I saw this article the other day arguing that your pastor is not meant to be your therapist and vice versa. I can sympathise to some extent with the argument. On the one side of things, there can be a tendency to treat church like a self help process. This doesn’t just affect one to… Continue reading What if your pastor is your therapist and your therapist is your pastor?
Category: pastoral-care
Promotion, drama and distraction
It’s the 96th minute of the final game of the season, it’s 0-0 at Valley Parade, the place is rocking as a late late goal goes in and Bradford City secure third place and promotion. For a Bradford fan like me, the emotion is sheer delight. We did it! I can imagine too, the crushing… Continue reading Promotion, drama and distraction
Pastoring the grieving: The funeral
An important part of looking after people through grieving is the funeral which offers some form of closure. Although it is not the end of grieving, it does provide a marker, enabling the bereaved to move on with the next phase of their life. There isn’t really a right or wrong way to hold a… Continue reading Pastoring the grieving: The funeral
What happens when we die?
It’s funny, the things we get finicky about and the things we relax about when someone dies isn’t it? I was intrigued by one conversation I observed on social media following the death of the late pope. It was in response to Stephen Kneale’s excellent article about how we should respond to the news. As… Continue reading What happens when we die?
Is Empathy a feminist thing?
In the penultimate chapter of “The Sin of Empathy”, Joe Rigney writes: “We can’t adequately address the dangers of empathy without considering feminism and its impact on the church.”[1] He quotes from a speech that Calvin Robinson made in 2024 where he argued that: Generally speaking, men tend to be more theologically rigid, whereas women… Continue reading Is Empathy a feminist thing?
Empathy and the balancing of virtue
Joe Rigney ends the first chapter of his book “The Sin of Empathy” by writing: “What then can we conclude from this initial survey? To begin, as Christians, we ought to resist any move to disparage biblical virtues. Sympathy, pity, compassion—these are biblical words with a long and well-developed history in the Christian tradition. The… Continue reading Empathy and the balancing of virtue
Muddying the waters of empathy
Joe Rigney in his book “The sin of empathy” suggests that “empathy” is a difficult word to define. He observes that it is a fairly recent entry into the English language. “The term “empathy” itself is very recent. It was introduced into English in the early twentieth century in the field of aesthetics. It originally… Continue reading Muddying the waters of empathy
The sin of root fallacy
In the first chapter of his book, “The Sin of Empathy”, Joe Rigney’s starting point is that in Hebrews 4:15, the writer talks about Christ sympathising with us in regards to our weakness. However, the NIV uses the word “empathise.” Rigney writes: .” The Greek word in question is sympathizo, which makes the English cognate… Continue reading The sin of root fallacy
Are we really not meant to show compassion sometimes? Part 1 of an engagement with Joe Rigney’s book “The sin of empathy”
I wrote recently in response to an article in Evangelicals Now about the supposed problem with empathy. The idea that we have a problem with empathy seems to be particularly driven by an American author, Joe Rigney. He has written a book called “The sin of empathy.” Actually, it’s a lot more complicated than that.… Continue reading Are we really not meant to show compassion sometimes? Part 1 of an engagement with Joe Rigney’s book “The sin of empathy”
Pastoral Care and Counselling : Avoiding the gear crunching shift to prayer
One of the things that people have shared with me which they find hard when seeking to talk about what they are going through and struggling with is the way in which sometimes, we can be too quick to dive into “let me pray for you.” Of course, prayer matters, of course the person’s biggest… Continue reading Pastoral Care and Counselling : Avoiding the gear crunching shift to prayer
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