Picture this with me.
You look across from a man—let’s call him Steven—who stares blankly at the coffee table, the floor, his mug, anywhere but your eyes. You can see he is physically uncomfortable—not only from shame but because of the back injury he sustained several years ago, marking his life with the daily suffering that is chronic pain. You’ve wondered if this pain is maybe exacerbated by the depression medication he’s utilizing, but you’re unsure of how to approach that question with the right amount of sensitivity, so you don’t ask. Steven, once again, fell in a moment of weakness and looked at pornography. He hasn’t been to church in three weeks and is increasingly isolating himself. These patterns feel like they are on repeat. And you feel helpless as a pastor. Yet, as dark as things appear, this brother has not yet given up hope because he was willing to meet with you today.
What does it mean to pastor this man? How do you counsel and shepherd him? What does the pursuit of meaningful change look like in the life of this brother in Christ? In this piece, I’ll apply the work of Todd Wilson in “The Integrated Pastor: Towards an Embodied and Embedded Spiritual Formation,” a chapter that reminded me how important it is for us to remember that every individual we have the privilege of pastoring is an embodied soul.
The Proof Is in the Pastors
Evangelical spiritual formation, with its paradoxical tendency to shape believers who are “holy and not whole,” is often tragically lacking. If we want proof, Wilson says we need look no further than our most “successful” pastors.[1] Pastors like Bill Hybels of Willow Creek, who fell into a sexual scandal that disqualified him from ministry after decades of seeming faithfulness. Or pastors like Mark Driscoll, whose behind-the-scenes tyranny was extensively documented in Mike Cosper’s viral The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill podcast. We could think of more recent examples within Reformed circles with Stephen Lawson and Josh Buice, or within the charismatic movement with leaders like Mike Bickle. While I was writing this article, news broke of Phillip Yancey’s extramarital affair.[2] At times, I find myself fearing who might fall next.
With welcome humility, Wilson admits his own holy/unwhole dichotomy as a pastor. He shares openly his obsession with ministry achievement and success that festered so deeply that it eventually landed him in a therapist’s office. That moment and the months of recovery after it helped him to see the godly/dysfunctional juxtaposition playing out in his life—what Wilson describes as “a lack of integration.”[3] That lack of integration is the natural outworking of an evangelical approach to spiritual formation that emphasizes doctrine and character while downplaying or even outright questioning the need for physical and psychological wholeness.[4]
This we should have done without neglecting the other.
Doing Justice to the Body, the Mind, and the Need to Be Known
If the spiritual formation embraced by pastors leads to discordant lives, how can we expect our church members to be any different? The apples do not fall far from the tree (or perhaps we should say that the sheep don’t get too far without the shepherd). How do pastors serve themselves and their church members like Steven who suffer from disorders of the body and the mind? Wilson says the way forward is for pastors to provide a spiritual formation
that takes seriously the nature of the human person as a psychosomatic unity, that does justice to our embodied, incarnate nature, and that promotes integration of the doctrinal and moral with the psychological and even neurological.[5]
This is an approach that will require pastors to lend more credence to the body, the mind, and interpersonal communion. It is an approach that integrates “the different elements of the human person into a coordinated, unified whole.”[6]
The most common evangelical anthropology, which Wilson sees as anchored in the thought of Saint Augustine, is a dualistic anthropology—a separation of mind and body, soul and flesh, that has more to do with Plato than with Paul. An integrated spiritual formation calls for a more biblically grounded understanding that is “more in line with Christian commitments to embodiment.”[7] Counseling Steven in his pornography addiction cannot be done effectively without taking into account the chronic pain he navigates every day, nor the depression that often hovers over his heart. His physical and mental suffering do not excuse his sin, but they are real factors to consider with grace and bring into the conversation.
Pastoral care for Steven means loving him enough to get to know him as an embodied person. Rather than putting him in a box as a man with a “lust problem,” our questions should open doors to deeper and wider introspection. “When you clicked on that link,” we could ask him, “what were you wanting in that moment besides those images? What did you want that you felt you could not have?” Is Steven chasing physical relief? Is he pursuing distraction from the crippling sadness that is exaggerated by a disordered mind? Is there past trauma in his life where pornography turns into a form of escape? If his spirit is willing but his flesh is weak or even outright against him (Matt 26:41), accountability software and an achievable Bible reading plan—both of which are good things—are likely not all that this brother will need from his pastors and his church.
Again, none of this eliminates Steven’s sin or his agency in resisting that sin. His suffering is real, but he is not a helpless victim. In fact, pastoral care for Steven will require helping him to believe that he still has agency and that the God who loves him so deeply has not and will not abandon him.[8] No matter the bodily or psychological ailments we may face, grace is always available to the Christian. But that grace comes to us in the lived experience of our bodies. Which means that as we seek to shepherd Steven, we must not forget that Steven’s body is Steven. Seeing this brother not as a soul with a body but as an embodied soul raises a speed bump against our frustrations and impatience and encourages us to consider other factors that may be at play in Steven’s addiction and depression.
As we elevate the importance of the body, we will naturally elevate the importance of the mind in our spiritual formation. Wilson speaks in no uncertain terms of how neglectful evangelicalism has been towards the significance of the brain: “For evangelicals, the brain is hardly even a category of spiritual formation,” when the fact is that “there is no spiritual formation without brain formation or re-formation.”[9]
This step (taking the brain more seriously) gets the most attention from Wilson as he brings in research on neuroscience and psychology. In the case of Steven, the real possibility of chemical imbalances in his brain should inform how we care for and extend grace to him. In evangelical circles, we can rightly caution against an overdependence on medication, but we should also caution against a prideful or unbiblically scrupulous avoidance of it. Medication can become a crutch, but it can also serve as an aid that enables Steven to better answer the biblical call to renew his mind (Rom 12:2) and may help him unburden emotional weights caused by a brain suffering effects from the Fall. Much wisdom is required for these conversations.
Finally, Wilson upholds the importance of greater interpersonal communion. He calls for Christians to descend below the surface of one another’s lives: to not just know, but to be known.[10] Indeed, neurological research shows that when people experience this kind of communion with one another, it literally rewires the brain in healthy ways.[11] It should not surprise us in the least that the Triune God, who designed us in his image for meaningful community, designed our brains to create healthy neurological pathways when that community is lived out and experienced.
Think for a moment on the physically communal components of Jesus’ ministry in the Gospels—how often our Savior uses touch to heal both body and soul (Matt 8:2–3; Mark 5:41–42; John 9:6–7). Consider how the Apostle Paul urges Christians to greet one another with a holy kiss (Rom 16:16; 1 Cor 16:20; 2 Cor 13:12; 1 Thes 5:26; 1 Pet 5:14). Although a kiss is not how our culture expresses physical affection for those outside of our immediate family, the New Testament places a clear emphasis on the embodied nature of the local church. Steven will be blessed by a brother in his church texting him a word of encouragement. He will be more blessed by the interpersonal communion that occurs when a brother places a loving arm around him after church and prays for the Lord to strengthen and uphold him. A wise pastor will gently, lovingly, and gradually call Steven towards greater relationship with his brothers and sisters in Christ and away from the isolation where sin and sorrow thrive.
Wilson’s claim is clear: If pastors are to shepherd their flock well, they must not lose sight of the Lord’s design of the human person as an embodied person. Since he wrote “The Integrated Pastor,” we’ve walked through the COVID pandemic that sunk our chronically online culture deeper into our screens as well as the meteoric rise of artificial intelligence and the disturbing use of it for companionship (and even therapy). One could argue that the need for understanding the human person as a unified body, soul, and mind has never been greater.
So, as pastors, let us gladly take into account the embodied nature of our congregants as we aim to shepherd them towards the reality that the life they live in the body is to be lived by faith in the Son of God who loved them and gave himself up for them (Gal 2:20).
References
[1] Todd Wilson, “The Integrated Pastor: Toward an Embodied and Embedded Spiritual Formation,” in Tending Soul, Mind, and Body: The Art and Science of Spiritual Formation, ed. Gerland Hiestand and Todd Wilson (IVP Academic, 2019), 108.
[2] Though Yancey is not a pastor, he held significant influence in American evangelicalism as a Christian author many looked to for guidance in the pursuit of spiritual formation.
[3] Wilson, “The Integrated Pastor,” 111.
[4] Wilson, “The Integrated Pastor,” 111–12.
[5] Wilson, “The Integrated Pastor,” 113.
[6] Wilson, “The Integrated Pastor,” 111.
[7] Wilson, “The Integrated Pastor,” 115.
[8] For an accessible reflection on mental health and agency, see Alan Noble’s book On Getting Out of Bed: The Burden and Gift of Living (IVP, 2023).
[9] Wilson, “The Integrated Pastor,” 116 (emphasis original).
[10] Wilson, “The Integrated Pastor,” 120.
[11] Wilson, “The Integrated Pastor,” 120.