A Pastoral Letter on Upcoming Council Action on Same-Gender Marriage: Part 2

This is the second of a four part series. Please also read Part 1, Part 3 and Part 4. Council will vote on its proposed resolution on Thursday, November 21, 2013 at 6:30 p.m. All council meetings are open to the public. If you wish to communicate with council prior to the vote, please e-mail council@sotv.org.

Part 2: How same-gender marriage is a matter of pastoral practice

Pastor Chris Smith
Senior Pastor

A big part of a pastor’s calling is taking care of the spiritual needs of the people in her or his community of faith. Pastors baptize, visit the sick, care for the bereaved, offer counseling, and celebrate Holy Communion. Recently I was involved in the blessing of a new home for a family. All of these duties, and others I haven’t mentioned, make up what we call pastoral practice. Officiating at weddings is part of pastoral practice as well.

What guides your pastors as they conduct their pastoral practice? This isn’t an easy question to answer because every situation is unique. Sometimes the need is simple, like a hospital visit with someone who will heal well and return to a full life. Sometimes the need is more complicated, like a hospital visit with a sorrowful family who has suffered a stillbirth. At other times the occasion is joyful, like a baptism in worship, celebrating Holy Communion with someone who can’t leave their home, or officiating at a wedding.

Based on examples like those and many others, I have formulated a few guidelines for our pastoral practice:

1. The central goal of our pastoral practice is to help people interpret their experience in light of God’s love for them and the core conviction that God is present and at work in the most intimate and important events and moments of our lives.
2. The message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ governs how we conduct our pastoral practice. Jesus was in the business of reaching out with reconciliation, healing, and joy.
3. We do not make judgments about people when we conduct our pastoral practice. In other words, we don’t try to judge whether someone deserves or doesn’t deserve the care we provide.
4. We do consider whether conducting a given pastoral practice makes sense or is appropriate in a given circumstance. There is nothing cookie-cutter about pastoral practice.
5. We always do our best to provide people with practical help, support, and resources.
6. We try to be good stewards of the church’s time and resources as we conduct our pastoral practice.

No doubt my colleagues and other pastors could tweak these guidelines and come up with others of their own. After all, pastoral practice is as diverse as the breadth of human experience. But these give you a good insight into the pastoral practice of your pastors at Shepherd of the Valley.

But here’s the thing. If you boil all these guidelines down, it’s really pretty simple: Your pastors are people who have been so grasped by the extraordinary love of God that we simply have to share it. In the name of Jesus Christ and by his grace, we love the people of Shepherd of the Valley and that love takes shape in our pastoral practice. And, that is exactly why the whole question of same-gender marriage is such a hard one for your pastors – because our pastoral practice is not about judging others but about making the merciful and gracious presence and power of God known to them.

Now that does not mean we are not thoughtful and very careful about our marriage ministry. In this case, our pastoral practice is not really about weddings – well, it is, but it really isn’t. Instead it is about marriage. We take delight in the formation of healthy, committed, faithful marriages. We require couples to complete relationship inventories and to meet with their officiating pastor to review the results. We require them to attend a day-long seminar with a well-qualified local counselor and faith leader. Finally, we also ask couples to attend worship and submit notes about their shared experience. It is not all cut and dried, either. Four times in my career couples in my care have discerned that they should not marry. At other times, my colleagues and I have asked couples to seek additional help to start their life together well. All this means that we consider carefully the guidelines for pastoral practice I listed earlier.

There are also different approaches among pastors in other contexts to the question of same-gender marriage as a pastoral practice.

Talking recently to several colleagues at other churches recently, the response of many of them has been to ignore the question. When approached by same-gender couples who wish to marry, they are not able to give a clear response.

Other colleagues, who choose to do so, officiate for same-gender marriages, but only away from the church buildings and faith communities in which they serve; they do not report this as part of their pastoral practice. This practice highlights the tension that can exist in pastoral practice when we ask the question, Are pastors free agents to conduct pastoral practice as they wish when they are not within the community of faith they serve? This is a hard question because pastors serve by virtue of the call they receive from a specific congregation. For that reason, one could argue that such pastoral practice is lacking in integrity (but that is certainly a matter of debate).

To deal with the question of integrity, still other colleagues have worked privately with their church councils. Often, the result is that their church councils authorize them to conduct their pastoral practice, including same-gender marriages, as the pastors see fit. Their pastoral practice includes same-gender marriage but that practice is not subject to consultation with their church council once the general authorization is given.

I should mention here that our pastoral practice at SOTV, in my recollection, has not previously been subject to consultation with our church council. But after a lot of thought, I have concluded in this case that our pastoral staff really cannot either operate as free agents without council consultation or request that our church council simply grant us carte blanche in our pastoral practice. SOTV is a large congregation. When on vacation, without planning to do so, I have encountered SOTV members in four different states and in foreign countries as well. The global reach of our congregation is a metaphor for me that wherever our pastors go to serve others, our whole church really extends there, too. It simply makes more sense to me that we all be transparently honest about what we do in our pastoral practice, without of course ever violating confidentiality.

For that reason, the process the council is going through leading up to their vote on November 21 is a good one. It respects their governance role as those entrusted with creating policy for our church. The process has also respected your pastors in their pastoral practice. The council has long known the insights and perspectives I have shared here and affirmed the thoughtful ways in which we conduct our pastoral practice. We have a good and positive relationship with SOTV’s church council, who display great trust in our judgment as pastors. As the council concludes this chapter in our life as a congregation, I would also ask you to trust your pastors as we receive the wisdom of the council and seek to conduct our pastoral practice with love and integrity.

See You in Church,

Pastor Chris

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