Referees shoulder the brunt of opposition from both sides. Interjected into the contest to keep peace, they have a job not many envy.
Pastors regularly find they, too, must blow the whistle and make an uncompromising call-but not on sports fields. Pastors end up in the middle of volatile domestic squabbles, where emotions run high and outsiders fear to tread. Sometimes standard counseling procedures may be impossible to apply.
How do pastors best intervene in family problems, which so many professionals consider no-win situations? Are there effective approaches to these delicate dilemmas?
To find out, LEADERSHIP editors Marshall Shelley and Jim Berkley met with four Ohio pastors who know the peril of refereeing domestic problems:
-Don Engram of Church of the Open Door in the Cleveland suburb of Elyria
-Joel Hempel of Prince of Peace Lutheran Church in Cincinnati's inner city
-Jerry Kirk of College Hill Presbyterian Church in Cincinnati
-Paul Tropf of Armstrong Chapel United Methodist Church in the Cincinnati suburb of Indian Hill.
Leadership: Police officers rue getting enmeshed in "domestic disturbances." With such supercharged emotions on both sides, anyone stepping into the middle can get shot. Yet when they do intervene, the abused person will often drop the complaint the next day. It's frustrating because it's only a matter of time until the phone rings again. Do you, as pastors, ever share their feelings?
Joel Hempel: Like the police, I have gone to quite a few volatile situations-usually involving an alcoholic husband and a battered wife who refuses to press charges-and I get frustrated, too.
Parent-child conflict can be messy as well. One girl in her late teens was being physically abused by her parents, and I asked her how she was able to put up with the pain. She said, "My mom is sick-I know that-but it's all the love I get."
Jerry Kirk: I find that before the problems come to me, they have usually gotten so bad-the depth of alienation, the scars, the patterns of saying they're going to change and then not changing-that the people are programmed for failure. The longing of my own life and ministry is to work for prevention, because remedial work is so difficult.
Paul Tropf: It's going on in the suburbs, too, but at a different level. One woman hardly had my office door closed before she was showing me the bruises from where her husband had thrown his attach case at her and knocked her down. Both of these were highly educated, intelligent people.
It ended finally with a deposition being taken in my study. He brought his attorney; she brought her attorney. I was to witness to what I saw.
But all the way through, I was the guy being pushed to the wall, because I couldn't take sides. Each party was trying to take from me something to fortify his or her own position. I was being torn in both directions.
Leadership: All of you have been in ministry ten years or more. Are these kinds of situations becoming more frequent?
Don Engram: I think so. In my early ministry, people in the church didn't want you to know anything was going on at home because their halo might be tarnished. Now they're willing to say, "Hey, I've got problems!" Maybe it's because we ministers are a little more transparent than we used to be-our halos don't blink all the time.
Kirk: The Gallup Poll reveals that people are much more prone to go to a pastor than to a psychiatrist or other counselor. I believe this grows out of the fact that pastors no longer feel they've got to stay on the pedestal.
Engram: Not only that, we work for free! (Laughter)
Leadership: There are some differences between pastors and counselors. Pastors sometimes feel they must intervene in a situation where they have not been invited, or perhaps where one person in the family asks them to confront another member. Have you ever felt obligated to intervene?
Tropf: I had one experience I don't recommend to anybody. As I look back, I don't know where my brain was when I started. (Laughter)
A mother of two teenage boys began telling me tales about her nineteen-year-old son (we'll call him Jon), whom she said was on drugs. Because of his age, the police could not step in, nor did the mother want to press charges. We had tried to talk him into going to Straight, a drug rehabilitation program, but without success. Finally, at her request, my associate and I decided to intervene directly.
We went to the house at 8 A.M., because that's when we knew he would be home-asleep. We went to his bedroom and I shook him. "Jon," I said, "this is Pastor Tropf. Do you know who I am?"
Groggily he said, "Yeah."
"Jon, the last time I was with you was in the intensive care unit after your overdose. I would like you to get up. I'm going to take you to Straight."
He opened one eye and said, "Are you kidding?"
"No," I said. "We mean business. You're much too intelligent and talented to waste your life this way."
Legally, I had no authority, but we were committed to do what we could. When we started removing nearby liquor bottles and glassware, he began to realize we were preparing for battle. And there were two of us and only one of him. My associate, by the way, is young and very athletic, which I would recommend if you're going to do this. (Laughter)
He got angry, jumped out of bed, and called his psychiatrist. Fortunately, the doctor wasn't in yet, so he left a message: "This is an emergency. Have him call me immediately." Then he went into the bathroom, and we heard several flushings. We pulled the plug on the phone and started looking for drugs. We found stuff stashed everywhere. We never laid a hand on him but when he came out we simply said, "We are going to Straight-today!" Since we had the evidence, he began to realize we were serious.
He went to his mother's room and started berating her-"You have really done it now. My psychiatrist tells me I'm finally beginning to make progress, and now you've blown the whole thing."
I said, "Jon, all you have done the last three years is blame your mother for what you are doing. Now it's time to face the fact that you are the person who has to make some changes!"
Two things began to happen: (1) he sensed he needed help; (2) he sensed his helplessness. We continued to remind him of his tremendous potential as a student and a leader. We told him he had no place to go but up if he decided to turn his life around.
About eleven-thirty he finally agreed to go with us. So we took him to Straight-in the back of my two-door car with my associate beside him.
At Straight, it's peers that make things happen, not the adults. Jon stayed on and became a member of the staff, until he eventually realized he wanted to go back to school. He entered the university and was on the dean's list the first year. As soon as he got back on the street, he came over and wanted to join the church-and professed his faith in Christ.
His life was turned around because, luckily, nobody questioned what we were doing.
Leadership: It sounds like a calculated risk.
Tropf: It worked for us, but believe me, there was a lot of prayer given to it before we made any move.
Engram: One of the most difficult situations I've faced was when a wife had some circumstantial evidence of her husband being unfaithful. She came to me and said, "Now look, you've got to confront him."
I said, "OK, let's get together."
Now, what's my role? If we're dealing with two Christian people willing to live by biblical principles, then, in Christ, these problems can be solved. So putting their marriage back together is really not my immediate objective. My role is to talk to them concerning their relationship with Jesus Christ.
I brought them together on numerous occasions and considered the evidence she had. Well, he had answers for everything. But she refused them.
Leadership: So there never was agreement over the facts of the case?
Engram: No. I talked with them. Prayed with them. Asked them to confess. But they both hardened their positions, and there is no solution to that. Many times you become the bad guy. They both turn on you because you don't take their side of the story. Whenever you get involved, you lay yourself open.
So many times I've said, "Before this is all over, I'm going to be the bad guy." And it happens!
Hempel: There are ways of staying neutral, but if you refuse to take sides, it does make you the bad guy.
I think here is a key attitude: an understanding spirit, an attitude that will hear the different sides without making the kind of judgment that rejects one and accepts the other. It means remaining calm, not getting as excited as either party will be.
Leadership: Are there times when you should not intervene?
Hempel: Yes-the very volatile, violent situations. I trust my fear level. When fear moves up and grabs me around the throat, I know to pull out of the situation. Another thing is psychosis, when reality doesn't seem to affect the person. I'm not trained for this.
I'm involved now in more family counseling and fewer family crises because I go less. I used to think I had to rescue everybody. Every time the phone would ring, I was gone.
Leadership: How do you walk the line between thinking you're God's savior for families-a superintervener-and getting callous because you've heard that phone ring too many times before?
Hempel: Sometimes I mess up and don't go when I should. Other times I go when I didn't need to. That's a reality, and God is teaching me to give myself the grace he gives me.
But I'm finding a growing intuition about these things the longer I'm in ministry, an ability to trust the Spirit.
Kirk: One of my primary concerns is knowing when I have reached the limits of my ability and I need to refer. Referral has become a primary part of my approach. I open things up and allow persons to begin to listen to one another, but then I get them to others for long-term help.
Leadership: How do you know it's time to refer?
Kirk: Two ways: Either I can't make the necessary time commitment, or I lack the necessary knowledge and skills. I believe I have a pastoral role rather than a counseling role. I used to counsel people over a length of time, but now I believe my unique role is pastoral.
Leadership: How would you distinguish between the counseling function and the pastoring function?
Kirk: Being pastor is a God-given mantle. It means representing God to the people and the people to God. My primary function is caring, listening, seeking to bring grace into the situation.
Counseling demands a listening approach rather than a directing approach.
Hempel: A counseling relationship is contractual. In a pastoral-care relationship I often use the same skills, along with prayer and other kinds of spiritual resources. But what's not there in a pastoral relationship is the contract that says if you present a problem to me, we agree to bring our best to its solution. The contract grants you as a counselor what you don't have as a pastor: the right to bring a person back to that commitment.
Engram: Our opportunities are great but also very frightening. We're in people's lives, and they're listening to what we say. Every morning I pray for wisdom.
Leadership: What are some of the family situations where you've had to take a pastoral rather than a counseling approach?
Kirk: The hardest thing for me is ministering to a marriage where one of them has really become "married" to another person through an affair. You have to cut that relationship in order to rebuild the original relationship.
Leadership: How do you make yourself move into these situations when your natural tendency is to hide? How do you handle the anxiety?
Hempel: I think we do have to confront people with objectivity, with something more than hearsay. We need to go with objective evidence. We must also admit our own reticence-not only with God before we get there, but also with the people we confront. It presents us as human so we don't overpower them.
Leadership: When a person comes with an accusation, how do you determine the validity of the complaints?
Tropf: I had a woman tell me she ended up in the hospital because her husband had thrown her out of a car going fifty miles an hour. That would be quite a feat to maintain control of a car while forcing someone out the passenger door!
When we talked a little more, it turned out he had actually stopped the car on the exit ramp, she was getting out, and he started the car before she had let go. It spun her into the dirt, and she got a few stitches at the hospital. But to hear the first explanation, I pictured her being ejected from a racing car.
You have to ask what seems plausible before you begin to deal with the accusations. In that case, she had an alcohol problem she was unwilling to confront, and she wanted me to fix her husband. When I began to deal with her alcoholism, she suddenly lost interest.
Kirk: Say a young woman comes in and says her husband is really knocking her around. Certainly I detest that. So I start counseling with both of them. Often I find she knows exactly how to bait him. Then he loses control and hits her, and she screams, "You hit me! That shows what kind of man you are!"
Hempel: I think listening is the important part, not jumping to conclusions and judging them. Beyond that, you look for evidence you can validate. We're not police; we're pastoring a family. If a family member is being abused, it cannot be tolerated.
Leadership: How do you listen with empathy, yet seek validating evidence? When people say they're being abused, isn't it cruel to say, "Do you have any evidence?"
Hempel: You take people seriously without judging. I need to receive their anger or tears in such a way that people feel welcomed and held. I can do that without getting on their side or the other's.
Leadership: What do you say when people want you to take action?
Hempel: I ask, "What kind of action do you want?" I can't call the police; I have no evidence. So I say, "Let's go talk together." Now a woman needs to realize the risk. She possibly subjects herself to additional abuse by making that confrontation.
Another action I suggest, if the situation is that severe, is for her to leave, at least temporarily. Once she and the children are safely away, then you get people together and start talking.
Kirk: It is crucial that we take them with such seriousness that they know they've not only been heard but understood. It's also crucial that we not own their problem, that we believe they can solve their own problem. Our role is to enable them to lay hold of the power of God.
Engram: The wife of a man in one of my classes called and said, "He left me for another woman."
I said, "It can't be. Not him! After all, he's right there every week in my class." Frankly, I didn't believe he would walk out on his wife and two children.
Anyway, I met him and I said, "First, I want to tell you I really care about you. You're a friend. But your wife called me. … "
He said, "Yeah, it's true."
I said, "Now, you know what you're doing is contrary to the Word of God, don't you?"
"Yes, I do."
"And you know God will discipline you for this."
"Yes, I do."
"Can I ask you to rethink this?"
"I'm going to do it anyhow because I have found happiness in the last three weeks I've never had before," he said.
I wanted to cry with him. He'd been growing as a Christian-and now he was making a mistake he'd live with forever.
So I told his wife, "Whatever you do, don't give him a divorce, because he's only known the woman for three weeks. He's going through a high school affair."
Four weeks later she walked up and said, "I gave him his divorce."
I had taken action. I had pleaded for time, but she wouldn't wait. It was another case of their coming for counsel but not doing what you say.
Kirk: I've learned from many experiences that when I did not press a couple to open up to one another, they have often gone down the tubes. But where they opened up and brought integrity and God's grace into the picture, healing usually happened.
You see, when persons share with me they've had an affair, as long as that's only between them and me, we've got a secret than can produce a closer bond than they have with their spouse. Until things are opened up to their spouse, I'm not really ministering to the deepest roots of the problem.
Tropf: I have a concern, however, for confidentiality. When you say, "Open these things up," what confidentiality must you maintain? Suppose this woman says, "You mustn't tell my husband."
Kirk: Without her permission, you can't. I have only moral suasion, no authority. One young couple had come for marriage counseling, and I asked to talk to the wife alone for a bit. She poured out her heart and said, "Jerry, I am having an affair at work. I want out of my marriage to marry this man."
"What got you into this?" I asked.
"Spending time together on the job. I had an affair about four years ago, and that kind of opened the way to this one."
"Have you ever shared this with anybody?"
"No, never."
"Was that last affair your first experience?" I asked.
"No, about five years before that I had another affair, and I've never been able to tell anybody."
I got her permission to tell her husband. Then I got their permission to call the guy from work right then to say, "I want to see you." When we got the bond broken between the wife and the guy at work, we started rebuilding that marriage. Because she never told anybody about the first affair, she was more vulnerable to the second.
God has given us tremendous clout through moral suasion. Of all the persons I have asked to follow this process, only one person in my recollection said no.
Tropf: Sometimes confrontation gets complicated-intervening, for instance, with powerful people like corporate presidents and business leaders. They could cause heads to roll if they wanted to retaliate. One businessman I know could, if he were angered, simply wipe out the careers of a half dozen church leaders in one stroke.
Kirk: We have found in high-level confrontation we're dealing with people who have had authority all their lives, who have used temper tantrums to get their way. I've seen the alienation that results. And the persons involved in the intervention were social peers-no pushovers-but they had never tried to hold people accountable at that level. In one instance it was gambling-I mean, more than a $10,000-a-day habit.
I don't think we understand this very well. I don't even believe we know how to call pastors to accountability very well. Calvin said discipline is one of three marks of the church, but I believe we've almost totally abrogated discipline in the church today. We have to face it. It's easier with certain persons than others in our congregation.
Engram: That puts tremendous responsibility on us to be men of God in our conduct. A pastor can't be the dictator; we are servants. That's why we're here. Being a leader, however, makes discipline necessary out of a heart of love for these people.
Kirk: I agree. The key to counseling is how much we love, how much we care, how much we are centered in the other person rather than ourselves, how we ask questions that communicate acceptance.
I've counseled over a hundred homosexuals. Once I dealt with five of them together and asked, "Why do you come to me?" Frankly I needed some insight into myself.
They said, "There are three reasons. One, we know you'll love us no matter what. Two, we know you know you're as big a sinner as we are." Those two reasons I had hoped and expected to hear, but the third caught me by surprise.
"Third, we know you will call us to repentance because you call everybody to repentance." They were saying, We want help, and we know you're a person who will give us help.
It is not technique. It is: Do we love in such a way that they know they are accepted and yet called to accountability? We open the gates, then they open up more and more.
Leadership: Do you ever use lay leaders to minister to families?
Engram: Two of the best programs in our church are lay-inspired and led. The wife of an alcoholic, a lovely Christian woman, wanted to help families with alcohol or drug problems. I kind of resisted because I didn't think of it. (Laughter)
I thought only a few might respond, but it's amazing who's come out of the woodwork! It's one of our greatest ministries.
The other program originated with a fellow who lost his son and wanted to know if he could start a comfort center for those in grief. Now, that's gone way beyond our church. It's been a tremendous encouragement. The lay leaders do what I cannot do.
Leadership: So this is almost an "experience bank." People who have had certain experiences use them to minister to others.
Engram: I have a secretary who, when I first met her, had tried to commit suicide twice. She was a drug addict, an alcoholic, and her marriage was breaking up. Interestingly, we started her recovery by having her come into the office to put stamps on envelopes. She just needed to be around some Christians. Eventually she came to a knowledge of Jesus Christ, and her husband accepted Christ.
If a person with drug or alcohol problems comes in for counseling now, I bring her in. I say, "You can talk to them like I can't." She never thought she could amount to a thing; yet look at how many people she's helped.
Tropf: Something happening in our church is exciting in terms of prevention. It's a course called "Gentle Parenting" designed by a lay woman in our church. She worked in the central city and began to realize she was getting people too late. So she created this course as an alternative to the yelling and screaming going on in most families.
We're offering it to our own people but also to other groups. One of our outreaches is to Appalachian people who live just across the river from us. We're hand-picking couples for this program. Instead of waiting for a crisis to erupt, we hope to be able to do something before it gets that far.
Kirk: I was praying recently, and I stopped to hear what the Lord had to say. I don't hear voices, but the thought came to me: Jerry, I have difficulty speaking to you because you have such a noisy heart. And you have a noisy heart because you have a noisy, busy life.
So many things in a day make it hard for me not to have a noisy heart. I need to simplify my life and ministry, to get more focused. When I shared with my people what the Lord said about my noisy heart, I touched chords all over the congregation. Families have noisy hearts.
Maybe the greatest need of pastors ministering to families is to cultivate a quiet heart, so ministries can bloom out of the center of God's grace.
Tropf: I went with our choir to England for two weeks. When the group hit the street, I ran out ahead of everybody. I didn't want to be with them.
This bothered me. Presently I began to discover that it had been seven years since I was able to get away. I finally realized I needed to be alone. I'm not a person who wants to be alone; I need people. But in some curious way this told me I need to quiet a noisy life.
Kirk: Paul, you have a tremendous ministry to families simply by your example amidst suffering in your own home. Why don't you briefly share your story?
Tropf: Five weeks after we moved to Cincinnati, my wife got viral encephalitis, which reduced her to infancy. She's come back some, but she does not know who I am. She's able to live at home, for which I'm grateful, but sometimes when I walk in, she looks at me and says, "Who are you?"
The congregation has been incredibly kind, because I foundered for a while. They ministered to me until I began to find a footing again. My wife comes to church now and stands with me to shake hands. While I have a robe on, she seems to know I'm her husband, but as soon as we go downstairs for coffee, she becomes confused and doesn't recognize me.
At home, I pray with her at night and she says thank you, but I don't know what's going on in her head. She hallucinates 70 to 80 percent of the time. Still, I can't bring myself to put her in an institution.
I have committed myself to my ministry, and this church is where my whole life is. That's why it's important for me to maintain this ministry, to take care of myself, to quiet my life. I would hate to have to move her.
Leadership: How has this situation affected your ministry?
Tropf: About three months into this, a man asked me, "Have you been able to thank the Lord for this affliction?"
I was irate, and I said, "No, I'm not there yet." That was seven years ago.
About a year ago while praying, I heard myself saying, "Thank you for Joanne." That shocked me. I hadn't been able to say that for six years. Then I stopped and said, "I'm finally able to say that!"
So it has affected me in a lot of ways: It's made me realize that God and the church are all we really have. All I need.
Kirk: There isn't any preaching as powerful as that kind of model.
I believe there are two keys for ministry with families. One is our own family life, where we've got all kinds of hurts. If we have not paid the price to heal them, roots of bitterness grow. I have to seek forgiveness from my family when I have blown it.
The second is whether or not we as pastors have any group with which we can be genuinely vulnerable, transparent, and accountable. Most pastors need such a group, and if they don't have it, they're going to burn out. They'll be performing rather than ministering.
Hempel: I can't agree more. Family time is very important. My wife helps me retain some sanity and perspective. She affirms me, but she also holds me accountable. She says, "We need you at home." That's been very good. When I'm home, I'm home.
Engram: God instituted the family first. Sometimes I have to watch that I don't get so busy producing a church program that I miss the family. We can overprogram and tear families apart rather than pull them together. That's why our church tries to bring everybody together on one night and leave the other nights free.
We also offer marriage retreats and seminars for couples. It's not just Sunday morning that solves all the problems. Thank God the church is waking up-maybe late, but we have been shaken. We are now laying a foundation to build biblical principles into our marriages.
Leadership: Where are the rewards in family ministry?
Hempel: Actually, some days they're hard to find. But then you see people change.
Six years ago I took a woman home from our evening fellowship and walked into her third-floor apartment downtown, where her husband, a drug user, was basically holding her hostage. He was irate that she had gone out; he threatened her life and mine. He had been spending her check on drugs, neglecting the children, keeping her in such a state of fear that she would literally shake in his presence.
It has taken six years and countless hours from a lot of people, but she has moved to the point of receiving Jesus Christ in her life, leaving that abusive relationship, getting a job, and becoming a leader in the church.
That kind of movement is very rewarding.
Kirk: Recently I was postponing having to call a man who had lost his job. It was several weeks before I got around to it. I said, "I'm so sorry to hear about your losing your job."
"It's no big deal," he said. "You seem more concerned about it than I am."
"I'm sure thankful to hear that," I said, "because it's been on my heart now for a number of weeks."
Then he began to pour out five other major crises of the last six months that were all worse: "My wife's father had a heart attack. Our daughter is having a baby, but there's a tumor growing in the uterus along with the baby. … " Thing after thing after thing. I just wanted to weep.
I said, "Jack, please forgive me for not having been in touch with you."
He says, "That's OK; we've got so many people in the congregation ministering to me, the thought never occurred to me that you ought to be involved. And, by the way, I've been walking with the Lord, and the Lord has ministered. Tomorrow morning when I'm in church, I'm going to be praying for you." That made my day.
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