When we sit in the counseling room with another person, we represent the church and the good name of Jesus Christ.
—Jim Smith
It was a moral and ethical minefield, and Pastor Warren was walking through the middle of it. Every available course seemed rigged for disaster.
Michael Thomas, a prominent school administrator in Pastor Warren’s congregation, had been nominated for elder. His election to the board of elders seemed assured, for he was active and well-respected in the church and in community circles. He already sat on the boards of a Christian school system and the metropolitan museum.
But Pastor Warren knew things about Thomas that very few others in the community knew, for Thomas and his wife had come to him for counseling. Pastor Warren knew that this man had a Jekyll-and-Hyde nature. Publicly, he was a learned, respected, socially conscious community leader; privately, he was a destructive, philandering, alcoholic husband. Pastor Warren knew of Thomas’ addiction to pornography, sex, alcohol, and psychological abuse of his wife and two children. But his knowledge of Thomas’ dark side was covered by the “confidentiality of the confessional.”
How could he prevent Thomas from being elected to the church board without breaking faith with the Thomases and with his own conscience as a pastor and counselor? In the nominating committee. Pastor Warren, whose role in which (according to his denomination’s polity) is limited to advice, gently tried to propose other names or to suggest that Thomas might be too busy to serve—all to no avail. The Thomas nomination sailed through the committee and was unanimously approved in the congregational meeting. Most troubling of all, because of his background as an educator, he was given responsibility for the children’s and youth ministries.
A year and a half later, the church was rocked by scandal when allegations surfaced that Elder Thomas had seduced one woman in the church and made passes at several others. Moreover, he exploded in anger during a youth night program and slapped a female high schooler across the face. Pastor Warren had to persuade the unchurched parents of the student not to sue the church. Thomas resigned from the church board and membership rolls.
The world is becoming increasingly more perilous for churches and pastors. The counseling room, once a safe haven where a pastor could simply counsel and pray with a troubled parishioner for an hour, has become a source of moral anxiety and legal liability. Not all issues are as dramatic as the one just described, but the question of ethics in counseling relationships has never been more important than it is today.
Building and maintaining trust is the key to sustaining ethical relationships with my counselees. When I do things to undermine their trust in me, I’m likely doing something that is or can quickly become unethical. Here, then, are some ways I build trust and thus insure a healthy relationship with the people I counsel.
Building Boundaries
First, I have to build boundaries that will encourage ethical behavior. Here are a couple of broad boundaries I set around my ministry:
• The appearance of propriety. For a pastor, the appearance of propriety, being “above reproach,” is nearly as important as propriety itself.
I make it a policy in formal counseling situations never to be alone on the premises with the counselee. I don’t sit down with a counselee unless someone else—a secretary or a member of the pastoral staff—is close by. On rare occasions when I visit a female counselee in the home, I bring my wife. She may not sit in on the session, but her presence in a nearby room helps guarantee the appearance of propriety.
If someone calls me and asks, “Is my spouse going to you for counseling?” I always answer, “I cannot answer that question, because my counseling schedule is not public information.” I give that answer even if the spouse is not coming to see me. Otherwise, that answer would only be a thinly veiled yes.
Sometimes counselees will emotionally attach themselves to counselors in a way that becomes obvious to others outside of the counseling room. Sometimes counselees feel they have acquired a special intimacy with counselors and display inappropriate forms of attention. This kind of behavior needs to be confronted frankly, privately, and as soon as possible.
• Limited counseling load. I also limit the number of hours I set aside for formal counseling. The amount of available counseling hours will vary from pastor to pastor and church to church, but I suggest it’s not good for a pastor’s mental health to devote more than ten hours a week to counseling, unless this is his or her primary responsibility.
The average pastor probably works fifty to sixty hours a week, so that would be about a fifth to a sixth of his or her time, on top of sermon preparation, administration, committee meetings, staff meetings, fixing the copier, stoking the furnace, and whatever else is in the terms of call. I know pastors who get totally overwhelmed by their counseling load because they fail to set limits. They can’t get their sermon study done and they rarely see their families. They’re so busy trying to fix other people’s problems that their own lives are falling apart.
When it comes to working with individuals, I make sure a few other boundaries are in place.
• Serious counseling is done in the office. There are times when, in my role as pastor, I’m called to listen to someone’s problems, to give a few words of counsel or advice, to offer an encouraging or comforting passage of Scripture. There is an element of counseling when I enter the home of someone who has just lost a loved one or when I meet a church member at a restaurant for lunch. There is even an element of counseling involved when a church member catches me in the hallway and just wants to bend my ear for a minute or two.
But these are not formal counseling situations. These are situations where I offer my presence as a pastor and as a friend.
But occasionally I discover that the issues the church member wants to discuss at the funeral home or in the parking lot or on the phone requires more time and a professional setting. At those times I find it helpful to set clear boundaries and ground rules with the counselee.
“I can see that this is a deep and troubling issue for you,” I might say. “Could we meet in my office on Tuesday at, say two o’clock?”
Issues I try to keep within the more formal boundaries of the counseling room include premarital counseling, marriage and family counseling, vocational change issues, addiction and compulsive behavior issues, depression and other emotional issues, and deep spiritual and moral issues (such as when a person needs reassurance of God’s forgiveness and grace after a major fall).
I’ve found that there are important practical reasons for structuring a formal counseling session with well-defined boundaries. Professional boundaries create a different atmosphere for working on issues and problems than the less formal atmosphere of a pastor-parishioner friendship. When in an office setting, there is an agreement to start on time and end on time, the counseling time is spent productively, dealing with real feelings and issues rather than just chatting over generalities.
If the counselee begins to talk around the issue or stray from the subject, I can say, “You know, we have only an hour, and I’d really like to get to the issue.” My experience is that when people feel they have unlimited time, they take it. All that does is hinder the counselee’s recovery and throw my own schedule into disarray.
• Time limits are set. Formal counseling should always require an appointment, and should cover a set length of time, not to exceed an hour. I usually contract initially for eight weekly sessions. If an issue requires more intensive counseling than that, most pastors should refer the counselee to a psychologist, psychiatrist, or psychotherapist.
• A contract is sometimes used. In some cases, it may even be helpful to have a written “contract” between counselor and counselee. It doesn’t need to be a long document written in legalese, signed, and notarized. It can simply be a memo outlining the times and dates of the counseling appointments and any special expectations, such as, “Mr./Ms. So-and-so will be expected to read such-and-such book, keep a daily journal, and come prepared to discuss his or her insights, feelings, and issues.”
These are a few of the boundaries I’ve put in place, boundaries that in themselves strongly encourage ethical behavior. There are other areas, however, where the boundaries are more intangible. Each counselor must decide how he or she is going to deal with the key ethical dilemmas that arise in counseling. Here’s how I come down.
Finances and Gifts
Parishioners like to do nice things for their pastor, and within certain limits they should be able to do so. But when that parishioner is also a counselee, there is an added issue: What if the counselee is giving that gift because of an emotional attachment? Clearly, accepting a gift under such circumstances only promotes that kind of attachment.
I feel the safest course is politely to refuse gifts of any kind from counselees.
For example, a woman I was counseling bought me a very nice necktie. While it may not have been an extravagantly expensive gift, and I had no reason to suspect any motive other than gratitude, I nevertheless had to tell her that, as a matter of professional ethics, I could not accept the tie. When I explained, “Thank you, but gifts have a tendency to confuse or compromise the professional nature of the counseling relationship,” she understood and accepted my explanation.
Naturally, there are exceptions. One couple I had once counseled gave me an attractive memento to keep on my desk. It had been about a year since our last counseling session, and I felt we had moved from a counselor-counselee relationship to a pastor-parishioner friendship, so I accepted the gift. Even so, it was a gray area. I always carefully weigh the ethical considerations when I am offered a gift by someone I have counseled.
It also depends on the nature of the gift: expensive or personal gifts such as cash, cologne or shaving lotion, articles of clothing, or jewelry I automatically decline. However, if I clearly see that the gift doesn’t transgress other ethical guidelines (like those above) I might accept a less personal gift such as a book or a donation to charity in my name.
And certainly, I will not accept large gifts of cash. In our church, there is a fee charged for pastoral counseling, so people rarely offer me money since they feel they are paying for a service. Still, occasionally someone will say to me, “You’ve been a real help, Pastor, and I know it’s not always easy to make ends meet, so here’s five-hundred dollars.”
I believe any pastor who accepts that cash is very foolish. Sooner or later, the gift giver is going to come back and start calling markers, because the pastor is now in the giver’s debt.
A counselor sometimes has to confront the counselee and say, “You’re way off base. You need to change your thinking and clean up your act.” If you are in the counselee’s debt, he or she will almost certainly turn that debt against you: “I thought we were friends! How can you talk to me like that after what I’ve done for you? That’s gratitude for you!”
Accepting gifts from a counselee is the rawest form of conflict of interest, and most of the time it should simply be refused.
Confidentiality
A number of years ago I counseled the Flynns, a couple experiencing serious strains in their marriage. Eventually they divorced. Mr. Flynn remarried and a few months later his second wife died under suspicious circumstances. A police detective interviewed me about Mr. Flynn, though no charges were ever filed against him. When answering the detective’s questions, I was careful not to disclose confidential information. I simply affirmed information he had gathered from the first wife, information she had given me permission to disclose.
Sometime later, Mr. Flynn became engaged to a third woman, who happened to be a friend of the first wife. The original Mrs. Flynn told the third woman, “You don’t know what you’re getting into. My ex-husband is dangerous. If you don’t believe me, you should at least talk to Pastor Jim Smith.” So the third woman called me—and that put me in a difficult ethical and legal position.
I couldn’t disclose anything I had learned about Mr. Flynn from our counseling sessions, but I had very good reason to be concerned for this third woman, so I chose my words carefully. “I’m not free to discuss anything I learned in counseling,” I told her, “but I would encourage you to be cautious and examine this relationship as objectively as you are able.”
Confidentiality is probably the most thorny ethical issue of the pastor-counselee relationship. Confidentiality is crucial in the counseling room, yet it is so easy to trip up and break that trust. I find myself facing the dilemma of confidentiality in at least four ways.
• Church matters. Sometimes the ethical requirements of the counselor’s role come into direct conflict with the requirements of the pastor’s role, as in the story that began this chapter. Pastor Warren knew that Michael Thomas was unfit to serve as an elder, but how could he have conveyed his knowledge to the nominating committee without breaching the confidentiality of his counseling relationship with Thomas?
There are no easy answers, but one tack that some pastors have found effective is to say something like this: “I know Michael Thomas very well, and I’m aware of some issues in his life right now that would make this a bad time for him to be involved in this role. Sometime down the road, perhaps we can put his name in consideration, but at this time it wouldn’t be wise to burden him with this responsibility.”
There need be no hint as to what those issues are, nor the fact that those issues surfaced during a counseling session. In this approach, any comments regarding Mr. Thomas’ fitness of church office should be nebulous, non-specific, and non-judgmental. Someone may ask for more detail, but the pastor should hold his ground and not get drawn into any elaboration beyond the original statement.
If the nomination still went forward, the pastor could talk to Michael Thomas and ask him not to accept. But if Thomas still insisted on being elected to elder, then in my opinion, the pastor would have no choice but to let Thomas be elected. In order to preserve people’s long-term trust, we sometimes have to risk such consequences. Admittedly, though, it’s a painful choice.
Some would disagree, saying that this is a clear case where the rule of confidentiality must be broken. I respond: unless someone is in imminent danger or the law requires it, confidentiality must be maintained.
As a pastor/counselor, I have essentially three things to offer the counselee: my unconditional acceptance, my trained insight, and an atmosphere of trust. If people can’t trust me, I’m out of business. No one will confide in me any longer.
• Consultations and referrals. There are some people, though, to whom I must speak about counselees. But I always get the person’s permission before doing so. Occasionally I encounter a person whose issues and problems are beyond my abilities and training, so I need to consult with someone else on the pastoral staff or an outside resource person.
So at the beginning of every course of counseling, I ask the counselee to sign a release that gives me permission to consult with other professionals. I also inform the counselee verbally when I need to consult.
“Some of the issues you’re dealing with are beyond my training and experience,” I’ll say. “Would you be willing for me to consult with So-and-so about this issue?” If the person says no, I say, “Well, I have to respect that, but you need to know that we’ve reached a point beyond which I am unable to help you.”
At other times, I may feel the need to refer a person to a support group. So I’ll say, “I think you would benefit from being involved in this support group, but they’ll want to know some things about you before they allow you into the group. What am I free to share?”
• Family counseling. Some of the trickiest aspects of confidentiality arise in family counseling. You have one or two parents and one or more children, each with their own issues—and each deserving of the counselor’s confidentiality. But again, even if the situation causes me great anguish, I won’t betray a confidence.
If, for example, the pastor is counseling two parents and their teenage son, and the son tells the counselor in confidence, “I’m going to run away from home,” I believe the pastor is ethically bound not to reveal this to the parents.
But then, when the boy runs away from home, the parents will probably ask the pastor, “Did he tell you he was planning to do this?” When the pastor admits that he knew, the parents will be understandably angry. “Why didn’t you tell us? We could have done something!”
It is small consolation to the parents when the pastor replies, “Because he told me in confidence, and I couldn’t betray the confidence.”
Or take an even more heart-rending situation: The son tells the pastor in confidence that he habitually uses dangerous drugs. The wise and conscientious pastor will do everything in his power to obtain the son’s permission to tell the parents—but without that permission, the confidence must be kept, even if the counselee is a minor.
• Inadvertent slips. I also have to be aware that I can accidentally break a confidence. That’s because there is often a fine line between public information and private information.
For example, one of my parishioners, Mrs. Maples, went into the hospital for an operation. The fact that she was in the hospital was public information, and it was announced from the pulpit on Sunday so the congregation could be praying for her. But Mrs. Maples asked that the specific type of surgery she was to undergo be kept confidential. I honored that request for many months—then I let it slip.
Another parishioner, Mrs. Baker, went into the hospital for the same kind of surgery. She was very anxious about her medical condition, and I recalled that Mrs. Maples had shared some things about the surgery that I thought would help ease Mrs. Baker’s mind.
“Remember when Mrs. Maples was in the hospital a few months ago?” I said. “Well she had the same procedure you’ll be having, and here’s what she found out.” Only later did I recall that Mrs. Maples had asked me to keep that information confidential.
I immediately called Mrs. Maples and told her what I had done. “I’m so sorry,” I said. “This is really embarrassing for me, and I apologize for any embarrassment I’ve caused you.” She was very understanding, and she told me no harm was done. Still, it was a betrayal of privately shared information, which I had no right to share with anyone else.
Few pastors would deliberately break a confidence for the sake of a good sermon illustration, but sometimes we do it inadvertently. I never tell a story that begins, “I once counseled a woman who told me …” That’s too specific and may cause people to scan the room and wonder who’s been talking to me. Instead, I make a generic observation: “People sometimes tell me …”
Nor do I tell stories from the pulpit that begin, “Let me tell you about a couple we’ll call John and Mary …” Such pseudonyms are all too often penetrated by perceptive people (especially in small congregations). What’s worse, it makes counselees feel vulnerable and causes them to wonder if they will be next Sunday’s sermon illustration.
Also, if I have been counseling Mr. and Mrs. Walters on Thursday afternoon, I don’t go out of my way to greet them Sunday morning. If anything, I go out of my way to avoid showing any special attention to people I’ve been counseling. The fact that people are seeing me as a counselor is a private matter. If I give a church member special attention and someone else infers from that attention that I am seeing that church member professionally, then I have betrayed a confidence.
One final word about confidentiality: the ethics of confidentiality confer great risks and emotional burdens on the counseling pastor. As counselors we carry around in our souls the most explosive and potentially destructive secrets of people’s lives. In the vast majority of cases, it is a knowledge we can never reveal under any circumstances. The people who have shared those secrets with us know that we know. And in time, some of those people may begin to resent the fact that we know what we know.
A pastor nurses a parishioner through an emotional crisis, and for a while that parishioner is grateful for the pastor’s help and insight. Time passes, and that parishioner turns against the pastor, perhaps even making unfair public accusations against him. The pastor can do nothing but sit and absorb the abuse, knowing the truth and unable to speak it. There is no happy solution to this problem; it’s simply an occupational hazard.
Some Legal Considerations
A pastor in North Carolina was sued for alienation of affection because of a sermon he preached.
In my home state of Texas, a pastor was jailed for contempt when he refused to testify regarding matters he was told in confidence in his counseling room.
(In Texas, the only profession covered by privileged communication statutes is the legal profession. If you are a professional counselor in Texas, you learn to keep your notes so garbled and coded that no outsider can make sense of them even if they are subpoenaed.)
The pastoral calling exposes one to all manner of legal liabilities. Three areas we must be aware of are:
• Legal limits to confidentiality. There are three issues that people occasionally bring into the counseling room which ethically and legally transcend a counselor’s commitment to confidentiality. As counselors we are required to disclose rather than conceal these issues because they involve acts or potential acts of violence. These issues are:
1. Child abuse
2. Contemplation of suicide
3. Contemplation of homicide
Child abuse should be reported to the appropriate social agency (the name of that social agency varies from place to place but is usually a county agency with a name such as Child Protective Services).
If a person acts suicidal, the counselor should try to get the person to agree verbally or in writing that he or she will not commit suicide before seeing the counselor again. If the person will not agree, then the counselor needs to take the person to a county hospital, or call the police to do so.
If a person threatens the life of another in counseling, the counselor is ethically bound to tell the person who has been threatened. In our church, when a counselor makes such a call, we always make sure the call is witnessed by another staff member; a memo is then written and signed by counselor and the witness.
No matter the circumstance and course of action the counselor takes, it is highly recommended afterward to write a memo outlining the time, date, and nature of the incident and what the counselor did as a result.
The demands of the law on the pastor-counselor are very stringent. In California, a church was sued (albeit unsuccessfully) when a counselor failed to report the suicidal intentions of a counselee. Moreover, a counselor who learns of an incident of child abuse and fails to report it will not merely be sued; he or she may be prosecuted.
• Giving testimony. Another hazard to approach carefully in the pastor’s role is testifying in a court trial. It is not unusual for a pastor to be thrust into the middle of other people’s court battles. I have personally been subpoenaed several times to testify or give depositions in child custody cases because of my counseling relationship with the parents.
In such cases, I decline to testify unless I get a written release from the parents. In most cases, both parents have given me the release in the apparent belief I would give them each a “good rap.” But if I just get a release from one parent, I only testify regarding the person who has given me the release.
For example, Mrs. Jones has given me a written release to disclose our counseling conversations but Mr. Jones has not. If I am asked, “Did Mr. Jones beat his wife?” I will answer, “Mrs. Jones reported to me that he beat her.” Even if Mr. Jones admitted to me that he beat her, I can’t disclose that fact because it is covered by confidentiality, and Mr. Jones has not given me permission to disclose it.
• Lawsuits. A pastor would expect (and deserve) to be sued if he became sexually involved with a counselee or manipulated the counselee for financial gain. But a pastor can also be sued for malpractice if he attempts to give counsel in an area where he has no expertise.
The fact is, anyone can sue anyone for anything. Even if the person suing you loses, the cost of defending yourself can be catastrophically expensive. That’s why it’s important to have a sufficient amount of liability insurance in place.
I’ve been told that in today’s litigious climate, a million dollars of liability coverage is the bare minimum any counselor should carry, regardless of his or her profession. One can debate the figures, but personal liability coverage does not usually protect us if we were to be sued in our professional capacity, so we are wise to make sure that some form of professional liability policy is in place.
Intervention: Walking into a Buzz Saw
The word intervention is becoming increasingly popular in our culture, and pastors are frequently asked to step into the middle of volatile domestic problems: “Pastor, my husband is drunk and violent! Please come now!” Or, “Pastor, I just found out my wife is having an affair. Would you come over and help me confront her about it?” Or, “Pastor, my teenage son is using cocaine. Please come talk to him!”
However, I’ve never found that type of intervention to be helpful. So I don’t do it.
If people are in pain and willing to work on their pain, they will come into my office, and we can work together in that structured environment. But if one party to the problem is not motivated to work on the problem, the pastor who seeks to intervene is just walking into a buzz saw.
There is a good reason why police officers hate to get involved in domestic situations: they are often extremely dangerous (even deadly) situations. I’m not eager to jump into a situation that would give a heavily armed police officer pause. I never know what I may walk into—and I’ve only heard one person’s version of the story.
I try to find alternatives to intervention. If I’m counseling a woman, for example, and she asks me to talk to her husband, I may call him and ask him to come to my office. “Your wife is counseling with me,” I’ll say, “and it would be easier for me to help her if I could have some time with you to get your insights.” If I make contact with the husband in a way that is non-judgmental and non-threatening, and if I refer to the wife as the patient, he’s more likely to come in and talk. But if he flatly refuses, I will not try to force my way into the situation.
I strongly believe that a counselor does not belong in the middle of people’s problems and issues. A counselor is an outside source of insight, perspective, and encouragement. As soon as a counselor becomes entangled, directly or indirectly, in the problems of the counselee, that counselor is bound to run afoul of the ethical and legal boundaries of his profession.
A Fragile Trust
Ironically, the best defense against failing ethically in counseling is to remind myself daily that I am a fallible human being, with the same capacity for self-deception and hidden motivation as those who come to me for counseling. That realization forces me to continually check myself to insure that there is no hint of exploitation of any counselee, male or female, for any reason—emotional, financial, or ego related.
I also try to remember the trust that’s been handed to me, and how fragile that trust is.
I recently heard the story of a troubled young woman named Janet who at age 14 was seduced by a church counselor. The relationship has continued off and on through the years, so that now, at the age of 32, Janet continues to be emotionally enmeshed with this man, who has long since left the ministry. The relationship has been enormously painful for Janet and continues to set back her emotional recovery.
Rev. Edwards, senior pastor of the church where this ex-counselor once worked, has met with Janet several times in his counseling room. Representing the church to her, he has asked her forgiveness for what this man did to her. Some healing has taken place in her life, but it’s a toss up whether she will ever be strong enough to sever her emotional ties to this destructive man.
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.
Then again, when we act in the manner of our Lord, as people who can be trusted, we are entrusted with bearing others’ burdens and seeing people experience liberation from spiritual and emotional bondage. And that makes the risks and burdens of counseling more than worthwhile.
Copyright © 1992 by Christianity Today
