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Healthy Boundaries and Pastoral Ministry & Counseling:

The Duty of Pastoral and Community Care and General Governing Standards

A Sacred Trust

Ministry practice is a sacred trust. Congregants and persons needing pastoral counseling seek out the experience of the divine as a pathway for healing, whether the brokenness is of the spirit or of the flesh, or whether it has its roots in the cruelest experiences of life. When a person enters a church or a church-related environment and seeks direct help from and relationship with a pastor, in a very visceral way, God has been called into the conversation, too, and for some of the most broken persons, the minister’s words and God’s words become one and the same.

And so it is a sacred trust that is being placed in a pastor who counsels, preaches and leads a congregation of people seeking to understand God’s will for their lives, who want to worship to the glory of God, and who want to please their pastor so as to also please their God. Religious bodies have a tendency to make icons of their leaders, to set them on a pillar and turn them into gods. (Benyei, 31)  “We do this because we want to believe that our pastor embodies all the wonderful things that we feel we cannot be, or the wonderful things that our parents could not be.” (Id.)  

The sacred trust that is healthy ministry carries with it the power of redemption to a soul that is troubled by its history in this world. “We want to imagine that our pastor is the unstinting caretaker that will never abandon us, never hurt us, never do wrong by us and always protect us, leading us beside the still waters of safety and security.” (Id.) When that sacred trust is broken, the results for the person of fragile faith is catastrophic, for the last bastion of hope, the hope that is in God, is shattered. The psychological pain that is visited upon the congregant/counselee from a broken sacred trust in the pastor/counselor is magnified and takes on cosmic proportions. “Not only are victims betrayed by a trusted professional, but they are betrayed by one who professed to represent God: Hence, they feel betrayed by God as well.” (Fortune, 110)

A well-known ministry resource, Mastering Pastoral Counseling, by Archibald D. Hart, et al, extends the crucial nature of the sacred trust into the pastoral counseling office: “When we sit in the counseling room with another person, we represent the church and the good name of Jesus Christ.  When we exploit the vulnerability of the hurting person under our care, the pain and destruction that results is incalculable and long lasting.” (39) And specifically, for women who have a history of sexual abuse, Jim Smith warns further:  “Pastors have to be especially careful with sexually abused persons. A lot of them have been abused by their fathers or important male figures. So, we need to build relationships without being exploitive or abusive.” (119)

When Trust is Broken

A broken sacred trust has far-ranging and life-long consequences for the victim. When the betrayal by the one who represents God is projected by the congregant as a direct rejection of her or him by God, the foundation of her or his relationship with God is shaken as well, and it may never recover. (id.) When the broken sacred trust occurs within the penumbra of a formal church setting, there is further damage that invariably results. Writing about just such a broken trust in a church where the male pastor broke boundaries and caused psychological damage to the female victims, Marie Fortune observed: “Because the church did not act adequately in response to their call for help, the [women] reasonably concluded that neither God nor the body of Christ was present to them in their suffering. This crisis became a crisis of faith. Seeing the church as a source of pain, suffering, deceit, and betrayal the women withdrew from involvement with [the church].” (supra, 111)

The sacred trust is held by the pastor, and is the ultimate responsibility of the pastor, not the congregant/counselee, because there is an inherent inequality in the power held by each of the parties in their roles. Whether a minister is a gregarious or a humble person does not matter; the role of pastor, because of the projection placed on that role by the church, carries power in and of itself.  The congregant/counselee is an inferior in the power dynamics, again not because of individual characteristics, but simply by role. This is why healthy clergy boundaries are essential to the maintenance of the sacred trust.

Clergy Boundaries  

Marilyn Peterson, in her book, At Personal Risk: Boundary Violations in Professional-Client Relationships, teaches that the potential for professional boundary violations “derives from the space that exists between the knowledgeable professional and the vulnerable client.” (34)  It is the dynamic of turning over one’s personal power to the pastor that leaves the congregant/counselee vulnerable. Women, especially, have conditioned responses to male authority figures, such as clergy in a system wherein only males hold that power of holy office. These conditioned responses “remind [them] that professionals know more, they are in charge, and they will establish the rules. [They] are to listen attentively, show [the professional] proper respect, and comply with their instructions. Until there is substantial reason to doubt the professional’s credibility, they will accept the difference in status as a societal norm.” (id., 23) 

Maintaining healthy clergy boundaries therefore is the sole responsibility of the professional in any relationship with a congregant or counselee. The responsibility for a breach of healthy pastoral boundaries is always 100% accountable to the pastor/counselor. This is because pastors and counselors invite and expect the suffering and the disoriented to come into church and into the counseling office. Persons seeking help in counseling give up much of their power to the counselor, and the counselor in turn must take great care not to exploit or abuse this power. (Patton, 219)  Pastors and counselors cannot prevent people from bringing their baggage inside the church’s doors, but pastors can, and must, in the practice of good boundaries setting and awareness, keep from getting “hooked” by the care-seeker’s vulnerabilities as well as the caregiver’s own vulnerabilities. This is the beauty of the gift of boundaries. A pastor who decides to offer counseling must be very clear at the outset as to his or her competencies to counsel in certain areas of practice, as to whom the pastor chooses to counsel (so as not to invite dual relationships and conflicts of interest), and as to the duration of the counseling relationships (so as not to confuse his role or overstep his competency). (McClintock, 118) 

Vulnerability and Exploitation

People who are emotionally needy or mentally not well tend to project their dysfunctional stories on their caregivers. By projection, it is meant that people “often come [to the counselor] in the midst of ‘scandal’: they are tired, beaten down, discouraged, ashamed, uncertain, weak.” (Lebacqz, in Ragsdale, 103)   They perceive themselves to be the outsider. They then project that image onto others, not seeing those qualities within themselves. In common terms, this is blame-shifting. A caregiver who cannot maintain good boundaries will blame a client for the client’s inability to attain healing, and thereby become frustrated and burned out. In reality, the counseling efforts of the caregiver have become ineffective, and even when it is obvious that it is time to terminate the counseling relationship and refer the counselee to another provider, a counselor whose boundaries have failed cannot recognize the burnout and instead blames the counselee for the failure of the counseling relationship. Adequate supervision by a peer or oversight committee can prevent this breakdown in the counseling relationship by recognizing the red flags of burnout and intervening on behalf of the integrity of the process.

In similar fashion, each counseling relationship between opposite gender participants is fraught with the very real potential for unhealthy transference and countertransference, dynamics that threaten the integrity of the counseling relationship and which pose great risk to the counselee if proper boundaries are not maintained by the counselor. (Courtois, 459) “The opportunity for the abuse of power often presents itself in the human tendency to relate to persons in the present as if they were persons from the past.” (Patton, 219) This dynamic manifests in the pastoral context in the counselee relating to the pastor/counselor on the basis of their past relationships with other authority figures (parents, older siblings, other pastors). A counselee/parishioner may feel that the pastor has a romantic interest in this relationship, or that the parishioner has to subjugate her or his own wishes and needs to please the pastor and be accepted by the pastor as being “worthy.”  

On the other hand, a counselee experiencing transference might feel rejected by the pastor/counselor because of prior rejecting experiences. (id.) For this reason, it is ill advised for a general-practice male counselor to attempt to provide therapy for a woman who has been victimized, for transference is almost certain to occur, and countertransference, a therapist’s emotional entanglement with his client/parishioner is a very real risk as well. (Courtois, 459) Incest therapy is a specialized practice within the field of counseling, and should not be attempted by someone of either gender who is not specially and clinically trained to provide care to the adult victim of childhood incest. (id. 458) Dr. Fleming states that a lengthy counseling relationship: …inherently intensifies the nature of the relationship between the counselor and the counselee and forces the counselee to begin to feel that which they previously dissociated away. The very relationship begins to makes (sic) old feelings fresh rather than remaining buried. The coping mechanisms that were first adopted in childhood of numbing dissociation and acting as if the world is trustworthy while keeping oneself aloof from human interaction, breaks down. (6)

A pastor/counselor who suffers from a messianic complex, the misguided and deluded belief that she or he can cure anyone and everyone, will tend to exhibit grandiose behavior. It is essential for the maintenance of healthy boundaries that a pastor/counselor acknowledge the limits of competence and availability. Failure to do so is an egregious boundary violation that puts the client/parishioner at great risk. Having surrendered personal power to the pastor/counselor who claims to be able to cure the brokenhearted, there is a loss of empowerment and centering completely when the grandiose (false or overstated) claims fail to produce the promised result. (Patton, 215-216)

Competence to Provide Pastoral Counseling

Pastoral counseling, as defined by the American Association of Pastoral Counseling, is “a unique form of psychotherapy which uses spiritual resources as well as psychological understanding for healing and growth. It is provided by certified pastoral counselors, who are not only mental health professionals but who have also had in-depth religious and/or theological training.” First and foremost, a pastoral counselor is not a pastor who merely does counseling. (McClintock, 118)  The designation of pastoral counselor is specific, authorized by certification, and has its own identity and rules of ethics. A pastor who is confused about whether he or she is or is not a true pastoral counselor risks confusing the potential client/parishioner about his or her competence to handle the specific brokenness presented by the counselee.

Howard Clinebell, a well-known pastoral care expert, is very clear about the differences between pastoral counseling and pastoral care. “Pastoral counseling is a focused form of pastoral care that is primarily geared toward caring for individuals, couples, and families who are experiencing particular personal, behavioral, or relational problems, which they wish to change. It is time limited and oriented toward helping people make choices or changes that will improve the quality of their lives and relationships. Pastoral counseling or psychotherapy is different from pastoral care because it tends to have a clear and negotiated beginning and ending. Pastoral counseling consists of an agreement between the counselor and the counselee to work together for a limited period of time in order to address particular life problems.” (98)

Professor Clinebell describes the credentials and associations crucial to identifying oneself as a pastoral counselor:

“Finally, there is the issue of whether the pastoral caregiver has the training and the time to devote to pastoral care or therapy, or whether he has been commissioned by the employing religious body to practice counseling and therapy. A qualified pastoral counselor will have a minimum of a master’s degree in pastoral counseling, which included a supervised practicum. Ideally the person will belong to the American Association of Pastoral Counselors (AAPC) and be up-to-date in counseling methodology.” (Id. 99)

Misrepresenting or overstating one’s counseling competence are serious boundary violations.  Failure to refer a client/parishioner to a specialist is a violation of boundaries and of the sacred trust that is so tenuous in a counseling relationship with a severely troubled care-receiver. And failure to participate in regular continuing education in counseling theory and practice, including boundaries training, is irresponsible and itself a boundary violation. (Kornfeld, 112) The requirement of specialized training and concentration is crystal clear:  “Of critical importance for facilitators [of an incest recovery therapy program] are: adequate training in addressing sexual abuse issues in a counseling context, experience working with groups [of incest survivors], and competent clinical skills.” (Chew, xiv.) 

Special Care Needed in Counseling Victims with a History of Sexual Abuse

A pattern of ineffective and irresponsible treatment of a person with a sex abuse history is described in the literature:

The therapist typically perceives quite correctly that the patient’s defenses serve to avoid remembering and working through a traumatic event or series of events. The therapist assures the patient that she will be well once the trauma is uncovered. The patient valiantly tries to remember the trauma and in fact does recover painful and frightening memories. As that happens, the patient begins to experience dramatic worsening of symptoms, often including self-injury and a variety of panic symptoms.  The patient is fearful and reaches out to the therapist, who tries to be available…There follows a long period of intensive therapy, again marked by uncovering of more trauma, more exacerbation of symptoms, and increasing intensity of treatment… This type of pattern following the valiant and sincere efforts of the therapist leads to a general pessimism.

L. Johnson, Psychotherapy in the Age of Accountability (WW Norton: New York, 1995, in Chew, 136)

“This vignette illustrates the potential for a co-created downward spiral for both the client and the therapist.” (Chew, 137)  This is a classic example of clergy burnout, the situation that develops when the caregiving professional gets overly involved in the life and story of the care-receiver such that merger occurs, and the professional gets drawn and emotionally exhausted by the situation.  When burnout occurs, the professional is more likely to display anger, judgment, frustration, and impatience with the care-seeker, often blaming the parishioner for the way he or she feels. When this happens, the counselee’s sense of debilitation extends beyond the counseling room.“ Depression is reinforced, a sense of inadequacy permeates, and hopelessness is unnecessarily prolonged.” (Id., 138)   

Clergy Self-Care

Clergy self-care is a boundary issue, and failure to practice self-care is a boundary violation of a very dangerous sort for the parishioner/counselee. If a pastor/counselor has in place supervision by a peer serving another setting, or by a spiritual director, a counselor of the pastor’s own, or by a pastor-parish team within the church, these patterns can be identified as they are occurring, and a referral can be made for the parishioner/counselee to another caregiver. Without such supervision, the pastor/counselor bears the sole responsibility for the damage that is sure to occur in the life of the very person the pastor has pledged to protect and nurture—the care receiver.  

Availability and Length of Pastoral Care Relationship

Healthy boundary setting necessarily involves explicit agreement between pastor/counselor and the congregant/counselee. Failure to define when, where, and how the confidential counseling will take place blurs the boundaries between professional work and friendship and between reasonable accessibility and intimacy, allowing for confusion and misinterpretation to seep into the professional relationship.

Counseling needs to take place in expected places, at expected times, for a limited number of minutes per session, and for a limited and defined number of sessions. The sessions should be limited to an hour or less, and if the counseling is done by a pastor who has an office in a church, sessions should be held in a sound-protected space where there is a window so that the counselor can be seen, and take place when there is a church secretary or other person of the church nearby. These boundaries clearly signal the expectation of the counselor that these contacts are professional, safe, and for the sole interest of the counselee/parishioner. (Smith, in Hart, 28-29)  “The church should be a place where boundaries are predictable; that is, where there is consistency and continuity.” (Fortune, in Ragsdale, 83) 

In this age of immediate access by cellphone and email, the pastor/counselor must be clear about her or his availability to clients and parishioners. (Courtois, 358-359; Hart, 165)  In the absence of pastoral emergencies (death or active dying, accidents and serious proximate traumas, suicidal threats, etc.), there is no good faith reason to accept communications from or to initiate communications of a professional nature after 8:00 pm or before 8:00 am.   This keeps the relationship on a professional footing. Boundaries are gifts that can be used by wise pastors and counselors to help them know where to stop and the other person begins. (Fortune, in Ragsdale, 79) Late-night contacts bespeak of an intimacy that is as improper as it is confusing to the counselee/parishioner.  This is especially true for an adult victim of childhood incest, as the incidences of childhood incestuous assault most often take place in the nighttime or pre-dawn hours. The risk for harmful transference is very high. “Mixed messages promote confusion. Especially for survivors of childhood abuse, for whom appropriate boundaries as children in relation to adults were nonexistent, predictable boundaries in a congregation are a priority for their healing.” (Id., 83)

Experts are uniformly clear—church-based counseling by a pastor should be limited to just a few sessions. (Doehring, 61; Hart, 29; Kornfeld, 95, Sacred Trust Boundary Training, 17; Clinebell, 9)   “A minister cannot engage in long-term pastoral counseling unless the pastor has been trained in pastoral counseling, is receiving appropriate supervision, and has clearly negotiated a treatment plan with a care-seeker that includes long-term pastoral counseling.  Pastoral caregivers must not provide care beyond their limits of expertise.” (Doehring, 61) Additionally, a full-time pastor risks burnout if she or he tries to have a long-term care practice and an active church ministry. It goes back to the nature of the messianic complex, the mistaken belief on the part of the pastor that he or she can be all things to all people all the time.  (Chew, 130, 137; Clinebell, 16)

Dual Relationships and Conflicts of Interest

A counselor who is also the client’s pastor creates a dual relationship, a mixing of roles in ministry and the resultant rules of engagement for the multiple roles. (McClintock, 122)  Not all of these mixed relationships are harmful, as long as clear boundaries are maintained and the pastoral care in counseling is short in duration and problem-focused. The role of pastor in a Christian church—to bring people into the healing and transformative experience of God through the person of Jesus Christ and with the empowerment of the Holy Spirit, is accomplished through the presentation of meaningful worship, an inspiring spoken Word, and a safe and nurturing pastoral presence, both in public and in private.  In healthy companionship, competent, short-term and issue-focused counseling by a pastor brings the care-seeker into the confidential healing presence of the love of God, often using prayer, scripture, and contemplative practice in a safe and secure environment, so that the Holy Spirit can do its work in the soul of the troubled person.

However, when either environment is compromised such that it is not safe, the dual relationship creates a conflict for the pastor/counselor and the counselee/parishioner such that the latter is vulnerable to exploitation in each role.  That is why short-term counseling demonstrates the exercise of good boundaries, along with competent referrals if longer term or more specialized counseling is indicated. The roles of a pastor and of a counselor differ somewhat. (Kornfeld, 95)  The pastor of a church is paid primarily to shepherd the congregation as the body of Christ, and not to primarily be a counselor.  

When a pastor who is also a counselor sponsors a parishioner/counselee for a staff position within the church, and serves as the supervisor of that person involved in counseling with the pastor, the dangers are obvious.  Once a pastor obtains confidential and sensitive knowledge about a parishioner, there is a conflict of interest should there develop a problem with the staff member’s work or relationships with other persons in the church.   The risk of a breach of confidentiality runs headlong into the pastor’s duty to protect the ministry and work of the church. Short-term counseling does not eliminate this risk altogether, but it does minimize it. Certainly, when the pastor is actively counseling a parishioner, and knows that parishioner to have deep-seated and troubling emotional or mental health challenges, the pastor should never nominate such a person for a staff position or a position of ongoing responsibility within the church. (Smith, in Hart, 26)

When a pastor who is also a counselor starts a small fellowship and study group in his or her private home, the pastor should not invite an active counselee to join that group and spend time in the pastor’s home.  This is especially so when there is the reasonable alternative of another group to which to channel the parishioner. When there is no such group, it is still the pastor’s responsibility to tell the counselee that it would be a dual relationship, and not safe or healthy for the parishioner to join the small group at that time.  Boundary-setting is always the responsibility of the pastor.

When a pastor is counseling a troubled person and knows that a major source of the parishioner’s brokenness stems from family history, abuse, and dysfunction, the pastor should not counsel other members of the same family at the same time.  There is a huge risk that confidences will be broken, and these professional relationships must be juggled such that none of the persons being counseled gets a clear deck and undivided loyalty in which to do their soul work. The effect on the victim of childhood abuse is palpable; trust is compromised. (Smith, in Hart 33-34)

When a pastor/counselor/supervisor also becomes personal friends with the parishioner/counselor/staff member, another layer to the multiple relationships increases the vulnerability of the care-seeker.  The congregant gains personal knowledge about the pastor and the pastor gains intimate knowledge about the congregant. Telling a vulnerable congregant that he or she is “special,” that he or she is the pastor’s “best friend,” that he or she “loves her” is very confusing language to a parishioner and a counselee.  For an unresolved incest victim who was denied the proper familial love and friendship of the family, that type of language and friend relationship is very hooking. It is irresponsible of the professional to let the professional relationship become personal; it is a breach of ethics and the standard of care expected of clergy professionals to knowingly use love and personal friendship language with a vulnerable person within their pastoral influence.  Moreover, asking and using a care-seeker to perform personal tasks for the pastor violates ministerial boundaries in a situation where these dual relationships are unhealthy in the first place.  

There is a risk that one or both people are feeling a romantic connection in a counseling relationship, and there is also the risk that others will view the multiple relationships between a pastor and a congregant as something more intimate than what is intended.  (McClintock, 122-124) This situation creates a hazard for the pastor, but invites real harm to the parishioner who is likely to be shunned, talked about, and scapegoated when the inevitable problems arise and are brought into the public square.

When all of these relationships coalesce at once, trouble is sure to follow.  The pastor, expected to juggle a ball or two, perhaps, cannot keep all of these balls up in the air at once, making no inadvertent mistakes that breach confidentiality, being fully present to all situations, and not experiencing stress, frustration, and burnout.  The requirement of referral exists here for all after-comers so as to keep pure the primary counseling relationship. (Hart, 126)

A pastor who has his or her own agenda and needs for the effective ministry of the church should never actively and intentionally bring a counselee into the leadership of worship or church administration.  There is born a conflict of interest that is irresolvable in the best interests and safety of the counselee, vulnerable to exploitation as the parishioner is by virtue of the unequal power dynamics at play.  The counseling relationship is exploited when a pastor or a church governing board attempts to “help” a counselee to heal by recommending her or him for a critical position within the church, and to do so is irresponsible and is a serious boundary violation.  This conflict places the pastor at risk, but it is only the parishioner who is vulnerable. (Fortune, 121; Kornfeld, 294) Moreover, when a church governing board attempts to resolve a staffing problem within the church on the back of a vulnerable person who is in counseling with the pastor, exploitation has occurred and the church bears responsibility for the systematic breakdown for the inevitable psychic damage to the counselee/staff member.

Red Flags and the Need for Referral

It is solely the responsibility of the pastor/counselor to maintain awareness of the potential for destruction of the professional-client relationship.  A counselee cannot be charged with this responsibility, for the counselee’s particular vulnerabilities often cloud the reality of what may be developing in the relationship with the pastor.  All of these roles are mentioned here, as they are all possible within the dynamic of the multiple relationships found in any particular church family setting. Typical boundary training materials provided to clergy in training sessions address the issue of “red flags” directly as a self-care issue for pastors and counselors.  The Faith Trust Institute, headed by Dr. Marie Fortune, in its boundary training course, “A Sacred Trust,” addresses the issue of clergy and red flags with the following warning:  

Clergy and spiritual teachers tend to be busy people juggling multiple tasks and multiple expectations from their congregants and students.  We are also easily tempted to believe that we are indispensable. The consequence can often be ignoring our needs and our health which then puts us at greater risk to make unwise choices and engage in conduct which may bring harm to someone.” (Course Workbook, 53)

The messianic complex suffered by many clergy poses a great risk to those within their care.  When a clergyperson assumes and presumes that no one else can handle the counseling of a troubled parishioner as well as the pastor can, and when the pastor further assumes that he or she is impervious to all the trappings that counseling an incest victim brings, the pastor is exploiting the counselee for the pastor’s own need, the narcissistic, grandiose need to be the church family alpha, the savior of the lost. (Edelstein, in “A Sacred Trust,” 69)

Proper supervision of clergy who choose to counsel can head off boundary violations through observance and early interventions when red flags and sexual grooming behavior make themselves apparent such as:  the pastor/counselor puts a great deal of time and mental energy into the relationship; the pastor/counselor accepts and initiates communication by private means (telephone, text, or email) during off-hours (late night or pre-business morning hours); the counseling sessions are extended beyond an hour, or they are increasing in frequency; the pastor/counselor engages in touch (full-contact hugging or embracing, patting, hand-holding) with the parishioner/counselee, especially with full embraces at the end of sessions; the pastor/counselor engages in the use of “love language” with the client; the use of hidden or oblique messages used both ways by the pastor/counselor and the parishioner./counselee—“fishing” language in the nature of subtle flirtation; counseling sessions that spend an inordinate amount of time on sexual matters and storytelling; the pastor/counselor begins to notice and express more his or her own marital frustrations; the pastor/counselor becomes a primary “rescuer” of the parishioner/counselee (rather than calling the spouse or 911 in the midst of the parishioner/counselee’s crisis); inviting the parishioner/counselee to meet in private or at off-hour times; the pastor/counselor invites the parishioner/counselee into positions within the church that keep the parishioner close to the pastor and in frequent contact (staff positions that involve close work with the pastor, small groups where the pastor is a participant or the host); refusal or failure to end the counseling relationship, even when instructed to do so by church leadership; denial of the red flags. (Hart, 155; Doehring, 21; Courtois, 349)

One of the most important things a counselor or pastor can do for a person who needs specialized or long-term counseling is to make competent referrals for them to other providers.  Pastors who counsel need specialized training in the waters they attempt to navigate; it is simply not enough to self-proclaim a “God-given gift” or a “way with these things” when counseling an unresolved victim of sexual abuse or domestic violence.  (Clinebell, 11) And when it becomes obvious at the commencement of the counseling relationship that the care-seeker is disturbed psychologically or for “other reasons are in need of psychotherapeutic, medical, psychiatric, or help from a specialized agency,” then “if this appears to be the case, begin immediately the process of making an effective referral.” (Id., 123, Hart, 29)  

The foregoing general rules of practice in counseling underscore basic healthy boundary-setting for clergy.  A pastor serving a family-size church (100-140 or more people) has a potential counseling base of 100 exponentially multiplied with the family systems that could come into play.  There is simply not enough time in the work week to conduct much counseling, and a pattern of counseling a person (and at times the person’s spouse) once, twice, even three times a week raises suspicion that even if not justified, creates problems for the pastor and the person being counseled.  The counselee will be prone to think she or he has a “special relationship” with the pastor, and others could certainly see it that way, too. The results can be devastating to the person being counseled. Church members can get jealous and ostracize the counselee, even chasing their fellow congregant out of the church altogether so as to preserve and protect the pastorate. (Hart, 27) 

Seminary Professor Howard Clinebell, a recognized authority in pastoral care and counseling, weds the problem of the ego-centered pastor and the too-long counseling model: By default, pastors who see themselves as a one-person band rather that the conductor of an orchestra often deprive troubled people of needed specialized help that is available in their communities… A wise referral is one of the most significant caregiving services a pastor can offer suffering persons and their families. (393Professor Clinebell laments that, “some pastors feel that to refer is to admit inadequacy or failure.” (394) He suggests that referrals should be made for:  

• Those who can be helped more effectively by someone else

• Those with problems for which effective specialized agencies are available in the community

• Those who do not begin to find pastoral help useful in four or five sessions*

• Those whose needs obviously surpass the pastor’s time and/or training

• Those with severe chronic financial needs

• Those who need medical care and/or institutionalization

• Those who need intensive psychotherapy

• Those about the nature of whose problem one is in doubt

• Those who are severely depressed and/or suicidal

• Those toward whom the pastor has a strong negative reaction or intense sexual attraction (395)

*There is a split of opinion among professionals about the number of sessions that are appropriate in counseling scenarios with a pastor, from as little as three sessions to a maximum of eight, but there is general agreement that eight sessions would be the outside limit, all other indicators being positive and helpful for the counselee.

When terminating a counseling relationship, it is up to the pastor/counselor to tell the counselee that the end of the counseling has come.  This should be done in person, with great sensitivity and with opportunity given to the counselee to express her or his feelings in this regard.  (Graham, 109) Where possible, healthy boundaries dictate that this be a joint decision, that the care-receiver recognizes that the counseling is at its natural and successful end.  In the case where the counselor or pastor recognizes the red flags that interfere with a healthy counseling relationship, or where burnout has occurred, then the pastor must find a suitable referral source and follow up with reasonable efforts to see to it that the hand-off has been completed. (Clinebell, 108)  In no case should a counselor/pastor “drop” a care-receiver without this process of conversation and closure.

Confidentiality   

Nothing is more basic in the relationship between and counselor and a counselee or between a pastor and a parishioner than the sacred trust of confidentiality.   This pillar of pastoral care “respects the time-tested clergy tradition of privileged communication, rooted in the inviolability of the priestly confessional and the biblical idea of sanctuary.” (Clinebell, 83)   With very few exceptions (stated intent to harm oneself or another), confidential disclosures made to clergy members in their professional capacity in the course of the discipline expected by the denomination are privileged.  (AAPC Code of Ethics) The pastor cannot be questioned about them in a court of law (C.R.S. 13-90-107(1)(c)) and the pastor cannot tell others of them for the pastor’s own purposes or for purposes of church management.

Boundary training materials set forth clearly the pastor’s obligation in a counseling setting:

Once such limits are determined and defined, pastors must then decide how best to communicate those limits in confidential settings. Although it can be an awkward way to begin a conversation with a parishioner, I have at times found it necessary to say, ‘I shall do my best to keep confidential what you tell me. However, if you disclose something to me that is illegal or puts yourself or another person in harm’s way, I will be morally obligated to help you or protect another person even if that means telling what you’ve told me.’  (Audette, 80) 

Court systems have their own standards, and those standards are helpful in determining what may legally be heard by jurors and judges, perhaps, but in the church setting there is a separate code of confidentiality.  A pastor’s first duty is to protect the confidences of his parishioner/counselee. Discussed above are the risks associated with being in a position to receive confidential information in the first place, and that is not discussed here in this section.  A pastor’s duty before disclosing sensitive information in the life of a parishioner/counselee is to first ask twelve discernment questions.  These are materials I have created for my boundary training seminars, and they are outlined at the end of this chapter.   (Clinebell, 268; Hart 31-33; Benyei, 101)  As the holder of intimate and sensitive information, the counselor/pastor is invested with the sacred trust (fiduciary duty) to zealously guard it, even if doing so frustrates other goals the pastor may have or interests the church may hold.

Even if the information is suspected or has been the subject of close-door discussion or gossip, having the pastor say it tends to make it etched in stone, because the pastor has the assumed authority of the position and is generally deemed by the pastorate to be above reproach. (Fortune, 9; Benyei, 31,36)  Therefore, the pastor must act with extreme care not to exploit the confidential and/or sensitive stories of counselees and parishioners for the pastor’s own benefit, for preaching purposes, or in defense of the pastor’s actions.

Not everything that is sensitive, potentially damaging information that comes to a pastor is in the nature of a confidential communication, but that does not mean it can be ethically used as a weapon by the pastor to further his or her own agenda.  For example, if Maggie tells Pastor Joe that her neighbor is having an extramarital affair with the church organist, the pastor should not divulge that information in a discussion about whether the church music program needs to be revisited. To do so only serves to visit damage upon the reputation of the church organist so that the pastor can support another musician for the position.  Likewise, if the church organist’s spouse comes to see the pastor for counseling because he fears his marriage is in trouble, the pastor can not ethically tell him what Maggie told him, even if the telling was not in confidence.

An interesting and particularly prickly situation arises where the pastor and his or her spouse witness or hear a sensitive situation or disclosure, the telling of which would visit shame, embarrassment, or harm on the parishioner or counselee involved.  Generally, that information should be protected, subject to the state rules on mandatory disclosure stated above. Just because a pastor’s spouse happened to overhear something or witness something in her or his capacity as the “church spouse,” does not make it “public knowledge.”  The overriding question always must return to that of the sacred trust and the discernment questions referenced above (Doehring, 50), because “[p]eople who go to a clergy person for counseling need to know right from the outset of the helping relationship that their safety and the safety of others will be the pastor’s highest priority.” (McClintock, 154)

Moreover, just because a parishioner has chosen to share sensitive information with other people, the pastor/counselor is not absolved of the duty to keep the confidences private.  The pastor must first have the express permission of the counselee/parishioner before disclosing it to others.

Supervision

Of the pastor/counselor, in the nature of self-care.  Perhaps the most important person in the pastor/counselor’s stable of advisors and supporters is that detached person who can speak truth to the pastor/counselor and will be heard.  This is called professional supervision, and it is critical to healthy boundaries and self-care. (Hart, 157) In fact, supervision is indexed in many authoritative books under the heading, “self-care.” All pastors and counselors should have regular counseling, spiritual direction, or peer supervision on an ongoing basis.  A pastor should also have a pastor-parish team within the church for the confidential discussion of troubling church relationships. Failure to have any of these in place is a breach in the ethical standard of care for a pastor or counselor. (“A Sacred Trust,” Workbook, 18)

Pastors and counselors with a tendency towards narcissism, evidenced by grandiose behavior (overstating credentials, overstating competencies, overstating library resources and depth of academic expertise and experience, black and white thinking, getting emotional needs met in the counseling setting –countertransference, scapegoating, expressing as a victim of the counselee/parishioner, claiming to know exclusively the will of God, ignoring the protocols in place and express directives of leadership, blaming behavior) must have a checks and balances system in place so that they don’t get hooked by their own vulnerabilities.  (Benyei, 54; Hart, 156)

Appropriate self-care expressed through supervision includes the pastor disclosing to the church community his or her counseling activities, without giving away confidential information.  The church where a pastor is employed should be given information about the number of hours the pastor spends counseling, the fees charged (if any), the types of situations with which the pastor is dealing and the pastor’s formal training in those areas, the pastor’s plan for concluding the counseling, and whether and with whom the pastor is getting professional supervision. (Patton, 216-217; McClintock, 119)  Failure to account in this way is a breach of the standard of care for pastors who offer counseling services.

Where other observers have remarked that the counseling relationship and/or pastor/parishioner relationship appears to be “intimate,” “romantic,” or “too close,” the boundary-healthy pastor/counselor will recognize these reports as red flags (whether true or not), and will refer the counselee/parishioner to another setting, immediately seeking supervision. (Graham, 225; McClintock, vi; Doehring, 59)

Likewise, when burnout is occurring to the pastor/counselor, manifested by anger, frustration, judging, blaming, scapegoating, countertransference, and breaches of confidentiality, pastoral supervision is critical for the protection of the counselee/parishioner.  Due to the unequal power positions of the parties, the pastor/counselor has the ability to crush the ego of the care-receiver, damaging the parishioner’s relationship with the pastor, with God, with the church, and with anyone else involved in the counselee’s story.  (Fortune, 33)  

Most often victims are accused of lying; having a grudge against the pastor, or some ulterior motive; being seductive and trapping the pastor, much like Pharaoh’s wife; being sick, neurotic, or needy; or simply being evil.  Victims are most often seen as one-dimensional and through labeling are frequently turned into the impersonal, making it easier to emotionally abuse and kill them. (Benyei, 96)

Duty of the Church to Supervise the Pastor

Counseling services provided by a pastor in a church setting is an authorized ministry of the church. (Patton, 216)  As such, the church must know of the counseling activities of its pastor and must exercise active supervision in this regard.  “The parish minister has an important accountability to the community of faith for the counseling that he or she does.  Pastoral counseling in a parish situation requires that the community, not the pastor alone, be responsible for it.” (Id.)

A church should have in place a written policy regulating their pastor’s counseling activities.  These policies should cover: limits on the number of hours and the description of hours during which a pastor may offer counseling (not including emergencies); the number of times a pastor may counsel an individual care-seeker; persons/situations who should be referred; a policy on mandatory reporting requirements (child and elder abuse); the type of supervision that will be available and required for the pastor (personal therapy, spiritual direction, group peer consultation, continuing education, boundaries training); and a policy for “checking in” with church leadership so as to avoid getting in over the pastor’s head, and burnout. (Kornfeld, 105)  Failure to put these safeguards into place violates the sacred trust that counselees and parishioners reasonably expect from their faith community.

A pastor who does not suggest supervision, or does not think she or he needs it, is foolish and shortsighted.  Supervision aids in protecting both the pastor and the church, but even more importantly it protects the vulnerable person who needs help from the church community. (Id., 94)  A “lone-ranger” minister puts all at risk. “The hallmark of a lone-ranger pastor is the lack of accountability relationships to professional peers or to structures. This isolation does not bode well for healthy boundaries in professional relationships.”  (Fortune, 141) These supervisory systems must be intentional, not occasional. A church that denies that it has a rogue, lone-ranger, out of control pastor sets itself up for heartache and liability for his actions:

The impact of this denial on the victim is that, not only is his or her experience and reality negated, but the victim may become scapegoated in the congregation’s attempt to protect and be loyal to their leader.  As a result, instead of being supported in a dire time of need the victim becomes emotionally separated, perhaps even ostracized, from her community, which is not only very painful but is also tantamount to spiritual death.  (Benyei, 79)

For a sexual assault victim, this spiritual death yanks away from a very fragile, very vulnerable person a major source—perhaps the only source—of emotional support and the loss of faith as a resource to access.  When a person such as this is not believed and is isolated from the faith community as a result, the pain is added to the unresolved pain of the original abuse, enhancing PTSD symptoms, hopelessness, suicidal thoughts, and loneliness. (Id., 79, 96-97)

When There Has Been a Breach of the Ministry Relationship

A church community must act once a boundary violation by their clergy has been exposed.  “The institution has the power and responsibility to protect the people it is called to serve, thereby safeguarding its own credibility.  Once it accepts this responsibility, it has the capacity to name the evil in its midst and to act justly in order to rectify the harm done.”  (Fortune, xiv) Scapegoating the victim in order to protect the offending pastor is a breach of trust. It is a fantasy to deny that bad things do happen in church, and when the pastor is the offender, there is an unwillingness to give up that fantasy, “and so we are prone to deny the truth and deny the truth-tellers.  In so doing, we multiply the injustice.” (Id., 119) And when church leadership does not take action in the face of clergy boundary violations, the victim feels betrayed, angry, and cynical: 

When the news is not something the institution or the community wants to hear, its knee-jerk reaction is to turn on the bearer of the news, often with a vengeance.  First the messenger’s credibility becomes the issue, and then her motivation is suspect. All of this serves to deflect the attention of the church from the real source of the problem, the unethical pastor, and it relieves the church from doing anything about it.  (Id., 120-121)

Conclusion

Ministry is a sacred trust.  It is at the same time, fantastic and mysterious.  It is both powerful and empowering.  It is a special privilege for a pastor to hold the hearts and spirits of a congregation in a grace-filled, caring, and safe place, so that the Spirit of God can do her work to heal the brokenness of the world.  Healthy boundaries, zealously practiced and proclaimed, help the church, its pastor, and most especially its family to maintain its spiritual and emotional health, so that’s God’s holy will may be done.

Twelve Discernment Questions Regarding Confidentiality:

• What is the purpose I have for divulging the information?

• Why is this information relevant for this discussion?  

• How will this information help the parishioner/counselee?  

• Do I have the prior, express permission of the parishioner/counselee to reveal the information in this setting?  

• Will harm come to the parishioner/counselee from the disclosure?  

• How will this disclosure help me, and what is the primary reason for the disclosure?  

• Am I required by law to disclose this information?  

• Will this disclosure impact my ability to continue to work with the parishioner/counselee?

• Will this disclosure shame, embarrass, or humiliate the parishioner/counselee?    

• Will this disclosure tend to drive the parishioner/counselee away from God, or the church, or both?  

• Might this disclosure tend to cause the parishioner/counselee to experience diminished mental health?

• Have I had supervision as to this issue and the boundary issues at play before making the disclosure?  

Sources & Further Reading:

AACP Code of Ethics

Benyei, Candace R., Understanding Clergy Misconduct in Religious Systems: Scapegoating, Family Secrets, and the Abuse of Power, Haworth Pastoral Press (New York: 1998)

Chew, Judy, Women Survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse: Healing Through Group Work, Haworth Press (New York: 1998)

Clinebell, Howard, Basic Types of Pastoral Care & Counseling: Resources for the Ministry of Healing and Growth, 3d ed., Abingdon Press (Nashville: 2011)

Col. Rev. Statute §13-90-107(c)(2016), Witnesses: Who may not testify without consent – definitions…(c) “A clergy member, minister, priest, or rabbi shall not be examined without both his or her consent and also the consent of the person making the confidential communication as to any confidential communication made to him or her in his or her professional capacity in the course of discipline expected by the religious body to which he or she belongs.”

Courtois, Christine A., Healing the Incest Wound: Adult Survivors in Therapy, 2d ed., Norton & Co. (New York: 2010)

Doehring, Carrie, The Practice of Pastoral Care: A Postmodern Approach, Westminster John Knox (Louisville: 2006)

Fortune, Marie, FaithTrust Institute, “A Sacred Trust” video series

Fortune, Marie, Is Nothing Sacred? The Story of a Pastor, the Women He Sexually Abused, and the Congregation He Nearly Destroyed, United Church Press (1999)

Graham, Larry Kent, Care of Persons, Care of Worlds: A Psychosystems Approach to Pastoral Care and Counseling, Abington (Nashville: 1992)

Hart, Archibald D., Gulbranson, Gary L., and Smith, Jim, Mastering Pastoral Counseling, Multnomah Press (Portland: 1992)

Kornfeld, Margaret, Cultivating Wholeness: A Guide to Care and Counseling in Faith Communities, Continuum (New York: 1998)

McClintock, Karen A., Preventing Sexual Abuse in Congregations: A Resource for Leaders, Alban Institute (2004)

Patton, John, Pastoral Care in Context: An Introduction to Pastoral Care, Westminster John Knox (Louisville: 1993)

Peterson, At Personal Risk: Boundary Violations in Professional-Client Relationships, Norton & Co. (New York: 1992)

Ragsdale, Katherine Hancock, ed., Boundary Wars: Intimacy and Distance in Healing Relationships, Pilgrim Press (Cleveland: 1996)

• Fortune, Marie, “The Joy of Boundaries”

• Lebacqz, Karen and Barton, Ronald G., “Boundaries, Mutuality, and Professional Ethics”