Pastoral Challenges in Family
Ministries
A pastor is the
spiritual physician of his congregation, appointed and qualified by the Lord, to
help resolve spiritual and social issues confronted by individuals and families
in that congregation. This is a challenging spiritual task which demands
spiritual vision, commitment, patience, spiritual power, knowledge, wisdom,
prayerfulness and spiritual burden.
Historical perspective
The Old and New
Testaments carry pertinent teachings and warnings related to family life. These
comprise of principles, direct commandments, life centered illustrations,
historical sketches and teachings on Family Life and its challenges. Wherever the
people of God violated these divine principles and teachings, they ran into
problems and breakdown in families. Some of these family calamities were overt
and a lot more were covert.
We see in the
Old Testament that God Himself directed families at the beginning, and later appointed
priests, prophets, kings and leaders to instruct families. In spite of it all,
there have been failures in family life of people and even in the case of
leaders, priests and kings. In the New Testament, believers are taught by Jesus
Christ Himself and later by His apostles to protect, teach, correct, evaluate and
rebuild families. After the apostolic era, this responsibility rests with the
spiritual leaders of the local church, like teachers, elders or pastors,
evangelists, deacons and other ministering men(Ephesians 4:11-16).
Pastoral responsibilities
A pastor is a
divinely appointed spiritual leader, teacher, guide and facilitator of
believers in all spiritual and secular matters. They exercise spiritual
responsibilities on the basis of spiritual gifts, their own life examples and
on the Word of God. The New Testament shows how these men devote themselves to various
ministries by setting apart their time, talents, interests, convenience and
health round the clock. They are accountable to the Lord and work with other
ministering brethren to meet the needs of the congregation (James 5:14; 1 Peter
5:2-3; 1Timothy 5:1-2).
Pastors go out
where the sheep are and minister unto the felt needs of people in all aspects of
their lives. This includes leading, guiding, counseling, teaching, correcting,
disciplining, educating, discipling, teaching, informing, warning, admonishing,
facilitating, evaluating, diagnosing their spiritual problems and providing help
in finding solutions. Their ministries thus impact the life of believers in
general and their personal needs, and in their choices on education, career,
marriage and conflict resolution in individual and family life.
The Laodicea challenge
Today’s church
of the Laodicea age (Revelation 3:14-22) is one where individualism, self
esteem, personal freedom, desire for privacy and greater financial independence
influence believers’ general outlook. Such life style and culture often make believers
far removed from the biblical teachings and its application in many aspects of
believers’ lives. The world thus influences families where the family as a unit
often lacks spiritual leadership and unity. In this circumstance, submission to
spiritual leadership at home and in the church gets seriously eroded. Thus pastoral
teachings for individual and family lives remain more an option than obedience
to biblical teaching. Pastors are seen not to have sufficient spiritual authority
to instill discipline in the congregation because of the ultra-democratic setup
of many local churches. Attempts at infusing biblical discipline in churches often
result in factionalism, rebellion and conflicts. To avoid or minimize divisions,
dissensions and unity, many pastors and elders try not to provoke the
congregation. Thus pastors and elders involve in more pulpit-oriented
ministries like preaching and teaching than personalized ministries like individual
and family counseling. This is a great challenge in pastoral ministries in
modern times.
Pastors’ approaches and challenges in family ministries
It is seen
that many pastors and elders wait for the congregation to individually approach
them for spiritual help which happens seldom anyway. Either the pastors are too
busy to be available and accessible or the individual believer doesn’t care to
engage the pastor. Believers and families try to avoid the pastor by clinging
on to privacy concerns. In the congregational churches, pastors seem to have
more authority than found in local churches which are more loosely organized and
structured. So individuals prefer to remain private and expect the pastors to
be less nosy in personal matters. They would rather go on by covering up their personal
and family’s problems. By the time such issues come to limelight, problems
would have solidified and hearts hardened. This is true about issues related to
backsliding, addiction and such other sins and conflicts between spouses or
parents and children. Thus many problems remain unresolved and eventually
destroy individual and family lives. In these circumstances, pastors usually become
hapless and helpless spectators of individual or family issues. It’s also true
that many pastors lack training in ministries like counseling to be able to handle
individual or family issues, thus lacking confidence properly handling family
matters of believers.
Challenging responsibilities
God has
appointed pastors and elders as spiritual guardians of the local church with
specific responsibilities and accountabilities (Acts 20:28-32). They are
expected to provide individuals and the congregation with the much needed spiritual
nutrients based on the Word of God. The true shepherd has to use the staff and
the rod to lead God’s people (Psalms 23:4). Their responsibilities to the
families in the congregations include preparing believers for family life and resolving
family conflicts.
Plenary and
individual teaching
It has been observed
that many pastors and churches are passive to teachings on many life-related
subjects. They lean toward more doctrinal teachings and expository preaching
which are vital. But it’s unusual to hear teachings or messages on practical
subjects like Family Life, conflict resolutions, individual behavior, personal
Christian life and the like in many local churches. It is a great challenge for
the ministering brethren to prayerfully strike a balance between teachings on
doctrinal and practical subjects. Then only doctrinal and practical teachings
like family life can be taught on a regular basis to instruct, inform, educate
and warn the married and yet-to-be-married about quality family life.
Pre-marriage
counseling
It is
important to prepare those in the congregation who contemplate on family life to
lay strong foundation for a happy married life. They need to be taught the
biblical truths about the duties, responsibilities, accountabilities, demands
and challenges of family life including bringing up godly children and their
emerging questions provided with biblical answers. Small group interactive sessions
will be most helpful to provide pre-marriage teaching. Pastors have to face
this challenge by humbly seeking to find help from the Word and through prayer
for the enabling.
Diagnostic
approach
The
ministering brethren should attempt to make regular evaluation of the spiritual
quality of life of each family in the congregation. This may be accomplished
through regular visits to the families in the church and use media for regular communication.
It is best if the brothers make these visitations along with their spouses
except during personal counseling. Pertinent but soft enquiries may be made
about the various aspects of the spiritual quality of each family including regular
family altar, fellowship time and spiritual goal-setting. There may be need for
wise spiritual counsel in vital areas in decision making in families. Parents
may also desire counsel on how to bring up children spiritually. All of these
may govern the pastors’ prayers and preparation for the various teaching and
personal ministries of the church.
Preventive
measures to save families
Spiritual leadership
of churches has to take up the challenge to help build and rebuild families in
the congregation and prevent its ruin and destruction. This necessitates
consistent counseling and encouragement of families to help resolving
conflicts. It has to be attempted at from the early stages of the development
of each family by observing symptoms and through interactions. If the elder is
in regular touch with the families by communicating with them through
visitations, media and by sharing spiritual resources, then timely interventions
will be feasible. Perhaps it will be possible for the life-partner of the elder
to help the wives of the families while the elder may deal with the husbands
and the spouses together.
Therapy to heal
and restore
Sharing
experiences, teaching from the Word and fellowship in prayer in a consistent
manner by the pastors will have therapeutic impact on each family. Interaction
with the families need not always be a group activity because the spouses in a
family may not open up in a group. But encouraging fellowship in groups might
be of immense benefit for mutual encouragement. Spiritual and family counseling
may be the much needed biblical tool that will have to be used to heal the
hurts and resolve the conflicts for reconciliation and restoration. Regular time
of prayer together with each family will have great healing touch on the
spouses and even children.
Follow-up of
family concerns
Pastoral Interaction
with the families shouldn’t be an occasional or one-time exercise. Families have
to be followed up consistently so that spirituality in the spouses can be
assessed, progress determined and rebuilt. Often pastors would need to interact
with the conflicting couples individually and subsequently bring them together
at an opportune time to lead them to reconciliation. Regular and consistent
communication with the families is the key to effective follow-up. It’s a great
challenge for the pastor to find time for it all.
Confronting critical issues
Pastors should
help couples with marital issues not to plunge themselves into despair because
of intensive spousal conflicts. They
should be guarded against getting lured by extraneous forces to think about separation
or even divorce. There are often issues of conflicts, arguments, abuse, disunity,
non-cooperation, submission, paranoia, miscommunication, children’s
indiscipline, in-law concerns and the like which pastors should address
biblically. Biblical truths regarding these may be taught and discussed with
one or both the spouses so that destructive tendencies could be expunged early.
The pastor should not try to lead conflicting spouses to a truce or agreement,
but his goal should be to lead them to confession and repentance of their individual
failures and offences. Pastors should do all that is feasible to prevail over
the couples from moving towards separation or divorce by encouraging and helping
them to rebuild the broken walls of their family life.
If
any divorced individual or couples or if remarried divorcees express interest
in coming into or continuing in church fellowship, they and their protagonists
may be taught the biblical teachings on this. The elders may convince them by
explaining why the Bible doesn’t permit receiving such persons into fellowship
except in the case of an innocent partner on whom divorce was forced upon by
the departing partner. But the church has to be convinced about such partner’s
innocence with ample evidence and testimony. However, the separated or divorced
believers may not be treated with contempt, but permitted to attend church
gatherings if they so desire. The unmarried divorcees may be received into
fellowship eventually if they express brokenness and repentance and remain
without remarriage. The congregation may be taught to deal with them with
kindness and not to embarrass them.
In
matters related to separation, divorce and remarriage of the divorcees, pastors
face great challenges in carrying the whole congregation with them because of
divergent views on these issues by many. Pastors have to prevail over any such
unbiblical views through consistent teaching and proper exposition of the commandments
of Jesus and the Apostles, without developing schisms and divisions in the
church. This requires much grace and wisdom.
Conclusion
One of the greatest challenges faced by many
local churches is the lack of preparedness of elders in handling family
conflicts. But if elders don’t get spiritually prepared to meet these
challenges, it will lead to surge in the number of unresolved family problems. Victorious
families are the result of how well the pastors take up the challenge in
helping to build and rebuild families.
