deep and life-long commitment to each other’s love. 120
The ninth conclusion is that not all marriages survive. Married couples therefore need to commit to the task of ministering to each other in love, being quick to forgive and slow to become angry. They will recognise that marriage is primarily about serving one another as Jesus came to serve his Church. They will avoid all pretence or practise of abusive, demanding, or dominating headship. Further, married couples will only find the degree of intimacy that describes a healthy marriage when they take the time to invest in marital growth and renewal. Jesus’ call for time apart provides a model for clergy couples who spend much time in people-ministry. They can so easily become buried and lost in the endless round of church life.
Finally, clergy couples who attempt to minister alone place themselves at risk for burnout, social isolation and loneliness. Jesus’ instructions to his disciples to minister in twos needs to be practised in the SDA Church whenever possible. This practise may assist pastors to find mutual support and be mentors for each other’s ministry and marriage.
Biblical Reflections on Growing in Relational Connectivity
Christian believers are encouraged to “grow in the grace and knowledge of our
Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 3:18). Paul’s message to the believers in Philippi also included the imperative to grow: “So this is my prayer, that your love will flourish and that you will not only love much but well. Learn to love appropriately” (Phil 1:9, The
Message). Love shared in a marriage is never static – it needs to grow.
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Expressions of love are capable of development. Marital partners who are committed to becoming more like Jesus Christ will recognise that their love for each other will require development and growth. As Gottman notes, “If partners can continue to turn towards one another in mutually satisfying ways, their bond will grow stronger.”1
While early marriages are marked by excitement and passion, long term marriages require long term love that at times may not be too exciting or too passionate, but will possess the strength and resilience to sustain the relationship throughout all of life. This permanent kind of love is the love that grows. As Craig notes, “Marriage is a process of becoming – a relationship that grows, deepens and strengthens over time.”2
SDA Ecclesiological Considerations: A Community of Concern
In the New Testament community, marked by pride and prejudice (Matt 5:19-20;
16:6-12; 23:2; Luke 11:43), dishonesty and deceit ( Matt 23:23-25; Acts 5:1-10) and hatred and discrimination (Matt 12:13-15; 22:15; Mark 3:6), Jesus called for disciples who would be characterised by love (John 13:34-35) and who would respond to his invitation to teach all that he had commanded, including the command to love (Matt
28:18-20). The Church of Jesus’ disciples will be known by its love for one another (Rom
13:8; 1 Thess 4:9), expressed through its care of those in need (Mark 10:21; Luke 7:22;
Acts 10:4, 31). While not all of Jesus’ followers will readily respond to his love (Matt
1 John M. Gottman, and Joan DeClair. The Relationship Cure (New York, NY: Three Rivers Press, 2001), 21-22.
2 Craig, Searching for Intimacy in Marriage, 28.
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19:16-24), nor love each other well (Mark 6:11), they will still do all they can to be at peace with each other (Rom 12:18) and act towards each other in ways that bring glory to
God (Phil 1:10, 11).
When the Church is invited to show the love of Jesus it will generally be quick to search for those who are in great need of love – the homeless, the alcoholics, the street- people, the wayward. Jesus ministry to Nicodemus, a leader of the Sanhedrin, provides a gentle but decisive reminder that the leaders of his churches might especially need more focused expressions of love. Pastors are easily overlooked as potential recipients of love and care because they are the ones considered by the members to be ‘leading the charge’ to model love and care to others, and be the initiators of acts of kindness to those inside and outside the church.
Pastors and their spouses are easily left off the list of those who need support and nurture, but they need to be placed back on the list, and administrators and church members can play a key role in initiating specific ministry events designed to strengthen clergy couple relationships. Simply being a pastor or a partner of a pastor provides no guarantee of a long-term marriage nor a marriage with a high degree of marital satisfaction and intimacy. It is the pastoral couple who may have to work the hardest of all those inside the church walls to create emotional and psychological intimacy.
The Preferable Future: Enriched and Strengthened Pastoral Marriages
The SDA Church in Australia will be a stronger, healthier church as it provides support and nurture to its primary caretakers, the clergy couples who minister to the
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church. The fact that a Christian marriage is to be a statement of the love of God for his church, and that clergy couple’s marriages are so publicly observed, means the pastor’s marriage can ideally be a mirror of the love, patience, grace and kindness of God. The growth and enrichment of the pastor’s marriage therefore needs to be a priority for the church.
Strategic Goals for Enriching Pastoral Marriages
A number of specific goals to enrich clergy couple’s marriages can be stated and described. The first of these is that church administrators gain a better understanding of the importance of strengthening clergy couple’s marriage for the health of the church and its mission to the community. The second is that clergy couples recognise more clearly their need to take the initiative and enrich and strengthen their own marriages, and the third is that church members accept their potential role in strengthening their pastor’s marriage.
Awareness: A Growth in Administrative Awareness of Pastoral Marriages.
Administrative support for pastoral couples is one area of ministry that is lacking in the SDA Church in Australia. Administration may periodically arrange one day in a calendar-year for joint pastoral social fellowship, but the emphasis will generally be on social interaction as a family rather than as couples. Administrators may also arrange for a presentation on marriage for pastors at a conference-wide or regional pastor’s get-
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together, but such presentations are not common and the partners of the pastors are not usually present.
As noted in Chapter 1, the SDA Church’s firm belief that it exists to prepare the world for the imminent return of Christ means the mission of the Church becomes paramount. This focus can be seen in allocations of funding, in the pattern of scheduled conference-wide programs, and the agenda content at scheduled pastor’s meetings organised by the conference. Administrative reports to the church regularly describe the number of baptisms and public evangelism events held within a given time period. The reports will also include important estate purchases or sales, but reports on initiatives to build pastoral marriages are extremely rare. The church’s emphasis on mission is honourable but its failure to care adequately for pastoral marriages is deplorable. This is a focal point for church administrators waiting for action.
Experience: Opportunities for Discovery and Renewal in Couple Intimacy
Pastoral couples who wish to grow in love and marital satisfaction will need to take personal responsibility for enacting specific strategies to build and keep marital intimacy. This is a process of growth that cannot be obtained by proxy. Couples may receive appropriate support and nurture from sources external to their marital union but real growth will only be achieved to its fullest when the couple themselves take the initiative to strengthen their marriage and invest in their marital future.
This process requires a shift in thinking from a remedial approach to a preventative approach: couples need to see value in preventing marital deterioration
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rather than waiting to attempt a rescue it when it is failing. Couples may be resistant to this endeavour based on false assumptions that include the belief that their current relationship will stay the same for the long term; or that success in marriage requires no particular insight or skills; that only people who are ‘sick’ need professional help; that seeking assistance is an admission of inadequacy or incompetency; or that people might become aware of their attendance at a marriage enrichment event and conclude that their marriage is failing. Church administration and church members can play a role here in providing, or arranging for the provision of, marriage enrichment events that are positive and memorable (for all the right reasons), and that allow the couple/s to experience a renewal event that assists them in building greater intimacy.
Transformation: Couple and Faith-community Change
Transforming moments in life are those “aha” moments when an individual or couple make a discovery that they perceive to be potentially life-changing, or at least significantly important enough to lead to new opportunities or outcomes. The church needs to provide transforming moments for clergy-couples that will head them towards a stronger and more rewarding marriage. Such moments will be of immeasurable benefit to the clergy couple and to the congregation, as both act in a reciprocal fashion to grow together. The pastoral couple find renewal and a revitalisation of their marriage, and they in turn are better able to minister to the needs of their membership, setting up a pattern of mutual care and encouragement. This mutuality in ministry is described by Garland and
Garland:
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The marital relationship for Christians involves two dynamics, neither of which can be ignored. The vertical dynamic is the relationship of each partner individually with God and their calling to ministry as partners. The horizontal dynamic is the relationship of partners with each other. It is their need to care and be cared for, to share joys and sorrows, to be intimate with one another, and to accept and feel acceptance. This dynamic enhances their ability to go out from a home base of acceptance and love into the service and sacrifice for which they were called.3
Such mutual support can only assist the church to reach its goals and objectives, and at the same time provide the clergy couple with an impetus to sustain a vibrant marriage.
This mutual sharing and support can be a ‘two-by-two’ ministry that Jesus modelled in his assignments for his disciples. Ministry to each other can become an act of grace that fulfils the command of Jesus to love one another.
Innovation: New Perspectives on Building Pastoral-couple Intimacy
A church administrative team and a local church committed to enriching pastor’s marriages will endeavour to get creative in their ministry to pastoral couples. Its focus on finding more effective ways of reaching the unchurched and ministering to its young people, for an example, can become a model for a similar approach to pastoral support.
The church sets aside finances, establishes working committees, assigns specific tasks to individuals and groups, and sets dates for accomplishing goals. The same approach can be pursued in an endeavour to minister to clergy couples.
While the church must remain faithful to its mission to the community, it must also become faithful in its ministry to strengthening pastor’s marriages. Sadly, the church
3 Garland and Garland, Beyond Companionship - Christians in Marriage, 17.
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can be slow to take up new challenges. Members feel uneasy about something new and prefer well-established paths and methods, but supporting the pastoral couple is an aspect of church life that calls for attention and action.
The Content of the Strategy
One of the first tasks for implementing a clergy-couple’s marriage enrichment emphasis is to provide a greater awareness of the urgent need for this ministry in the minds of church administrators. Marriage support for pastors rarely makes it on the administrative agenda. To be fair, administration’s failure to provide support for pastoral marriages is not due to malice, but mindlessness.
Deeper Insights for Church Administrators into Pastoral Couple Needs
Pastoral marriages usually become an issue for administrators only when one of their pastor’s marriages fails or they hear that it is failing, or a pastor becomes involved in an affair or other inappropriate relationship. Administrators are also rarely trained in pastoral counselling or therapy and will be reticent to take up the role of counsellor to a marriage in trouble. This reluctance to get involved may also reflect a belief that if something appears to be working there is no need to interfere with it.
Administrators will need to be informed of the research regarding the state of pastoral marriages as outlined in part in Chapter 1. They need to be made aware of the magnitude of the problem facing pastoral couples in achieving marital intimacy when pastors are so deeply immersed in the needs of the local church. They need to recognise
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the impact on the pastoral couple’s marriages in light of the demands on the pastor’s time and their emotional and physical resources; the inappropriate interference of the members’ requests for attention, often at difficult hours; and the expectations that the pastor attends all the church events. Administrators may acknowledge these difficult aspects of church life but often fail to think about the potential impact on a pastor’s relationship with his partner (and family). Insensitive leadership will recommend more prayer, better time management, or maybe a few days off, but only the astute will recognise the need for more specific attention to the pastoral marriage.
The intent of the project is that the administrators will not only recognise the risks and hazards of ministry for clergy marriages but will initiate strategies that make a statement to their pastors that they care about their pastor’s relationships. It is both the intent and practise that is important to the success of this ministry. When administrators get invested in improving pastor’s marriages, the pastors will be encouraged to take more personal interest in their own primary relationship. Any attempts to enrich pastoral marriages, in whatever shape and format that proves to be helpful and positive, regular and ongoing, needs to be applauded.
Greater Personal Investment from Pastors in Building Couple Intimacy
This project proposes that a marriage enrichment event be made available to pastors and their partners as one significant step towards strengthening clergy couple’s marriages. But clergy couples need to personally invest in the process towards marital
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renewal. They need to see the importance of taking charge of their own relationship and building spiritual, emotional and physical intimacy.
Clergy can become immune to the effects of late nights, high-conflict events, and emotionally demanding programs such as church ‘high-days,’ weddings and funerals, and only feel the need to do something about their marriage when it is in crisis. Pastors may also be unaware of their attitudes and beliefs about marriage and may never have considered making changes to their schedule or to seek help when their marriage is under stress because they believe those steps are unnecessary. Their view of ministry may be so narrow that anything other than soul-winning or evangelism would be considered a waste of time – theirs and God’s, or they may have a negative view of emotions and believe the emotional arena is only for those who do not take life seriously enough. A move to enrich pastor’s marriages will need to include strategies for encouraging even the most reluctant pastor to be involved.
Pastors and their wives will find greater impetus to invest in their marriages if they can accept that a marriage can improve and grow. It will take effort, but it can grow.
Gottman states, “Connecting is not magic. Like any other skill, it can be learned, practised, and mastered. . . . It doesn’t happen automatically. Even when people are highly motivated, it takes a certain amount of conscious effort and diligence.”4
4 Gottman and DeClair, The Marriage Cure, 25.
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Growth in Awareness and Commitment in Congregational Care for Pastoral Couples
Church members can be totally unaware of the level of demand they make on the lives of the pastoral couple. Members might believe that the pastor works one day a week and then only in the morning at the time of the main service. While they accept that she also does some pastoral visitation, this may be regarded as ‘soft’ work involving a chat, a coffee, and a prayer. Other members may not discern the levels of emotional stress pastors deal with when caring for the grieving, those who are terminally ill, those dealing with personal loss such as a separation, divorce, or loss of a parent, partner, or child.
Therefore when members make requests to the pastor to be involved in their project or ministry, they may do so thinking she has little else to do.
Members need to be better informed of the pressures of pastoral ministry that can confront the pastoral couple. They can then begin a process of establishing a supportive ministry, coordinating various people or people-groups to use their Spirit-given gifts to strengthen the pastoral leader’s marriages. Simply being aware of the impact of their expectations on their pastor and how their demands or requests for his time or attention impact on the pastoral couple may bring significant and positive changes.
Target Population and Leadership
This project proposes that this three-part supportive ministry for pastoral couples is a valid goal for all the SDA Churches in Australia. However, a trial of the project will be carried out to assess its effectiveness and assess any need for changes in the project before its broader introduction to all the churches. The target population for the trial will
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therefore be the administrators, pastors, and a selected church in the Greater Sydney
Conference (GSC), one of the larger conferences within the Australian Union
Conference. The conference is administered by a team of 3 key administrators – president, secretary and treasurer, who inform and, in turn are guided by, the Greater
Sydney Conference Executive Committee. As previously noted the GSC also appoints a
Ministerial Secretary who oversees pastoral care. The Conference has within its borders
63 churches cared for by 60 Pastors. While this conference is regarded as a city conference, integrating the pastoral care initiative into more rural areas would follow the same process.
Administration Selection Criteria
The President, Secretary, Treasurer, and Ministerial Secretary are the four key leaders who oversee all aspects of pastoral employment in the Conference. They are the ones responsible for allocating the pastors to the churches, who oversee their performance as pastoral leaders, who take responsibility for providing encouragement and inspiration as well as providing any particular preaching or evangelistic themes or programs they deem appropriate. These, then, are the key administrators to whom this project it to be presented. Their approval for the project will depend on their perceptions of the need for this ministry to pastoral couples, and whether they are prepared to allocate the time and sufficient financial resources to make it a successful endeavour. The
Ministerial Secretary will especially need to be convinced of the value of the project in
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light of the fact that the personal needs and interests of the pastoral team are under his specific care.
Pastoral Couple Selection Criteria
The Project leaders will invite 15 married couples from the total number of married pastors in the GSC as a first-base trial. Marriage Enrichment events that involve more than 15 couples face the risk of ‘losing’ couples to the large group ‘noise’ that is an inevitable part of group work. Couple-time together that occurs in a smaller-sized group allows for fewer intrusions and better opportunities to work on individual issues without interruptions. The smaller size also allows for a greater amount of input to be provided to each couple by the group leaders.
Faith-communities Selection Criteria
The church selected for the trial period would need to be as representative as possible of the various churches in the conference, and in turn the churches in Australia.
The membership would need to include representatives of the diverse cultures that make up so many of the GSC churches, as well as different age-groups, professions and trades.
The Kellyville church will therefore be selected as the trial church in that it best fulfils the selected criteria. Its membership is diverse in culture and is led by a European-born pastor. There is a broad spread of age-groups and a mix of both professional and blue collar workers. It has also demonstrated in the past its willingness to take on new projects and endeavours.
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Leadership Selection Criteria
The leadership of this project will rest most effectively with individuals or couples who possess the necessary skills and abilities to lead a small group retreat. They will need have an awareness of the magnitude of the issues facing pastors in the local church. Unless there is such an awareness, it may be difficult to relate effectively with the pastoral couples who choose to attend an enrichment event. They will also have an appropriate degree of acceptance and respect for the leadership of the church, the pastors and the members. A lack of respect for leadership would jeopardise the degree of involvement by all those selected for the project. There also needs to be a reciprocal expression of respect for the leaders of the project.
Leaders will also need to have a high degree of interest in, and passion for, the success of the project. Enthusiasm and energy is an imperative for the success of this ministry. There are many competing interests for people’s time and resources in the churches and in the conference, and a lack of passion for the project will only assist in limiting its acceptance into the conference and church calendars. Further, leaders need to be adequately trained in the social sciences, with a special interest in the area of marriage and relational wholeness, building emotional intimacy, and journeying with couples towards a greater degree of couple-connectedness. This includes an awareness of the factors that help to ensure the success of marriage enrichment events, and preferably with previous experience in providing such events that were deemed helpful and positive by those involved.
Small group ministry also requires a willingness by leaders to invest the time and energy necessary to care for a marriage enrichment event and in the preparation of the 134
necessary resources and operational details. A retreat of this nature requires a considerable amount of physical and emotional input to be successful. It also requires an ability to be discerning and an openness to change. Leaders will need to be able to adapt the program to the needs of the participants.
Resource Development
The project requires the development of a number of resources. Practical issues including the venues for meetings with the administrators of the GSC and the pastoral team of the Kellyville church, and the marriage enrichment event, are to be cared for by their respective representatives. The core resources will be those specifically prepared for the GSC Administrative leaders, the local church membership, and the pastoral couples.
Due to the fact that the retreat weekends will be led by a number of different leaders, the resources made available to the pastoral couples may differ in some form, dependent on the skills and personal interests of the retreat leaders. The following chapter outlines in more detail the form and content of the proposed resources and the steps in establishing the project in the GSC.
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CHAPTER 5
IMPLEMENTATION PROCESS AND EVALUATION
This chapter provides a summary of this project to strengthen clergy couple’s marriages. It provides details of how the project is designed and the various resources prepared for its success. It also provides reflections on the value of the project and its potential to enrich pastoral couple’s marriages. The procedures, the resources, and the possible outcomes of the proposed meetings and events are outlined. Reflection is also given to issues that might arise from the project that have the potential to shape and inform future projects designed to enrich pastoral couples’ marriages.
Three-part Project Summary: Administration, Pastoral Couples, Faith Communities
This project proposes that in light of the high demands on the lives of pastors who minister in SDA Churches in Australia and the subsequent risks this ministry places on their marriages, there is a real need to initiate a ministry that might assist in enriching and enhancing pastor’s marital unions. Pastors in local churches can become so immersed in the needs of their members that they fail to observe the signs that their own marriage is in trouble. They may believe that God will care for their relationship if they just care for 136
God’s church; they may be ignorant or unaware of the ways in which relationships thrive or dive; they may feel uneasy in those aspects of the relationship that demand emotional closeness; or they may be unaware of the ways in which they are failing to build and sustain their marriage.
Whether they are aware of it or not, pastor’s marriages are often the most visible in the church setting. There are high expectations among members that the pastoral couple will be the epitome of love and grace. This places a great responsibility on all
SDA clergy to do everything they can to model this love of God through their marriage, a love especially expressed in the gift of Jesus Christ who gave his life for the church.
When a pastor’s marriage ends, either through marital breakdown or because of a pastor’s involvement in a forbidden sexual encounter, the fall-out can be considerable. Not only will there be high levels of pain and loss felt by the couple, but the members will also feel deeply hurt or angry over the event, and those who have been baptised or married by the pastor may especially feel confused.
It is for these reasons that there is an urgent need within the SDA Church in
Australia to give specific focus to a strategy that might intentionally strengthen clergy couple’s marriages. This cannot be achieved with any degree of success without the involvement of the couple themselves, the church administration, and the church members. A couple may set out to enrich their marriage and do it well, but if the church administrators continue to demand high levels of achievement from the pastor at the risk of the marriage, their efforts will be less than best.
Their efforts will also be potentially limited by insensitive church members who fail to realise their impact on a pastor’s marriage. Members who insist on a pastor’s 137
ceaseless involvement in every aspect of church life place her at risk for burnout and marital strain. Growth in pastoral marriages therefore requires a ‘three-way’ focus and investment: the pastoral couple, the administrators, and the church members.
Project Time-line
A number of factors will shape the timing of the introduction of the trial project to the GSC, Kellyville church, and the pastoral couples, and in turn to all the conferences and churches in Australia. Conferences usually establish programs within their territories from 12 to 18 months in advance. Local churches also make plans during the latter half of a calendar year for the next 12 month period. Pastoral couples who choose to be involved in the enrichment weekend will also need sufficient time to prepare for the event, especially for those pastoral spouses who regularly work over weekends.
Guidelines Developed and Resources Identified
For this project to become established as a regular and ongoing ministry in the
GSC, trained and qualified leaders for the retreat weekends will need to be appointed, sufficient funding will need to be allocated, resources will need to be designed and produced, and measures developed to assess the levels of acceptance and integration of the project. Scheduled retreat weekends for the pastoral couples will also need to be included on the conference calendar. Administrators will also need to keep records of pastoral involvement in the retreats to ensure all pastors are potentially involved.
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Leadership Selection
The leaders of the marriage enrichment retreats will need to be selected well in advance. While some conferences have SDA pastors or ministry leaders on their staff who have some training in small group leadership as well as marriage education, counselling and/or therapy, others do not. For the success of this project throughout the
Australian SDA Churches, thought will need to be given as to who meets the criteria for leading the retreats, as noted in Chapter 4. The trial retreat weekend in the GSC will be led by a pastoral couple who have already completed 6 marriage enrichment weekends and have demonstrated their ability to successfully lead participants in an intensive small group towards growth and renewal.
Administration Group Selected
Discussions with the GSC conference administrators will need to take place preferably twelve months prior to the scheduled weekend of the pastor’s enrichment retreat. Project leaders will need to present an outline of the project, demonstrating the need for the project, its benefits to the conference, church, and the pastoral couples, as well as the financial implications. On the understanding that the project is timely and achievable, there would be value in having the decision recorded in the format usually used by the conference, such as committee minutes.
Faith Communities Selected
When the GSC administrators have approved the project, they will need to meet with the Kellyville church board. At this meeting plans will need to be made for the
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introduction of the project dependent on their current calendar schedules and their plans for the following 6-12 months. Discussion needs to be given as to how the church will introduce the ministry event into the regular life of the church.
Meetings with Administration
Retreat leaders will need to meet with the GSC administrators to process a strategy that ensures each pastoral couple has an opportunity to attend an enrichment retreat, and to prepare invitations to these pastors and their spouses. Attendance at the marriage enrichment event is to be by choice. Any coercion to attend has the potential to ensure the event is less than effective. Participants may be angry about being required to attend, or may have no interest in such an event and be a negative influence on the group.
Enrichment Event with Pastoral Couples
Once the date of the marriage weekend has been chosen the invitations can be sent to the pastors. The project leaders will have chosen and booked an appropriate venue for the retreat. On the assumption that the retreat will cater for 15 couples, the leaders will then commence making the necessary plans for accommodation, meals, any technical requirements, and written resources.
Awareness Event with Faith-communities
In light of the fact that the Kellyville church members are being invited to invest in the nurture and support of the pastoral couple and their marital relationship, there may
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well be an understandable reluctance on the part of the pastor to present this component of the project to their church board. The project leaders might therefore recommend, and request, that they personally present the aims of the project to the representative members on the Board and through them request the involvement of the whole church membership.
The leaders will then be able to obtain an indication of the degree of support for the project and if necessary, arrange for further follow-up meetings.
Resources
Each conference administrative team, the retreat leaders, pastoral couples and local churches will need to be appropriately resourced to ensure the success of the project. The resources produced for the retreat leaders will include the resources to be made available to the participants who attend the weekend retreat. The project leaders will need to regularly assess the degree of involvement in the project and interest levels, and update the resources as required.
Resource Materials for Administrative Leaders
The administrative leaders will no doubt acknowledge the need for strong pastoral marriages but they may not be aware of the personal struggles many pastors face in attempting to sustain an intimate marriage. Further, they may recognise the demands on the pastor in the local church but they may not so easily recognise the implications these demands have for a married pastoral couple. The intent of the resource material for the
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administration is to encourage them to give more consideration to the marital health of their pastors and to be pro-active in supporting and nurturing their primary relationships.
The resource material provided to the administrators will include a short summary of theological aspects of marriage as provided in Chapter 3. This will immerse the project in the scriptural grounding it deserves and will provide the administrators greater confidence in knowing that the project will fit within its broader operational mandate of service to the church and its mission. The material will also include a summary of the key issues faced by clergy couples that emerged from the research in the social sciences as outlined in Chapters 1 and 2.
The resource material will outline the key issues facing pastoral couples that is consistently revealed in the research. It will include references to the fact that women are now more represented in the work-force than in the past; that they are honoured for seeking professional expertise, and that spouses are not considered unworthy of being a pastor’s partner if they pursue their own careers. It will also include the fact that men have a high need to be considered successful, and for many men, this will be found in their mode of work; that a pastor will have a strong sense of calling from God and may focus on his role and mission as pastor to the detriment of his marriage; that pastors will vary rarely be provided a job-description; that they lack training in couple relationships; and that the pastor’s spouse may feel a strong sense of expectation from both administrators and members of the church to fulfil a perceived role as partner to the pastor.
Not all pastors will face all of these issues to the same degree, nor will pastoral couples have the same personalities or skills to deal with stress, changes in life and work- 142
situations, or crises. However, these issues consistently appear in surveys of pastoral couples, and administrators will therefore be encouraged to recognise their significance in the lives of their pastors and join with the project leaders in making a commitment for change.
Resource Materials for Pastoral Couples
The material shared with the GSC administrators will also be appropriate resource material for the pastoral couples. While many of the pastors might declare they find nothing new in the theological material, they will hopefully be challenged by the research relating to their ministry in the local church. The pastoral couples will also receive a number of resources at the Marriage Enrichment weekend. Any particular resources provided for building rapport, group cohesion and trust within the group will be dependent on the skills and abilities of the leaders. The actual weekend time-table may also be influenced and guided by the management of the particular retreat-venue.
While the overall format of the weekend retreats might differ depending on the skills and resources available to the leaders and the participants, the ministry event will be more effective if the couples are made aware of and choose to accept a number of important guidelines. These include a commitment to assist in building an atmosphere of understanding and acceptance; to keep confidentialities, to respect all other participants, and to take responsibility for personal growth.5
5 For a more complete listing of the Guidelines for Participants, see Appendix C 143
The sessions that make up the retreat program and shape the resources made available to the pastoral couples will be dependent on the choices made by the leaders, but the research by Gottman outlined in this paper will inform the primary content of the sessions. Leaders will need to recognise that at the commencement of the retreat on
Friday evening, couples may be feeling apprehensive about being involved. The greater number of pastors will be familiar to each other in that they have met at scheduled pastoral meetings at a conference level on previous occasions, but their spouses may not be so well known to each other and be especially tentative. Attention needs to be given to this issue by the leaders, ensuring the participants are provided a welcome and introduction to the venue and their fellow participants.
Session 1 will include activities that provide participants the opportunity to commence sharing positive aspects of their relationship. The retreat leaders will need to introduce each event in a warm and reassuring style that invites participation and conveys trust and support. The content of Session 1 will include a welcome and introductions, details about the venue and its facilities and any general house-keeping issues. This will be followed by either ‘Memories,’ an activity where participants are invited to share some positive memories of their relationship with another couple; or “Draw your
Marriage,”’ which provides the couples an opportunity to enter into the evening in a fun, relaxed style by drawing a picture that conveys their aims and hopes for their marriage.
This will be followed by an activity that focuses on the core issues that challenge a pastoral marriage. As couples commence raising these issues, the retreat leaders will be able to get a sense of the concerns and needs of the participants and be alerted to any primary issues that might impact on the tone of the retreat. Comments by participants 144
may alert the leaders to a possible need for more professional intervention in a particular couple-relationship. Leaders will then share how the retreat program will set out to address these primary concerns for pastoral marriages and offer effective strategies for couples to build and sustain their marital intimacy.
Session 2 on Saturday morning will be a presentation by the leaders on the six signs of a marriage in trouble as found in Gottman’s research, outlined in Chapter 2 of this project. The following sessions until the lunch break will focus on Gottman’s first two principles for a successful marriage: “Enhance your Love Maps” and “Nurture your
Fondness and Admiration.” The afternoon schedule will include Gottman’s third principle, “Turn towards Each Other,” and a session on effective ways to deal with marital conflict, again based on Gottman’s research. The sessions after the dinner-break will focus on building emotional and sexual intimacy in marriage and creating shared meaning.
The final sessions on Sunday morning will include material and discussion on ways to keep love alive, and a commitment ceremony that provides the participants an opportunity to make a renewed commitment to sustain and build their intimacy and love for each other. This will be followed by an assessment and evaluation of the weekend, allowing each participant to provide an indication as to what each session meant to them personally and how they feel about the value of the material. They will be given an opportunity to provide feedback as to how the retreat might be improved and strengthened. As the couples leave they will receive a small gift as a token of their
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participation in the retreat including a copy of Gottman’s book and other printed material that speaks to enriching a marriage as selected by the retreat leaders.6
Resource Materials for Faith-communities
The intent of the project for the local church is that members will become more aware of the struggles and difficulties pastoral couples face in building and sustaining marital intimacy in the local church setting. The second aim is to have the church members design strategies for playing a positive role in nurturing and supporting their pastor’s commitment to their marriage. A simple awareness of an issue will not necessarily lead to an active response but it may well be a catalyst for change.
Church members may be ignorant of the stressful nature of people-ministry. The ongoing emotional demands of working with diverse personality types, various crises, and intense, emotionally laden events such as funerals, are not readily considered or acknowledged. Church members can easily regard these events as simply the pastor’s job
– that’s what she is paid to do.
Church members may be unaware of the impact of these stressors on their pastor’s marriage. The effects of stress are often unrecognised and misdiagnosed. Pastors will also be understandably hesitant to reveal their perceived inadequacies, and the stress and resultant impact on their primary relationships will be hidden from public scrutiny.
This can mean pastors will minister year after year, appearing to be doing well and in control when in fact he may be in physical, emotional and/or relational stress.
6 For a more detailed outline of the Marriage Enrichment Program, see Appendix D
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Resource materials for the Kellyville church will include similar content provided to the administrators and pastors that describe the issues regularly facing pastoral couples in their daily ministry. This material will be provided to the congregation at a regular
Saturday morning service. The presentation will be given by the project leaders. A printed hand-out of the issues previously mentioned will be provided as a summary for the members at the end of the program.
Church members will then be invited to respond in practical ways that might include expressing appreciation for their pastor’s ministry and affirming their skills and abilities, and encouraging the church board to ensure that, in all its plans for church functions, evangelistic programs and special events, there is a consistent sensitivity to how these functions might impact on the expectations it has for the pastor. The members may also encourage the pastoral couple to ensure they are taking sufficient times to be apart and nurturing and strengthening their marriage; and being sensitive to the time of day they contact the pastor, remembering that he needs time for refreshment with God and his spouse.
The Church will be encouraged to follow-up on this event, selecting a small working group to develop a more detailed pastoral-couple care program. This will be shaped by on the skills of the selected group and their sense of what’s best for the pastoral couple currently ministering to the church. Each pastoral couple’s needs will be different and the small group will need to be discerning and sensitive in its applications of care.
Assessment Plan
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To be considered effective the project will need to be assessed in a number of ways and on various levels. These assessments will inevitably, by their nature, be somewhat subjective, and some responses may be unable to be adequately measured.
Perceptions of success of any particular people-ministry will vary considerably due to differences in personality, personal beliefs and expectations.
Evaluate Reflections and Input from Administrative Leaders
The GSC administrators will meet with the project leaders after the pastoral couple’s retreat and the time spent with the Kellyville church to assess the project’s standing and possible introduction to other churches. The administrators will then need to consider providing further opportunities for enrichment programs for more pastors. The overall intent of the project is to see its introduction into all SDA Churches in Australia, so any feedback from the GSC will be invaluable for future programs.
The difficulty will be in measuring both the short-term and long-term results of each facet of the project. The introduction of the project into the GSC calendar, the time spent with the Kellyville church, the assistance provided in the selection of the pastors to attend the enrichment event, and financial support for the project, may be appropriate measure of the success of the project from the administrator’s perspective. Their perceptions of the project’s success will be enhanced if they receive very positive comments from the Kellyville church members and the same degree of positivity from the pastors who attend the weekend retreat. They may especially feel the project is successful if there is a measurable decline in the number of clergy marriages in trouble at
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the end of a given time-period, but such a result may be influenced by other known or unknown factors and be totally unrelated to the retreat event.
Assess Reports from Pastoral Couples
The pastoral couples will have an opportunity to make an assessment of the impact of the weekend retreat on their marriages through the use of a feedback form provided to them to fill out at the end of the weekend program.7 This form will invite their responses to each segment as well as the quality of the venue, meals, and overall planning. What the feedback sheet results cannot provide is an accurate indicator of the success or satisfaction levels of the pastoral couple’s marriage in the future.
While pastoral couples may feel more positive about their marriage at the end of the retreat, there are no assurances or guarantees that this level of satisfaction or happiness will describe their marriage in the years ahead. They will have received information about important marriage issues, had opportunities to practise intimacy building strategies and been given time to invest in open and honest discussion, but their ability to take these same discoveries and any commitments they may have made together into their future is unknown. However, if their subjective self-measure of the success of the weekend is positive and they feel encouraged, excited, and more committed to not only sustain their marriage but do all they can to ensure it more accurately reflects the love of God, the weekend for them will have been a success. This positive sense of success may empower the couples to sustain the insights they have gained during the
7 For a copy of the Assessment Survey see Appendix E
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retreat weekend, as well as provide an indicator to the GSC administrators that their investment in this ministry is a valuable one and needs to be sustained.
Evaluate Responses from Faith-Communities
The evaluation of the project from the perspective of the local church is an important one, but again, it may be difficult to obtain an objective measure. The levels of enthusiasm for the pastoral-couple care program, the levels of involvement and participation of the membership in designing strategies for supporting the pastoral couple on an ongoing basis, and the pastoral couple’s reports of greater levels of local-church support will all contribute to the sense of how effective the program was at Kellyville.
Any decisions of the church to be involved in the project that are not carried through into the future months and years may not necessarily indicate a failure of the project. It may be that the ideas were unworkable, but as the ministry continues it may be considered a helpful and fair indicator of its success. If it can be demonstrated that it is only being continued for personal gain by the key carers or it has become a ‘required’ part of the church program and something that someone ‘has to do,’ it will need to be assessed and reviewed.
Reporting the Results: Analysis and Review
The results of this initial trial project with the GSC administrators, the church at
Kellyville and the first 15 pastoral couples will help to inform the project leadership as to how to continue the introduction of the project into all conferences and churches in
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Australia. Any feedback will be highly valued and very important to the project leaders.
The responses from the Kellyville church and the 15 pastors will be provided to the GSC administration for their reflection and assessment, and then to the conference executive committee for approval to introduce it to the rest of the churches in the conference.
Administration will then make plans to have the rest of the pastoral couples involved in a weekend retreat.
A report will then be prepared for the administrators of the Australian Union
Conference who have jurisdiction over all of the conferences in Australia, informing them of the degree of the project’s success at Kellyville, and the support given to the project by the GSC administrators. The report will provide outlines for how the project could be successfully implemented into the other conferences. The support of the AUC leaders will be important for the promotion of the project into the regular life of the
Australian SDA Churches.
A further report will also be prepared for the SDA Church’s media to share the aims and hopes for the project with the church membership Australia-wide through written, TV and web format. Media plays an important role in the SDA Church in
Australia. A church newsletter is distributed weekly to all SDA Churches, and a weekly news segment is broadcast on SDA TV programs. Regular reports on the project’s integration into the churches will play a significant role in promoting the project. A regular blog report will allow individual churches to report on the specific strategies they have established in support of their pastors, which would in turn act as motivation for other churches to get involved.
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SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
Pastoral couples in the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Australia have numerous opportunities for developing their marital happiness and intimacy while ministering to their congregations. The premise of this project is that many pastoral couples do not take these opportunities because they feel overwhelmed by the ongoing demands of pastoral ministry in the local church. They become tied to the demands of their congregations, the expectations of their administrators, or their own high demands on personal performance, and they minister year after year at the risk of experiencing burnout, debilitating stress, and more significantly, marital breakdown.
The selected research provided in Chapters 1 and 2 clearly indicates that pastoral marriages are at high risk for failure. Further, a number of broken marriages over recent years in the SDA Church in Australia confirm the reality of these risks. A marriage that commences with high hopes for marital satisfaction and longevity but ends prematurely is tragic when considering the implications for the individuals, their immediate and extended families, and their friends.
A failed pastoral marriage is not only tragic for the individuals within the marriage but has serious repercussions for the church membership. Members can easily become disillusioned over the broken marriage and feel angry with the pastor and/or the church. The human tragedy in any broken marriage is immeasurable, and pastors are not exempt from the forces that exist to end intimate human relationships. Pastors in particular may be more vulnerable to these negative forces than they realise.
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A number of core issues facing the pastor and his or her spouse in the local church setting were highlighted in Chapter 1. The social science research into clergy lives and relationships consistently reveals the presence of significant stressors that present as either internal or external stressors on the pastoral relationship. They are imposed externally from administrators, the church members, or the community, or they are imposed internally as expectations held by the pastor, the spouse, or both. The reality is that both these external and internal stressors can act together to create tenuous clergy- couple marriages.
The external stressors that are often present in the lives of SDA pastors include the expectation that they will be successful pastors. This expectation is an honourable one, but the difficulty for pastors is the way in which their success is measured. Often the performance indicators, such as baptisms achieved or evangelistic series completed, are unwritten but strongly felt, unspoken but loud in the minds of pastors. The research indicates that for men in particular, work provides the most powerful indicator of success and well-being, so if pastors feel they are not doing well at work, they will find it more difficult to sustain a sense of positivity and their relationship will bear this pain.
There are also the expectations of the congregation who often see the pastor as a
‘superman/woman’ who has all the answers to life’s difficulties and is to be at their beck- and-call at any hour, for any reason. They are expected to be at all or most of the church functions, provide the impetus and enthusiasm for all the church projects, and be the best pastor to every age-group. They are expected to be able to say the right things at the right times – baby dedications, baptisms, weddings and funerals, as well as regularly preaching inspiring and challenging sermons. All these expectations place inordinate pressures on 153
the pastor to perform consistently and successfully, and in turn place the pastoral marriage under heavy stress.
The internal stressors can include the pastor’s own expectations about performing as a pastor, including the ability to preach well, to pastor well, and to visit well. The pastor will feel the need to be the perfect husband or wife, and the perfect parent. They will feel the need to keep up appearances at any cost despite the pain, loneliness or heart ache they may be carrying. Each of these issues bear heavily on intimacy and joy in marriage.
The selected book reviews in Chapter 2 further highlighted the significance of these issues for pastoral couples. Hard to be Holy (Whethams) pointed out the urgent need for pastors to be connected in significant friendships, especially with God and their family. However this is not always easily achieved by pastors who are constantly time- challenged, required to move (geographically), and reluctant to establish friendships when they know their tenure in a church is temporary. The authors also speak to the temptations for inappropriate sexual liaisons when pastors feel drawn to the intimacy and warmth of another person who promises to supply the affection and attention they may believe is missing in their own marriages. They also highlight the issue of pornography and mark it as a futile attempt to achieve an intimacy that can only be achieved with their partner.
The Promiscuous Profession (Sotheren) highlighted the temptation for the pastor to marry the concubine – the church – whose demands and promises keep the pastor alienated and separated from the one who God has ordained as the only legitimate partner for love – the marriage partner. Sotheren’s point was that clergy are often connected to 154
the church while their partners live as singles. The pastor-God-spouse triangle best describes where the pastor needs to focus his or her primary love, not the pastor-church- spouse triangle – this is temptation to promiscuity.
The Search for Intimacy in Marriage (Craig) places emotional intimacy at the forefront of what it is to be in love. Craig reported research demonstrating that it is in the emotional interactions between couples that prove to help build deep and lasting primary relationships. Couples who can learn to be emotionally attuned to each other will achieve greater levels of intimacy than those who fail to acknowledge or express their heartfelt emotions.
The Authentic Marriage (Balswicks) use the inter-relatedness and connectivity of the Trinity as a model for the genuine Christian marriage. The members of the Trinity are unique and distinct, separate in Person and role, but connected in love, purpose, and mission to humanity. Marriage partners are also to sustain a rightful independence in marriage – to be separate and distinctly unique as an individual, but they are to be intimately connected as one in a God-shaped marriage.
The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work (Gottman and Silver) was highlighted due to Gottman’s wide acceptance in the field of social science and in particular in marital research. His findings have become widely known and accepted as key indicators for marriages in trouble as well for building strong and happy marriages.
His principles for making marriages work can be readily used by couples and marriage educators who wish to improve the strength, happiness and intimacy in marriages.
The scriptural reflections in Chapter 3 provide a summary of selected texts in the
Bible that speak to marriage. While Scripture is not a marriage manual, it provides some 155
key concepts that describe how a Christian couple might best fulfil God’s plans for marital happiness and achieve marital longevity. Core to the scriptural teachings found in
Genesis is that marriage is a God-thing. It is not simply a joining of man and woman in a contract. God ordained that a man and a woman should not experience the debilitating effects of loneliness and he established marriage as the antidote.
Of special significance are those texts in Ephesians that state that the marriage between a man and a woman can especially express the love God has for his Church.
This love is not a love that will therefore be expressed in dominance or wrongful expressions of headship. Jesus stated himself that he came not to be served but to serve and give his life for many. Love in God’s terms is sacrificial love. It is love that centres on giving more than getting. Christian couples will focus less on the question “what am I getting out of this relationship” and ask more often, “what am I giving to this relationship?”
This biblically based picture of love places a huge responsibility on Christian couples to do all they can to reflect as clearly as possible this servant-based love of Jesus
Christ. Their love for each other will be patient, kind, respectful, honourable, and will never give up (1 Cor 13). But Christian couples will also keep clearly in mind that there is no such thing as the perfect marriage, and while they must aim high, their love will never be all that it was designed to be in the beginning of time where there was no shame, guilt, or separation. Christian couples live in the reality of human relationships sadly defined by the results of the broken relationship with God – deceit, vulnerability, blame, and separation. But they will not allow these aspects to dominate their relationships.
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Under the influence of the Spirit of God they will do all that is possible to love one another as God loved his world.
Christian couples, especially pastoral couples, will also follow the example of
Jesus and take time out from the “press of the crowds” to seek rest and renewal.
Recognising that Jesus himself often set out early in the day to find a quiet place and time to commune with God, so couples will separate themselves in some realistic ways and not only commune with their God but also with each other. They will see in these times a unique and important opportunity to build and sustain their emotional and spiritual intimacy.
They will also keep in mind Jesus’ instructions to minister two-by-two, and seek out whenever possible fellow ministers or other people-helpers with whom they can find mutual fellowship and mentor each other during their pastoral and marital journeys.
Being alone is to be incomplete as a human being, and couple-aloneness can also bring risks to the marriage. Joining with the members of the church in social interactions and fellowship can be a vibrant and effective two-by-two ministry that can help to sustain the pastoral couple as they build their intimate marriage.
In light of these findings in the Scriptures, in the social sciences and in the writings of selected authors committed to strengthening marriages, several directives can be established that might work together to inform, enrich, and help build strong, intimate clergy couple marriages. Due to the fact that a Christian marriage is to be a reflection of the love of God, and pastor’s marriages are often the most observed marriages in the church, special attention needs to be given to strengthening and supporting clergy marriages. This emphasis gains further impetus from the knowledge that a failure of a 157
pastor’s marriage is rarely a private affair. The pain and loss over a broken pastor’s marriage can be like the ripple in the pond that continues on indefinitely. For these reasons and others suggested in the previous pages, there is a vital need to focus on ways to build up the marriages of the SDA pastors in Australia.
This project is shaped by the belief that strengthening the marriages of church pastors will happen best when three key people-groups work together to make it happen: the pastoral couple, church administrators, and the church members. As previously stated, while a couple might set out to build a more intimate relationship, their chances of success can be strengthened if those who oversee their ministry and those to whom they minister join with them and support their endeavour. If a couple set out to improve their relationship and find no support, their journey will still be worth it and they will reap the rewards. If they can take the same journey towards marital wholeness and have committed, sensitive and helpful support, their chances of success must improve immeasurably.
Couples who do make this kind of commitment are not without helpful resources that can guide them in their endeavour to be more Christ-like in their marriage, and achieve greater levels of intimacy. They will find valuable insights in books highlighted in this project as well as others not listed. They will do well to familiarise themselves with the six signs of a relationship in trouble as outlined in Gottman’s work, as well as the seven principles for making marriages work provided in the same book. Further resources from both Christian and non-Christian sources are available in bookstores and on the web that can provide instruction and encouragement to help couples build stronger marriages. 158
Church administrators cannot afford to live in hope and simply trust that the pastors in their care will live exemplary lives of marital love simply because they are pastors and called by God to be his leaders. They cannot live on the premise that pastor’s marriages are ‘made in heaven’ and they will therefore last the ravages of earthly ‘hell.’
Church administrators need to take the initiative and build into their thinking, and their conference calendars, specific times and events that minister directly to the welfare of their pastor’s marriages. Improvement and strength never comes to anything or anybody by default – it requires specific strength-building strategies that need to be consistently and faithfully incorporated and followed. Conference leaders would do well to become proactive in ministering to the pastor’s primary relationships. They will need to see this as a priority and sustain a faithful commitment to make it happen.
Church members can also play a key role in supporting their pastor’s marital journey towards God’s ideal. A sensitive and insightful awareness of the ways in which they might positively impact on their pastor’s marriage and be a warm and caring presence is a God-given gift. Pastors need, and will value, such a ministry. Their work will be lightened and they will more effectively minister in turn as the church faithfully ministers to them. Churches who can take up this ministry will make an immeasurable but worthy contribution to fulfilling God’s command to “love one another” and build up
God’s kingdom church.
The success of this project is heavily influenced by the good-will, commitment and investment of people, and people are not always predicable or dependable. It will never succeed if there are only good intentions and talk of promises but little action. The
SDA Church is notorious for dreaming up new themes, presenting new strategies, and 159
parading new programs, but never making thorough assessments or allowing for long- term development. This project may suffer the same outcomes unless all those involved commit to seeing it as an ongoing ministry for the growth of the pastoral team and the church and its members.
Future students might wish to investigate the effectiveness of this project through a longitudinal study that follows its implementation and integration over a period of 5 or more years and then assess its effectiveness for building pastoral marriages. This will entail the design of testing instruments and the inclusion of more specific statistical implementation into the research. Students may also consider research that provides a more accurate analysis of the state of pastoral couple’s marriages in the SDA Churches in
Australia, and to what degree the consistently reported issues of pastoral couples across various faith communities in Australia are similar or different to the pastoral couples in the SDA Church. Students may also find value in studying pastoral partner’s responses to specific issues raised in this project, such as the regular moves from church to church, the expectations on partner’s inclusion and involvement in pastoral ministry, or the effects of couple ministry on the pastoral family.
This three-part project will never be the ultimate ministry that ensures the success of all pastoral marriages in the SDA Church in Australia, but it may go a way towards reaching that objective. Its success will depend on the personal commitment of all pastoral couples, all administrators, and if not all, the greater number of church members.
Such lofty goals may never be completely achieved. The project, however, is still a worthy one, and under the blessing of God and with a real commitment from enough leaders, members, and pastoral couples, it may bear much fruit to the glory of God. 160
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APPENDIX A
SIX SIGNS OF A MARRIAGE IN TROUBLE
1. Harsh Start-up. A harsh start-up describes a negative start to a conversation or discussion,
usually involving a negative tone of voice or the use of sarcasm.
2. The Four Horsemen a) Criticism. Gottman differentiates between a complaint and a criticism. A complaint is a
genuine concern over some issue that is clearly stated without attacking the character of
the other person. Criticism is when one partner uses negative words about their partner’s
character or personality. b) Contempt. Gottman considers contempt as the worst of the four horsemen because it
conveys disgust. It will often be expressed in sarcasm, or through name-calling, eye-
rolling, sneering, mockery, and hostile humour. c) Defensiveness. When couples deny any sense of responsibility in an issue, they are really
blaming their partner, which only leads to more negativity. d) Stonewalling. A stonewaller is one who, through word or action, states to his partner that
he no longer wishes to stay involved in resolving the issue – he chooses to opt out. He
reads the paper, watches television, or walks out. He gives no indication to his partner
that he is emotionally involved or interested.
3. Flooding. Gottman describes flooding as a reaction to a partner’s negativity, expressed
either through criticism, contempt or even defensiveness. This emotional overload will
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often drive the receiving partner into emotional withdrawal: they pull away to protect
themselves.
4. Body Language. While the term “body language” is usually used in the relationship
literature to describe the way people communicate with their bodies: their hands, facial
expressions and stance, Gottman uses the term to describe the way the human body reacts
to emotional arousal. Gottman’s research clearly demonstrated that when a couple are in
a heated argument, their blood pressure rises, their heart rate increases, and there is an
adrenaline surge that primes the body for fight, flight, or freeze. The chances of solving
the issue are severely reduced or become impossible.
5. Failed Repair Attempts. Repair attempts are any statements or actions, humorous or
otherwise, that send a message to a partner that it is time to stop the discussion and to
slow and/or cool down. Gottman describes repair attempts as brakes that couples use to
minimize the degree of negativity in their relationship.
6. Bad Memories. The final sign that a marriage is in demise is when one or both couples
re-define their past to match their sense of the present. They re-write their relational
history in negative terms, often describing all the aspects that are wrong, or simply
forgetting the shared good times.
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APPENDIX B
SEVEN PRINCIPLES FOR MAKING MARRIAGE WORK
1. Enhance your Love Maps. Gottman found that successfully married couples got to know each other incredibly well. They continually updated their maps of each other’s lives – their joys, worries, concerns, and issues. Gottman suggests that from knowledge springs not only love but fortitude to weather marital storms. The more couples know and understand about each other, the easier it is for them to keep connected as life swirls around them.
2. Nurture your Fondness and Admiration. Gottman claims that fondness and admiration are two of the most critical elements in a rewarding and long-lasting romance, and are crucial to the friendship that is at the core of any good marriage.
3. Turn Toward Each Other Rather than Away. Couples who take time to stay connected in all the small day-by-day interactions and invest in each other’s moments stay married. He suggests that couples periodically make ‘bids’ for their partner’s attention, affection, humour or support. People either turn toward one another after these bids or they turn away. Turning toward is the basis for emotional connection, romance, passion and a good sex life.
4. Let Your Partner Influence You. Those marriages where each partner allowed the other to influence their thinking and decision making reported happier marriages. The practice of allowing partner influence appeared more common for women and more difficult for men. The happiest, most stable marriages in the long run were those where
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the husband treated his wife with respect and did not resist power sharing and decision making with her.
5. Solve Your Solvable Problems. Gottman defined two kinds of conflict: those that can be resolved and those that are perpetual. Perpetual means they will be a part of life forever, in some form or another. In attempting to solve those problems that are able to be resolved, Gottman suggests several key steps: a. start off softly; b. learn to make and receive repair attempts; c. soothe yourself and each other; d. compromise, and f. be tolerant of each other’s faults. He believes these steps take very little training because couples usually have these skills, but couples in intimate relationships forget to use them.
6. Overcome Gridlock. When negotiating over conflicts that cannot be resolved, couples will need to ensure there is minimal negativity and loss of honour and respect.
Gottman asserts that the gaol of ending gridlock is not to solve the problem, but move from gridlock to dialogue.
7. Create Shared Meaning. Each country and culture celebrates special national events such as Christmas, New Year and Ramadan. Gottman found that successfully married couples also celebrated special couple-events and built their own culture that allowed for the development of a deeper, shared meaning. It is about creating a spiritual dimension that has to do with creating an inner life together.
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APPENDIX C
GUIDELINES FOR PARTICIPANTS
1. Encourage an atmosphere of understanding and acceptance. By Listening to and affirming each other, personal and spiritual growth begins to take place. Feel free to demonstrate your care by showing concern and support to others. Invite God’s Spirit to be present to guide all the sessions.
2. Be responsible for your own growth. Focus on your own needs and be responsible for getting what you want from this retreat. Avoid topics and discussions that detract from this priority. When you have a concern, this takes precedence within the group.
3. Respect others. Honour the individual concerns expressed by others in the group.
Avoid intellectualising, interrupting, analysing, confronting, giving advice or prescribing solutions for other couples. Sharing experiences and showing empathy reduces isolation.
4. Speak for yourself. Do not assume you know how other people feel. Share your own thoughts, feelings, wants and perceptions. However, no one should feel pressured to share.
5. Respect your own relationship. Avoid aspects of your relationship that would make your spouse uncomfortable. Either spouse may request that their dialogue be terminated. This request will be honoured.
6. Maintain confidentiality. Confidentiality is expected. It is essential to the preservation of group trust. It is essential that sharing be treated with respect and confidence.
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7. Keep commitments. Attendance and participation at all sessions is expected. The sense of community is lost by irregular attendance or non-participation.
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APPENDIX D
MARRIAGE ENRICHMENT PROGRAM SUMMARY OUTLINE SUMMARY OUTLINE
FRIDAY
7.30 pm Welcome and Introductions a. How are you feeling about being here? b. We affirm and congratulate all of you c. A little about us d. Expectations of the weekend e. Timetable f. Guidelines for the weekend g. Devotional Reflections
7.45 pm SESSION 1
Sharing Time a. Draw a ‘picture’ of your marriage b. Share some positive things about your current relationship with two other couples c. Discuss together 5 things that would be part of an ‘ideal marriage’ and share as a group. d. Leaders select one couple and have them stand in the centre. Surround them with other participants holding cards titled with ‘impacting issues’ on marriage e.g., children, in-laws, finances, work/careers, etc. e. Demonstrate the need to sustain the intimacy in the relationship while continuing to deal with these various issues
8.30 pm Break
8.40m SESSION 2
a. Work in groups of 6 and share what happens in a marriage when it is confronted by those ‘impacting issues,’ as listed above b. Share feedback with whole group c. Share the way in which the retreat will set out to assist couples to build and maintain intimacy while dealing with these issues.
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SATURDAY
8.30 am Breakfast
9.15 am SESSION 3
a. Reflections on last night b. Devotional reflections
GOTTMAN”S SIX SIGNS OF A MARRIAGE IN TROUBLE
1. Harsh Start-up 2. The Four Horseman: Criticism Contempt Defensiveness Stonewalling 3. Flooding 4. Body Language 5. Failed Repair Attempts 6. Bad Memories
10.30 am Break
11.00 am SESSION 4
GOTTMAN’S PRINCIPLES FOR MAKING MARRIAGE WORK
Principle 1 - Enhance your love-maps
Emotionally intelligent couples are intimately familiar with each other’s world – a richly detailed ‘love map.’ It is that part of the brain that stores all the relevant information about your partner’s life. They remember key times in each other’s lives and update the information regularly.
From knowledge springs not only love but the strength to weather marital storms. Couples who have detailed love maps are far better prepared to cope with stressful events and conflict. The more you know and understand about each other, the easier it is to keep connected as life swirls around you.
12.00 Break [169]
12.15 Principle 2 - Nurture your Fondness and Admiration
Fondness and admiration are two of the most crucial elements in a rewarding and long-lasting romance. Although happily married couples may feel driven to distraction at times by their partner’s personality flaws, they still feel that the person they married is worthy of respect and honour.
Having a fundamentally positive view of your spouse and your marriage is a powerful buffer when tough times hit. It means you won’t have cataclysmic thoughts about separation and divorce each time you have an argument.
Fondness and admiration can be fragile unless you remain aware of just how crucial they are to the friendship that is at the core of any good marriage. Simply be reminding yourself of your spouse’s positive qualities helps prevent a happy marriage from deteriorating.
12.30 pm Lunch
1.30 PM Free time
3.00 pm SESSION 5
Principle 3 - Turn towards each other
When couples engage in lots of chit-chat, they stay happily married. What is really happening in these brief exchanges is that the husband and wife are connecting—they are turning toward each other. In couples who go on to divorce or live together unhappily, such small moments of connection are rare.
Romance has been distorted by Hollywood! Real romance is found in the myriad little ways couples connect with each other during all the ordinariness of every- day life! Couples who turn toward each other remain emotionally engaged and stay married; those who don’t eventually lose their way. Nurturing fondness and admiration is the key to a long-lasting romance!
Principle 4 - Let your partner influence you
Studies have shown that marriages where the husband resists sharing power are four times more likely to end or drone on unhappily than marriages where the husband does not resist. Accepting influence is an attitude, but also a skill that can be learnt. [170]
4.00 pm Break
4.30 pm SESSION 6
Dealing with Conflict
All marital conflicts, ranging from mundane annoyances to all-out wars, fall into two categories: They can be resolved; or they are perpetual (which means they will be a part of your lives forever, in some form or another).
Problems are an inevitable part of a relationship – like chronic physical ailments as you get older. We may not like these problems, but we learn to live with them, and to avoid situations that make them worse. In unstable marriages, perpetual problems like these eventually kill the relationship. Instead of coping with the problem, couples become gridlocked over it; they get frustrated, and punish each other.
The signs of Gridlock: a. The conflict makes you feel rejected by your partner b. You keep talking about it but make no headway c. You become entrenched in your positions and are unwilling to budge d. When you discuss the subject, you end up feeling more frustrated and hurt e. Your conversations about the problem are devoid of humour, amusement, or affection. f. You become even more stubborn over time, which leads you to vilify each other during these conversations g. This vilification makes you all the more ‘concreted’ in your position and polarized, more extreme in your view, and all the less willing to compromise. h. Eventually you disengage from each other emotionally.
Solvable problems sound good when compared to perpetual problems! However, they can cause a lot of hurt and pain in a relationship. Just because they are solvable doesn’t mean they get resolved! We need to learn specific strategies to deal with problems and learn new skills that will assist in solving those issues that minimise intimacy in a marriage.
Principle 5 - Solve your solvable problems
Some keys for resolving problems more effectively: a. Soften your start-up
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b. Learn to make and receive repair attempts c. Soothe yourself and each other d. Compromise e. Be tolerant of each other’s faults
6.30 pm Evening Meal
7.30 pm SESSION 6
Building Emotional and Sexual Intimacy in Marriage
Emotional intimacy is at the core of all strong and long-term marriages. Emotional intimacy emerges in marriages as couples take care of all the small aspects of every-day life, and work at building trust, being emotionally available, and responding sensitively. These skills can be learnt, and need to be integrated into all the couple-interactions.
Sexual intimacy can be a thermometer on the relationship. Emotional distance may well be expressed in sexual distance. Sexual intimacy is much more than a physical union. Emotionally intelligent couples will ensure their sexual relationship is mutually enjoyable and satisfying.
SUNDAY
8.30 am Breakfast
9.15am SESSION 7
a. Reflections on Yesterday b. Devotional reflections
Keeping Love Alive I
All of us have dreams -- often established in our childhood. They are major ‘goals’ and ‘ambitions’ that are above the mundane and ordinary. Dreams can be a problem if they are hidden or not respected by your spouse.
10.30 am Break
11.00 am SESSION 8
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Keeping Love Alive II
Open Reflection time – review Review Original Drawings – add ‘new’ material Assessment Sheet Commitment Ceremony
12.30 pm Lunch
1.30 pm Clean-up and depart
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APPENDIX E
MARRIAGE ENRICHMENT PROGRAM EVALUATION SURVEY
The thing I enjoyed most about this retreat weekend: ______
Things I learnt from this course that I felt were most valuable: ______
______
I felt most comfortable with: ______
______
I wish we had: ______
______
What this retreat has meant to me personally: ______
______
What I would like to do as a follow-up from this retreat: ______
______
HOW I RATED VARIOUS SEGMENTS Poor Excellent
Issues Clarification ______1 2 3 4 5
Gottman’s Six Signs______1 2 3 4 5
Gottman’s Principles 1&2______1 2 3 4 5
Gottman’s Principles 3&4 ______1 2 3 4 5
Dealing with Conflict ______1 2 3 4 5
Building Emotional and Sexual Intimacy______1 2 3 4 5
Keeping Love Alive I ______1 2 3 4 5
Keeping Love Alive II ______1 2 3 4 5
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