Healing and Wholeness in the Christian Life

A Formative Exploration
Columbia Theological Seminary Spiritual Formation Certificate
© June 18, 2001 by Norman Stolpe

The pursuit of this certificate in spiritual formation has corresponded with the second major transition in my ministry career. At the time of my Immersion Week at Makemie Woods in April 1997 I was seeking to discern God’s direction for leaving a seventeen-year ministry as an associate with First Presbyterian Church in Mt. Holly, New Jersey to take a solo pastorate at a new non-denominational church in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. My prayer partner, small group and conversations with Kent Groff and Ben Johnson were important further confirmations of making that move. During the two tumultuous years I served MorningStar Christian Church in Milwaukee, I took three courses at Skyline, and the community there has been a critical support as I struggled to serve and lead a deeply divided congregation.

I felt wounded and in need of healing through that process, and one of the most obvious casualties was my confidence in discerning God’s leading. A variety of forces, including the delay of this course, meant that I was not able to take any courses during the year of transition from the time I left MorningStar Christian Church until I came to be the pastor of Central Christian Church in Dallas, Texas. In that year my wife and I went for a week of retreat and counseling at Fairhaven Ministries in Roan Mountain, Tennessee – a center specializing in a ministry of healing for wounded pastors. An important part of that process was identifying and exploring ways that I contributed to the problem, lessons I am learning, and benefits received through the difficult experience in Milwaukee.

Now, after two delays, this course, “Healing and Wholeness in the Christian Life,” comes almost a year into my new ministry in Texas. As I expect to be taking the rest of my courses in the program in Austin, this one is a sort of bookend on my time with the community at Skyline. The themes of healing and wholeness are particularly appropriate, almost orchestrated (as a Calvinist, I could even say preordained). This course is not just relevant to my present situation; it is clearly part of God’s provision for concluding a time of difficult transition and being prepared for entering into a new era of ministry. As I write this, I am approaching my first anniversary with Central Christian Church and have already experienced a satisfaction and affirmation in ministry as well as hope for future fruitfulness that I never tasted in Milwaukee. This course has helped me address issues of personal wholeness and congregational wholeness.

Personal Wholeness

Henri Nouwen spoke often about wounded healers. The Apostle Paul wrote that God “consoles us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to console those who are in any affliction with the consolation with which we ourselves are consoled by God.” (2 Corinthians 1:4) In personal wholeness, I am facing my aging and mortality, discovering how to reform wholeness out of this time of transition, and learning how to nurture wholeness in my pastoral calling.

Aging and Mortality

Becoming a grandparent, undertaking what I expect will be the last pastoral call of my career, becoming aware of decreased levels of energy during these four years of pursuing this program and making this life transition has been the sort of crisis that James Fowler describes as realizing that old solutions, values and meanings don’t and won’t work any more. In this transition process I have become aware of my aging and mortality. The way I see myself is shifting.

I have not just moved from a long-term associate pastoral role to being a “head of staff,” I am realizing wholeness now means owning my life experience and wisdom, not as a novice just gathering experiences. I am learning the difference between tentativeness and humility, and becoming comfortable with being confident. My image of myself has shifted from apprentice to mentor. I am appropriating a deeper respect for myself.

I am also recognizing personal limits, not just in reduced energy, but also in sensing that the terminus of my career and life are no longer remote and abstract. So along with respect, wholeness calls for some grieving. As Celeste Snowber Schroeder writes of our deepest longings for the many losses of life: “loss of joy, dreams, or expectations, emotional or physical illness, a severed relationship, or even our ache for the presence of God.” (p. 157) Bringing this “ache for the presence of God” up against grieving over my limitations (specifically a disappointing, brief ministry in Milwaukee) and mortality balances my dread of death with an insatiable appetite to be with God. Wholeness in the present is receiving glimmers of God’s presence with joy without settling for less than the full satisfaction that is only possible in the resurrection.

Reforming Wholeness from Transition

In our discussions, Bill Clemmons spoke of “break-in moments that let us see.” For me these past four years have been a protracted, slow motion break-in moment, more like gradually bringing a picture into focus than turning on the lights. Some of this has been very intentional, such as writing out “what I learned from the experience with MorningStar” as part of the counseling at Fairhaven Ministries. Some of it has been purposeful, such as trying to draw as many insights as possible from the courses in this program. And some of it has been seemingly incidental if not accidental, such as alternately giving and receiving support with two old friends as they went through unwelcome ministry career changes in this same time window.

In retrospect, I can see that pursuing training and starting my career in Christian education was a drawing toward spiritual formation, though at that time I did not have the categories to talk about it that way. As I matured, I increasingly shifted my emphasis from cognitive to affective learning. With more experience in teaching ministry I became acutely aware in myself as well as in those I served that, as Bill Clemmons said, “discipleship is not information or even reformation but at God’s hand. The transformation from brokenness to wholeness is a gift from above.

Thus, these courses that I have taken at Skyline have been way stations on this four-year transition, enabling me to examine, be supported in, and extract nourishment from the crises that have pushed me past a certain comfort zone into a new phase of my spiritual journey. The timing of this course on healing and wholeness has been appropriate as it has allowed me to look at and refine my understanding of who and where I am now and to give thanks for the people and difficulties of this four-year crisis.

I struggled with being thankful rather than resentful for having my calling and character attacked, being forced to move my family twice in three years, and having a year of frustrating unemployment. Theophan the Recluse’s image of the “mud bath” became the Holy Spirit’s recurrent and defining tool for shaping me during this time. “When you find that you are being maligned, accept it: it is a kind of healing mud-bath. You do well not to lose the feeling of brotherly friendliness towards those who apply this medicine to you.” (The Art of Prayer, compiled by Igumen Chariton, first published in Russian in 1936, Elizabeth Palmer’s English translation published in 1966, p. 242 in the 1997 paperback edition by Faber and Faber, Boston)

I have journeyed in prayer through the Psalms monthly for about thirty years. Especially during the year of transition between churches, as I was seeking to see myself from God’s perspective and follow God’s direction in a seemingly trackless wilderness, I felt exposed before God. When I came to “O Lord, you have searched me and known me. … Such knowledge is too wonderful for me. … See if there is any wicked way in me” (Psalm 139) on the 19th of each month I first struggled with feelings of embarrassment, that I had let God down by not bringing MorningStar together. I experienced what Celeste Snowber Schroeder described. “We, too, can become naked before God in our journey through the Psalms. We do not have to put on an act that everything in all right. That we are always the triumphant Christians. No! We come in brokenness.” (p. 107)

This line was one of those “break in moments.” It was not just that I am naked before God and want to hide, as Adam and Eve hid in the Garden, but that if I could see myself as God sees me, even in this difficult transition, I would see that I don’t need to hide, I can relax. As the psalmist says, “I come to the end (or trying to count God’s thoughts) and I am still with you.” All through this time, I kept up the practice of my “rule” (started many years earlier and set on paper in Immersion Week). As we practiced lectio divina and centering prayer together during this course, I realized that I had never lost the awareness that I have been with God (or more to the point, that God has been with me) through this whole time.

In the “Prayer in Many Forms” course, I found Ignatius’ description of rhythms of “consolation and desolation” to be very helpful. Particularly the information conversations with those who have shared this journey with me, I began to see that in this past year the period of desolation has faded and consolation has dawned. Thomas Keating reminded me to accept and live in this consolation without clinging to it or analyzing it. “As soon as we start enjoying Him, we have to reflect, ‘O boy, I’m enjoying God!’ And as soon as we do that, we are taking a photograph of the experience. Every reflection is like a photograph of reality. It isn’t our original experience. …When we experience the presence of God, if we can just not think about it, we can rest in it for a long time.” (pp. 84-85)

While some folk from MorningStar questioned my calling, many others were quite affirming. One of these supporters encouraged me (and raised a lot of money to make it possible) to try to start a community chaplaincy ministry. Nursing homes, funeral parlors, apartment complexes, businesses, day-care centers, pulpit supply and interim pastorate. As much as I tried and even had some degree of “success” in these endeavors, I saw myself ever more clearly, and I believe from God’s perspective. It is not just that pastoring is what I like to do or do well. In one way, pastoring is not so much what God has called me to do. A pastor is what God has been and continues to form me to be.

The attempt at chaplaincy put me in a lot of short-term emergency situations with people who were not especially interested in an ongoing relationship. It required me to spend well over half of my time selling and managing the “business.” Even though a small advisory board guided me, I was cut off from the accountability and community of congregational life. I was afraid I was a disappointment to those who had invested time, energy and money into the chaplaincy ministry. Toward the end of this time, I got a major chaplaincy opportunity to help a small struggling church as interim pastor. This was the break-in moment in which I saw (I believe from God’s perspective) that I was not a chaplain but a pastor. I was alive and thankful for those who had made it possible for me to see who I was not so I could better see who I truly am.

Nurturing Wholeness in Pastoral Calling

As the clamor of those in MorningStar who questioned my calling grew more raucous, I futilely made adjustment to try to satisfy their complaints. Both my ministry and I became distorted. During my few months as interim for Lake Drive Church, I felt a freedom to be more myself as I knew I would be with them only a short time. Suddenly, and almost unconsciously, the desolation faded and I emerged into this new consolation. I was effective without having to manipulate myself into something I was not.

Bill Clemmons asked us, “What happens when a tree tries to become a rosebush? What happens when we try to be what we are not, when the interior and exterior are incongruent?” By trying to accommodate myself to other people’s expectations of a pastor, my emphasis shifted from sharing the overflow of my relationship with God with the congregation to matching the external forms that I knew they were looking for. Ministry became an intellectual exercise, like trying to write a paper to get a grade. I never could satisfy my detractors, and deprived others of my authentic ministry. I lived in self-doubt and desolation. I am very thankful that the experience as interim pastor for Lake Drive Church reminded me that I am most effective by being who I am in Christ. Even more important than “career success” is the congruence of being the same person before God, with my family and among those God calls me to serve as pastor.

In the transition time I read Eugene Peterson’s books on pastoral ministry. Besides confirming and giving me more ways to talk and think about the kind of pastoral ministry to which God has called me, he reminded me of how the integrity of being a pastor, not just doing pastoral things, is essential to the commitment of calling and ordination. Drawing on the image of Ulysses being lashed to the mast as he sailed past the sirens, Peterson writes as the conscience of the church, “With these vows of ordination we are lashing you fast to the mast of Word and sacrament so you will be unable to respond to the siren voices.” (The Contemplative Pastor, Eedrmans; Grand Rapids, Michigan; 1989; p, 139)

Congregational Wholeness

Having had to face my own need for healing and wholeness, I believe I am better prepared to help this congregation find God’s healing for some of its old wounds, accompany them through the grieving of the passing of a formative generation in the history of this church, and instill hope for the future of the church.

Healing Old Wounds

After about 20 years of drifting and decline and the departures of two pastors under a cloud of scandal and controversy, the church faced a crisis in which the old solutions, values and meanings didn’t work any more. Those who had led the church through the last surge of growth (in the late 60s and early 70s) had tenaciously hung onto power through the slow decline of the 80s and 90s. Many of the leading voices had died, and others had surrendered their leadership as they were aging. However, a new generation of leadership had not formed and did not have a clear sense of vision.

A powerful break-in moment is needed to get out of this drifting discouragement. While there are projects to do and decisions to make, more to the point is to be encountered by God. Celest Snowber Schroeder writes, “We ache to taste the wildness of God, where honey and fire meet, … a God so bursting with wild passion, it is hard to comprehend how we could have relegated the Creator to conventions of sterility and predictability. … Our God dances into history with a fierceness that is compelling and sometimes repelling at the same time. When we truly come face-to-face with the presence of God, we are stunned to the bone.” (pp. 119-120)

Though God can certainly break into a congregation through someone besides the pastor, as pastor my priority has to be on being shaped by God’s wild presence in me. Then I have to live with such transparent authenticity that God’s presence is evident to the congregation. Spearheading programs, adding staff and improving facilities are futile if God hasn’t encountered us as a community. Neither information nor reformation will bring about this transformation for a congregation any more than for an individual.

Some of the past experiences have been so painful that folk want to just leave them behind and not think or talk about them any more. Some who remember the last era of flourishing want to be sure those days are not forgotten. This congregation needs some time to explore the core question of spiritual direction, in what ways can we identify God present or working in both the good and the ill of our experience? Then as a community we can give thanks for how God has formed us as we were forced out of our comfort zones. Then we can together know that when we come to the end of our counting God’s thoughts for Central Christian Church, we will know that God is still with us.

Congregational Grieving

Central Christian Church has a disproportionate proportion of older people. All else being equal, assuming I am the pastor here for 12-15 years until I retire, I will conduct funerals for half of the present congregation. While this has strategic implications for reaching out to and developing a new generation, more to the point to the spiritual formation of the congregation is a profound process of grieving. Many are already widowed or will be widowed soon. People are saying “good-bye” to not only their friends but those who have been their spiritual leaders for fifty years or more. The groups and programs that they started and enjoyed, especially during the last great surge of growth, have been discontinued or are fading quickly. I am finding that conducting funerals is one of my most appreciated pastoral functions. They are a sort of congregational spiritual direction of identifying how God has been present in and through the life not only of each deceased person but among those around them. It is a way of saying “thank you” for God’s forming work through and joys and pains of the past.

Celeste Snowber Schroeder writes, “We need to find places for lament in our spiritual journeys, liturgies, and worship services. Only in being attentive to lament can we honor our grief and pass through it. Otherwise grief can lodge in our body-soul in destructive ways, eating us to our very core.” (p. 158) One man who seems to have connected very well with my preaching confided to a friend, “I want Norm to be a pastor who stays with us long enough that when he puts me in the ground he will know me.” One frail woman said to me after a funeral, “Take care of yourself. I want you to do mine.” Two adult Sunday school classes were founded in the early 40s as young adult classes. They are now close to the point where they will not have enough able people to continue to function. I don’t know if there can be a funeral for a Sunday school class, they do need some recognition of shared grieving and acknowledging God’s presence in their history. And though the form will be different as we reach out to a new generation of young adults, the people of these classes are a model of God’s work of bringing together a generation of young adults through whom God shapes the church for many years. Finding God’s presence in the passing of the oldest generation of Central Christian Church is not an inspiring program strategy, it is essential to discerning how God is continually forming the community and its individuals.

Hope for a Future of Wholeness

As a person and as a pastor, I certainly have not achieved some designated level of wholeness in order to lead the church from their woundedness into a static state of wholeness. Life is dynamic. Growth is continuous. Transformation comes from God, not from what we learn or our spiritual disciplines. The “disciplines” open us to and prepare us for God, but they do not make God do our bidding. Yet, God is more ready for intimacy with us than we are for God. So when we yearn for God, we can be sure God will find us and awaken us. As Bill Clemmons told us, being found and awakened by God has consequences. We are changed; we are shaped, and not always the way would have predicted or requested.