Well, my vacation was wonderful but now over. I ended it with a routine trip to the dentist for a cleaning (torture). It helps (I’m kidding) cement the reality that the fun is done.
While away I read a book, Restoring the Fallen: A Team Approach to Caring, Confronting, & Reconciling (IVP, 1997). Authors: Earl and Sandy Wilson, Paul and Virginia Friesen, and Larry and Nancy Paulson. It tells the story of Earl Wilson’s infidelity with a client (he is a psychologist) and the interventions his spiritual formation team enacted to help him over a multi year period of time. In between the story, they detail the best ways for a spiritual formation team to work through the process of repentance and restoration.
Very helpful. Over the next month, I’m going to blog a few of the chapters here given that it is so close to the kind of work I have done and am doing. They have put into words some things that I have done but not written about.
But, here’s my thought. This book suggests a spiritual formation team process for after the “fall.” Why not have one of these teams before a fall? Why not have it as required care for the Christian leader, whether pastor, elder, missionary, counselor?
Here’s what they said they did as a team. They committed to:
1. Be in regular communication with both husband and wife.
2. Pray regularly (daily?).
3. Meet as a team regularly.
4. To consult with others who had experience in particular areas
5. To hold the leader accountable for specific promises made.
The team worked toward the following ends:
1. Spiritual health (interested in ferreting out the spiritual roots of problems, and to help the person become grou8nded anew in a relationship with God)
2. Body life (the team provides spiritual gifts such as discernment, intercession, admonishment, encouragement, mercy, etc.)
3. Accountability and sensitivity (the team acts as advocate for the spouse and family members as well as holding the leader accountable)
4. Penetrating denial and clarifying reality
5. Synergy (combined wisdom and consensus of the group led by the Spirit)
6. Intercession (“Restoration ministry is divine in nature and is characterized above all by grace. It cannot be driven by anything apart from consistent intercession.” (p. 37).
Obviously, this book is focused on the restoration of an offender. However, each of these goals and purposes ought to be part of a spiritual care team for any christian leader. I wonder how many pastors, professors, counselors, missionaries have such a team?
Musings on Faith and Psychology 