Abandonment and pastoral care

No one chooses to be abandoned. Abandonment occurs when those from whom we expect love, understanding, and acceptance turn away from us. Whatever the cause of the abandonment, the experience is painful. Church members, even whole groups within a church, abandon one another because of some disagreement over doctrine, polity, or otherwise not having their way. Christian church history is replete with instances where a disagreement or dispute regarding doctrine or polity, organization or choice of leadership, or even the use of a particular word in stating an ecclesiastic position has led not to just abandonment and expulsion of individuals and whole groups but to torture and elimination of those who were considered as heretics or enemies of the church.

Abandonment is more than an issue of history. It is a personal tragedy, leaving the victims in emotional turmoil, social isolation, homelessness, sickness,
and disablement. Abandonment affects our parishioners, and we, as pastors, should expect to deal with it. Some need help working through their painful
memories of being abandoned in the past, while others may seek support for a current crisis. Many such victims have confidence that God will bring about healing through the ministry of their pastors. Still others who have no connection to God or any church may also seek help from a pastor.

Some who have been abandoned will never connect with a pastor unless the pastor goes to them. I met one such person when I was a student pastor.
Visiting a nursing home, I came across a 38-year-old man who was curled up in a fetal position and completely noncommunicative. He suffered from advanced multiple sclerosis. His only other visitor that day was his mother, and she could only afford to make the trip monthly. He was about two years younger than I was, and I just could not imagine what he was experiencing.

The pastor and abandonment

Scripture speaks much about those who were abandoned. Imagine the loneliness and fear Joseph experienced when he was abandoned in a dry well, later sold as a slave to a caravan on its way to Egypt, and still later abandoned in jail for being true to God (Gen. 37:22–28; 39). Think of David, abandoned by his son, Absalom, in the latter’s coup attempt (2 Sam. 15:1–14). Even Job cried out in anguish because his prayers seem to have been ignored (Job 30:20–31). Or imagine the national sense of abandonment during the captivity when God’s people cried out in Babylon, “How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?” (Ps. 137:3). And even Jesus was not spared from the agony of abandonment in Gethsemane (Matt. 26:56; Mark 14:50), the betrayal of Judas (Mark 14:10, 11), the denial by Peter (Matt. 26:69–75), and the separation experienced on the cross when He uttered those words of “ultimate” abandonment, “ ‘My God, my God, why have You forsaken Me?’ ” (Mark 15:34, NKJV).

With such a brief portrayal of abandonment in Scripture, it should not come as a surprise to pastors that they and their families too can be easy targets of rejection. We can see the effects of abandonment when someone loses themselves in alcohol or drug addiction because we are watching from the outside. But we do not notice the crisis when we, who are pastors and chaplains, become “addicted” to serving the needs of the church or a chaplaincy setting because we are in the midst of the situation. We are doing good, but we may fail to recognize the anxiety, sadness, and even the tears in our spouses as we leave for yet another home visit, church meeting, or conference committee gathering. “Workaholism” can be an addiction that many pastors struggle with, and consequently their families may experience abandonment.

One way abandonment may manifest itself in pastors is their unexpected departure from ministry. In one conference where I served as a pastor, eight fellow pastors withdrew from ministry in one year. The shock waves were bigger than one might expect. Not only were the individual congregations left wondering why they were abandoned, but also many colleagues in this small conference.

Another way, not very common but real, that pastors abandon their congregation is by taking the extreme step of suicide. This is not something we like to admit, but it does happen. In my pastoral career I have had two clergy colleagues who committed sui­cide. The incidents shook those of us who worked with them and became confusing and unbearably painful for their parishioners.

Sometimes pastors feel abandoned when they fail to understand or adjust to denominational policies they cannot fully comprehend. I served in a denomi­nation that made clear that our loyalty, after our commitment to Christ, lay with the church. I was present when a clergy couple asked whether they could be appointed to churches geographically close enough to share one parsonage. The bishop said “No.” He reminded us that when we were ordained, we promised to go where we were sent. Yes, we did, but we had no idea of the strain that would put on our families.

Pastors may also create feelings of abandonment in a congregation by leaving “too soon.” A church that I served many years ago endured the loss of several pastors within a few years. A well-liked pastor was reassigned after five years in the parish. The next pastor left on his own initiative after a year. The third pastor, well liked, left ten months after arriving at the church to open a small business. When I left after almost four years to be a chaplain, it must have seemed to the parishioners that they had been abandoned not just by the four pastors but by the conference that sent us to them.

How should pastors respond to abandonment?

So, as pastors, where do we begin to deal with abandonment? In the ideal world we begin with an honest look at our spiritual condition no later than when we are in seminary. A senior pastor, pastoral counselor, or seminary professor with training in counseling are all potential resource people to aid us in looking into ourselves. If we are willing, they may help us to identify memories, barely suppressed emo­tions, or dysfunctional behaviors that indicate that we have been abandoned or suffered some other ordeal.

Some of us will discover feelings of having been abandoned when our parents divorced, a sibling died, or our family was impoverished. We need to be aware of these experiences and learn how to keep them from interfering with our ministries. As we listen to individu­als narrate their story of having been abandoned, we need to be sufficiently self-aware of our feelings and memories so that we attend to their pain instead of ours.

With appropriate supervision in our practice of ministry, we can begin our healing process even as we help others. Others of us will need to go further and engage in pastoral counseling where we are the counselee—not the counselor.

From my own experience, I recall dealing with parents of children with cancer. I joined a grief support group working with such parents and soon found that I had more than the aver­age amount of counseling training at that point. Even then I was not ready to deal with my own fears and grief when our daughter struggled with cancer. I needed to be with others who understood what it felt like to be help­less. The leader of this group, a trained clinical pastoral education supervisor, was helpful. However, what helped the most was being with other parents who would never abandon their children even though it may have felt like they were as they stood helplessly by while the hospital staff took over the care of their children.

When abandonment experiences are faced without support from peers or professionals, we may feel over­whelmed. We may even be angry at the magnitude of the suffering we experience, either within ourselves or with those who seek help from us in coping with their pain. Since anger is not easily tolerated in congregations or pastors, we may suppress or repress our anger only to have it resurface as depression. Our sense of abandonment may result in deciding not to seek the help we need to cope with our emotional and spiritual needs. We may also feel as if there is no way to cope if we have limited access to competent pastoral counselors with clinical as well as pastoral training.

Pastors also face abandonment, as a pastoral issue, whenever they note that the great question “why” is asked. Why did God allow a good person to suffer? Where was God when my baby died? Where was God when my spouse was killed in a car accident? Why did God allow my spouse to leave me?

In situations such as these, we need to be aware of our limits as to how much we can do to alleviate the suffering that comes from being abandoned. We may be shocked to learn that people are not always healed by our recommendations to pray or enter into extended pastoral counseling. While our parishioners do need our supportive pastoral care, we must learn to refer people to clinically trained counselors or psychiatrists. Otherwise, we may inadvertently ques­tion the power of prayer or the need to get professional counseling and assistance.

People who suffer abuse—physical, emotional, or sexual—may question the need for spiritual strength. They may even rage at God and/or the church for what they have had to endure. We who are pastors need to be humble especially when we have not lived with such abuse. We may not begin to understand the rage or sense of rejection that some victims carry within their souls. We may interpret it as a lack of faith, instead of recognizing that the victim has been blocked internally from connecting with God.

Working toether to bring relie?

How else do we cope with the emotional and spiritual burdens of even a small congregation? Where do we turn when there are no addi­tional resources from our conferences, colleagues, or retired clergy? We can choose to organize with other pastors, either denominationally or ecumeni­cally, to form support groups for each other. Pastors can gather as a visible demonstration that God does not leave us isolated to cope with our burdens and those of our congregation. We can pray together as a visible sign that God calls us to be together—not driven apart by our unconscious needs or conflicts.

A pastor leads the committee, but most of the visiting is done by laypeople. This group has gone through a training program along with periodic supplementary training. They maintain contact with people who would otherwise have no physical contact with the church because they are unable to come to the church. They show that the church cares about God’s people enough to come to them. However, our parishioners need more than just an occasional visit. So, our church publishes a prayer list of groups of people with particu­lar needs. While obvious, it is worth reminding each other that we can help people to avoid feeling abandoned by praying for them and sharing with them that we are praying for them. Unless they have stated that they do not want prayer, it would be spiritually strengthening to pray with them, in person, where possible, and over the phone when it is not. Even praying over the Internet is worth exploring

Perhaps one of the most impor­tant ways to show people that they are not abandoned by God or the church would be to involve them with Communion service when they cannot come to church. Both when I was a church pastor and when I served as a chaplain, I found this to be a ministry many appreciated. It is, after all, a visible sign that the church as the body of Christ is deeply interested in the spiritual welfare of its members and showing that the community of faith cares.

There may be some church mem­bers who feel so abandoned and have gone so far away that they have sinned grievously and think that God does not love them. Local church pastors are not always aware of this problem. However, I witnessed such despera­tion repeatedly when the military veterans to whom I was a hospital chaplain shared their feeling that God did not care about them. Often their feelings were the outcomes of what they were expected to do in wartime. Unless we have been through combat, particularly as a member of a military or paramilitary force, we simply do not know the depths of violence that a human being is capable or the guilt that may result from it.

In such and similar cases, the church needs to find ways to make it clear that all of God’s people are invited into the congregation. The church and its pastors need to remind their congregation that Jesus will not abandon His followers under any circumstances. His promise is: “I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matt. 28:20b, NRSV). We need to consciously witness to Jesus’ love for everyone. Any genuine reminder of God’s presence and love can create a foundation for healing from the experi­ence of abandonment