TWO-DAY RETREATS

One of the special offerings of John Mark Ministries to pastors, church leaders and their spouses – and many others – is a ‘This is Your Life’ retreat. In these two months as I write six individuals and one couple have booked a retreat-time. (They will come from our home-state Victoria, one from interstate, another from an Asian country).

[See http://jmm.org.au/articles/8053.htm ]

EMAIL COUNSELLING

I counsel many people by email. Here’s one sample chosen at random from my Sent folder. The counsellee is a pastor, whose name and country shall, of course, remain anonymous. He’d been through the ’19 questions’ (see above) and tackled them honestly.

From Rowland: Hi my friend,

Thanks for these – terrific honesty, and that’s good.

My responses may be short / cryptic, but please know that I’ve weighed carefully all you’ve written. They begin with ==

(PS. If you could send the stuff in text within an email, that would be slightly easier for me – but don’t worry too much about that 🙂

Rowland Croucher.

From the counsellee:

Anxiety/Fear,

Worried that I could be wrong about Christianity – that maybe the Muslims are right and that I am going to burn in some awful Muslim hell for ever and ever. The problem is that I believe Christianity is right, I am just not certain.

== Have you read my article on the website, Living with Ambiguity? I’d be interested in your responses to that. I resonate with your feelings here, except that I reckon any reasonable person has to score Jesus way ahead of Mahommed on every significant criterion you can think of!!!

Fear of death.

Fear of the devil, as a child this was a BIG one, together with the fear that by thinking ‘I give my soul to the devil, Amen’ that I would. That was a mental nightmare.

== You’ve heard the wise truism that those who are afraid they’ve committed the unpardonable sin (or equivalent) haven’t…

Again, as a child, fear of cancer, rabies. I also had obsessive-compulsive disorder (‘if I do not do this or that so many times, then something terrible will happen’)

I was scared that by thinking horrible thoughts about people then those horrible things would happen to them.

==Have you read Frank Laubach on this?

I often worry over small things.

Sadness/Grief,

Sad at the death of my parents. That I never really knew my Dad, not closely as I would have liked to. Sad that he never saw me married, or saw my children. Sad at my mum’s death. I still miss her.

Sad at the way I was treated at College, my training church, and my first solo church. Sad that older Christians, who should have known better, who should have encouraged or even mentored me, didn’t.

Sad that I was not encouraged.

Sadness at all of the time I have wasted, and of the opportunities I have squandered.

==Still some childhood material not resolved…

Guilt (bad things I have done)

Masturbation, sexual fantasies – often accompanied by quite awful, wicked, blasphemous thoughts

==How serious / often?

I have often aimed too high in my leadership, with the result that I have achieved very little. (A sort of perfectionism really)

==Can you elaborate?

That I have not achieved more in Kingdom terms

==What’s reasonable / realistic here?

Shame (bad things I feel about me),

Masturbation.

==Read my article on this?

Blasphemous thoughts

==How serious?

Lazy

==What’s the difference between sloth /idleness and rest / doing nothing for the glory of God? Do you have an opinion about activity being idolatrous?

Ill – disciplined

Not being the me that I know I could be

Not being more spiritual

== Uh huh…

Irritation/Anger.

At .., one of the deacons at . church, my first solo pastorate. He was a real bastard to me. He was sexually abused as a child, and was still clearly damaged as an adult. He was – wait for it – a social worker! He could be pleasant and supportive one moment, and childish, two-faced and rude the next. He also reminded me of my Dad, which didn’t help!

== And you might have reminded him of some male authority-figure – double-bind, eh? His being a social worker doesn’t surprise me – meet ’em all the time 🙂

At the way I was treated at my training church; especially some of the older people.

At not being given my chance – I see other pastors that are younger than me seemingly advancing beyond me and I feel jealous. It’s not so much jealous of them, although there is that, as jealous that they’ve been given their chance and I haven’t.

== I hear that…

At not being a better me

At not kicking masturbation

== If you don’t mind my asking, does your wife know? Without disclosing too much detail (!) how’s your sexual relationship? Is there a correlation between masturbation activity and sexual activity in your marriage?

At not praying more

At being lazy

At being me

At not being supported by the denomination

== Best advice to young pastors: don’t expect much help from anyone; be surprised/grateful when it comes!

Sloth,

I can be very lazy, I can be a workaholic. I seem to work in bursts of high energy, with big lulls in-between. I can be very lazy as a response to discouragement. I lack discipline, and find it easy to waste time or engage in ‘displacement activity’.

Lust,

Oh, yes, big problem. As in masturbation, fantasies, internet stuff. My counsellor believes that this is a symptom caused by my childhood problems, and that as these are resolved the problem will diminish. E.g. The better I feel about me in reality, the less the need for fantasy. There is some logic there, although, whether it will solve the problem completely.

== Your counsellor’s right!

Anger,

I can get BIG outbursts of anger. I am never violent, but I do swear, kick things, and really scream (and really swear). These can often come after a bad bout of masturbation. Again, the logic appears to be that these are consequences of the ‘crap’ inside me. They have significantly diminished through the counselling.

Pride,

I seem capable of alternating between thinking I am the greatest preacher since CH Spurgeon, and the worst Christian since Judas Iscariot. I suffer bouts of pride. Especially when I see my contemporaries speaking at conferences and stuff and I think ‘I could do that’.

== Want to send a text of one of your sermons (your best?) Can I publish it?

Envy,

A close cousin of pride, so see under that list. However, I do not seem to have too much trouble with Envy as such – although comparisons with my contemporaries (especially my old college friend) is a real issue.

Gluttony,

I am four stone overweight and use food as a comfort mechanism.

== Exercise routine?

Greed.

You do not get to be four stone overweight without being greedy.

What are your ‘addictions’?

Masturbation (and fantasies)

Food

Of the three great temptations – money, sex, power – where are you weakest? Why? What are you tempted to do/be/think if you were sure you wouldn’t be found out in this life?

Money – over the last year I have found myself on occasion feeling quite resentful at being poor. I think I object to church members jetting off around the world, while my wife and I struggle to afford a week in a very down-market holiday-place. One member does a lot of work in his garden (I should have added ‘those with DIY or gardening skills’ to my list under Envy) which I am highly impressed with. However, when I ask the deacons about the state of the garden wall (about to collapse onto the pavement) this guy volunteers, comes round, and does a bodgie job. I am happy that something has been done, but I can’t help thinking that this guy wouldn’t have accepted that standard of work for his own garden, so why is it ok for the Manse?!

== Difficult one that. Churches make lousy landlords, generally…

Sex – I am terrified of committing adultery. I can see how easily it could happen. As you will probably know from my very first e-mail, I have lost many, many friends and role-models in the ministry to this. My masturbation, etc problem makes me worry that I am more likely to commit this sin. I love my wife. But I also know and fear this weakness.

== Stay terrified of adultery, if it’s a working disincentive! Adultery never solves anything, and messes up your whole life (and lots of others). Don’t even think about it!!!

Power – no problem, I haven’t got any!! No, only joking. I have probably developed at this church to the place where I am the leader. But. I am scared of hurting people. I also tend to fail to give a lead on many subjects. As an example, ‘open’ or ‘closed’ membership is just about to become a real issue for us. People feel strongly about it on both sides. Currently I am not giving a clear lead, mainly because I really don’t care! I am happy to work with either situation, as long as we are clear and we stick to it. So giving a lead is an issue with me; as is the problem of liking to be liked. ( I have improved, it used to be NEEDING to be liked.)

== Sorry to mention another paper I’ve written – but I’d value your responses to my Open Membership paper (which is doing the rounds of churches in Oz and NZ. A start on this question is to give that paper to people with a ‘What do you think about this?’ approach…

You’re in my prayers!

Shalom!

Rowland Croucher