by: Werner K. Boos
5/1/2005

As one of a team of therapists with Quiet Waters Ministries that hosts Counseling Intensives for Christian Leaders and Their Families, I’ve been privileged to conduct a number of Couple Intensives, which involve pastors and their spouses. I’ve found that these unique therapeutic encounters bless Christian partners with the gift of marital renewal. They also give me deeper wisdom regarding the nature of persons, the dynamics of couples, and the interplay between what’s happening with clergy unions and the congregations that they serve.

The issues I’ve encountered during these two-week, twenty-hour Intensives can be grouped into three themes: 1) personal themes of pastor or spouse; 2) couple themes and their consequences; and 3) themes involving the couple, the congregation, and Quiet Waters Ministries.

Personal Themes of Pastor or Spouse

Often these cases involve an excessive use of alcohol, which anesthetizes the person against difficult feelings and continues the dynamics of adolescence against “parent” figures. In one case, a pastor claims: “I need something to bring me down from the high levels of stress that I meet on the job. It’s hard to do that all by myself.” A spouse asserts: “I used to be a staunch soldier. That, however, is hard to come by when my partner comes home from the church either superaffirmed by some people or down in the dumps because of others. Alcohol helps to buffer the extremes of mood that I meet and lets me pretend that my partner’s ups and downs don’t matter.”

Often related to this “I get by with a little help from my beverage” behavior is a lack of self-esteem, a feeling of insignificance, or a sense of unlovability. These problems often come from family-of-origin experiences that Eric Berne, in the sixties and seventies, and Amy Bjork Harris, in the eighties, summarized through the Karpman Drama Triangle. Each point of this triangle represents one of the rotating roles of a shame-based self: victim, persecutor, and rescuer. Berne and Harris teach the need to get out of the triangle to leave compulsive, repetitive, point-switching in favor of what I call embracing the “gracebased self.” Most individuals with whom I work have difficulty making the leap.

Some factors in the lives of troubled persons that hinder the jump from shame to grace include: 1) family cutoffs (having nothing to do with one or more of one’s extended family initiated by self, the family, or both); 2) clinical depression, and 3) an underdeveloped sense of self. This third factor is often nurtured by an inability to self-monitor and selfevaluate. As one client put it, “I’m not a self-analytical person.” I answer with a quote from Socrates: “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Then I add: “The unexamined life is dangerous when you’re in a leadership position. When you don’t know what’s going on with you; when you don’t ask for needed help; when you don’t learn, stretch, and grow, you’re going to hurt somebody including yourself!”

Sometimes there’s unfinished business with a previous partner in one or both of the couple’s past. In such cases, when the going gets rough and one or both feel neglected/unloved, an old agenda gets stirred up with predictable negative results. Sometimes the “old flame” is reengaged; sometimes s/he’s is replaced by someone else either in or out of the congregation. In other cases a sexual compulsivity develops, which focuses not on a person for its expression but on pornography. Needless to say, these developments complicate matters.

A problem that I often encounter is narcissism mainly in the minister. This personality disturbance shows itself in feelings of entitlement. The person concludes that “the rules for life, love, and truth by which others live don’t apply to me.” It’s common among a subset of clergy who come from one of two family-of-origin scenarios. The first is a family where narcissism (hyper-self-love) is the primary training regimen. In