"PASTORAL THEOLOGY & PRACTICE" PROF. HAROLD SENKBEIL & DR. RICHARD WARNECK CAPTIONING PROVIDED BY: CAPTION FIRST, INC. P.O. BOX 1924 Lombard, IL 60148 1-800-825-7234 * * * * * This is being provided in a rough-draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in Order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings * * * * * >> NICK: How should a pastor respond to Christians who either contemplate divorce or announce that they have gotten a divorce? Would your advice change when the pastor knows or suspects that domestic abuse of either spouse or children was a part of the original problem? >> DR. RICHARD WARNECK: Nick, your question extends our discussion of the whole subject of divorce and remarriage. And the particular accent in your question is whether or not the counsel the pastor an cords couples who are in marital difficulty contemplating divorce, whether that changes when we suspect, at least, that there may be abuse in the background. Well, let's address that initially in terms of our earlier discussion. We indicated that the apostle's exhortation relative to desertion in I Corinthians 7 would probably apply to an instance where a wife, for instance, was suffering abuse in such extreme measures that it really made it impossible for her to continue any longer in the marriage. And if a pastor suspects those circumstances in the background, it may be that if those situations are so dire�and so extreme that a lady probably would be well to be out of a marriage if the abuse cannot be corrected and in a satisfactory manner so that she can have some security in continuing in a marriage and some assurance that it's a violent situation is not going to happen again. She has to have some assurances to continue in that marriage. So what we're saying is that abuse finally in terms of the apostle's counsel becomes a matter of desertion. And if that be the case, the pastor wants to be alert to that. And certainly his counsel and his guidance here is going to be affected by that kind of an extraordinary and extreme abusive situation. Aside from that, let us say that the pastor normally takes the position that in spite of numerous difficulties that befall marriage, to follow our Lord's intention and the guidance of the apostle, people should be counselled to stay in the marriage, to deal with the difficulties but to stay in the marriage. Occasionally, however, this will happen and particularly in very large parishes where sometimes the family and private lives of our people escape the attention of the pastor for the reason of so many people in his care. A lady may come after the service to greet the pastor as the congregation customarily does at the church door. And this time she steps up and she says, "oh pastor, I just want you to know that Bill and I were divorced last week." oh, this is news to the pastor. He wasn't aware that there were any kind of problems that would precipitate that kind of action essentially dissolving the marriage. In fact, he's just taken totally by surprise. And the lady is a little flippant about the whole thing and she, of course, obviously is expressing some sense of relief that well, we got through all of this and the pastor didn't know about it and church didn't know about it and so if the pastor had known about it, he might have interjected himself in things here and made it much more complicated and we were spared all of that and now it's over and the pastor and the church will just have to accept things the way they are and we go on our way from here. Well how does the pastor respond to that situation? He certainly just doesn't let the lady off the hook and say something casual at the door and say oh, well, oh, that's news, but we hope you're going to get along all right. No, the pastor follows up a comment lying that maybe later in the week or when he has opportunity to call and maybe visit and suggest that he's really concerned about what has happened to the lady and her husband and the dissolution of their divorce and how all of this�-- how this thing reads in the eyes of the Lord and that he wants to make her aware of this, also her husband. And perhaps he has to counsel both parties. If there was sin involved, the pastor does not want that to stand unattended. He moves toward some gentle pastoral admonition and possibly with a view to speaking the absolution, the thing is over and done, can't be much done about the circumstances, but the lives involved here possibly need his pastoral care. So a pastor will not just simply be laid back and accepting of divorces that occur in his congregation. He will want to follow-up. When a pastor is aware that a couple is having trouble in their marriage, he may very skillfully and patiently and gently, let us say, possibly let the couple know that he is aware that there may be some problems and difficulties and at least offer his assistance. Can we sit down and talk about the situation? Would you find that helpful? And so he attempts to move in and often the pastor doesn't get wind of things as we indicated a while ago until things have gone to pretty much wreck and ruin and the couple is really already at the lawyers and they're right at the footsteps of the courthouse and ready to arrange for the divorce. The pastor may simply want to buy time if he can put the brakes on that and buy some time with the couple, help them comprehend their very closed situation in the larger picture of the Lord's design for them when they became married. My expression for this is move that couple, if the pastor is able, to holy ground where they begin to think about themselves as two people the Lord has brought together, whom the Lord blessed and whom the Lord intended in this marriage of theirs to find happiness and fulfillment and with a little cognizance of that little picture then come to the problems at hand and attempt to deal with them. So pastors are concerned about these situations in the homes and in the marriages of their people. And occasionally that calls for the pastor taking some initiative. Instead of being kind of in the know but not in the know and just hoping things are going to get better and then all of a sudden presented with another failed marriage. A pastor wants to attempt to prevent that if he can with whatever initiatives are available to him. * * * * * This is being provided in a rough-draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in Order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings * * * * *