Pastor: Don't Make This Grave Error

Below is an excerpt from a 9Marks article, dated
3-18-2022, by Dr. Jeremy Pierre, dean of students and associate professor of biblical counseling at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. 3-min read.

People want to understand their own experience.

People see therapists to make sense out of their own experience. This is not in itself a problem. The problem is that therapeutic models have largely emerged from a secular culture characterized by a deep valuing of what Carl Truman describes as expressive individualism. Human experience is understood not from the external reference point of sacred order, but rather from the internal reference point of perceived happiness.

A pastor is not a therapist. But that does not mean he overlooks personal experience. Rather, it means he helps people see their experience from a much broader perspective — how God designed people to relate to himself and to his sacred ordering of creation. God designed people to love him and others (Matt 22:37-40), and this design purpose is how we understand healthy functioning. It is the great privilege of human experience — a privilege restored to humanity by God himself becoming a man (Heb 2:10-11).

The redemptive work of Jesus is the only way to ultimately make sense of human experience. This includes an individual’s personal experience, too.

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Pastors address personal experience as neither unimportant nor all-important.

“E.g.; Pastors may dismiss people's trauma and mental health experiences.”

Richard Lee

Your job as a pastor is neither to overlook the importance of personal experience nor to venerate it as sacred. Pastors can commit both errors.

As in the opening example, I’ve seen pastors dismiss the experiences of their people because those experiences seem odd ["weird"], unsettling, or “worldly.” Dismissal is almost guaranteed to send your people looking to others who will help them understand themselves. And we rob our people of the explanatory power of the Word for personal experience.

The biblical authors themselves don’t ignore individual experience, but address it in light of higher realities.

When Jesus spoke to the woman at the well, he did so as if her domestic situation mattered.

“When Jesus wept with Lazarus's family (although Jesus knew He would be raising Lazarus);

He did so because their traumatic experience mattered.”

Theresa Lee

Peter’s occupation as a fisherman mattered. Timothy’s stomach problems mattered. The false teaching threatening the church in Galatia as opposed to what was threatening the church in Corinth mattered.

As a pastor, you should never imply, “Your unique experience doesn’t matter. Truth does.” Instead, make it clear that Truth helps you understand how your unique experience matters.

I’ve seen pastors commit the other error, too. They get caught up in a person’s experience and feel uneasy offering commentary. They don’t want to seem dismissive, so they unknowingly affirm the person’s bad takes on everything from what it means to be happy to how they see themselves. Pastors can fear being seen as the trite “Bible answers” guy that they neglect their duty to actually speak solid ideas from Scripture, helping a person begin to see their experience in the light of God’s kindness, faithfulness, and redemptive intentions in their unique situation. Pastors should not imply, Your unique experience is all that matters. Truth can wait. They should rather say, Truth helps you experience more fully who God made you to be.

So how do you address human experience well? By setting it in its proper order.

Pastors help their people see themselves in relation to God and to his sacred order.

Pastors say to their people, You were made to see yourself as God sees you, not as you prefer to be seen. God’s first conversation with Adam was about Adam’s identity, telling him who he was and what he’d been designed to do (Gen 1:28). Adam needed words from God to make sense of himself. That’s true of all people created in God’s image. They don’t know how they fit into the order of things without God revealing it to them.

That’s why the rest of creation can be described as the sacred order. The Holy God designed creation to reflect his holiness. He ordered creation to reflect the truth of his own mind and the beauty of his own character. He then placed individuals within that order. This means truth and beauty are not subjectively determined by individuals. In other words, you don’t understand yourself truly apart from the sacred order in which you were placed.

This is why a pastor always has his Bible open. It’s not to ignore what a person describes of his own experience, but rather to be able to say, “Your unique experience matters, and is only rightly understood in light of truths revealed from outside you. Let’s consider a few.” And then, he unpacks one or two of the countless themes in Scripture that illuminate different aspects of what a person is going through. None of it is to dismiss personal experience, but to illuminate it.

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Full Article: https://www.9marks.org/article/youre-a-pastor-not-a-therapist/