Curious situation--Pastors?

[John81]

Where in Scripture is a pastor required to keep anything in confidence. This is something that the Catholic Church pushes, not Scripture. I give Biblical Council all the time and each time I begin counseling someone, I make it clear that there is no right to confidence, especially with teenagers. If someone confesses a murder, I will call the police.

We must be very careful as Pastors that we do not back ourselves into a corner.

As to this situation - The girl is 18 and now an adult. I would have dealt with her Scripturally. She repented - It is now washed under the blood and nothing else needs to be done. (Matt. 18). If it were to continue, bring witnesses. If it still continues, bring it before the church.

Obviously, after the first step, I would pull the parents aside and let them know what is going on, but not until after the first step.

To be clear, I wasn't suggesting there is a requirement for pastors to hold conversations private. Myself, I am wondering how a pastor determines what will and won't be held in confidence. Naturally, or it seems it should be, a pastor wouldn't keep quiet if he learned someone had committed murder, rape or some other sort of crime. What I'm asking is more with regards to general counseling where a person might share with their pastor they have had lustful thoughts about someone not their spouse, or they mention a sin (not a crime) from years past, or simply discuss some issues they are dealing with. For the most part, shouldn't such discussions with a pastor be private unless otherwise stated beforehand?

With regards to the 18 year old girl, I think I agree with you.

[blossom]

I am so relieved to hear you say that about murder and rape. We had an American pastor at a church here in Queensland who knew his son had a problem with paedophilia and he kept it to himself. The hurt that caused and the amount of people who left the church it was so damaging. I have never understood the stand of keeping it under church discipline. Anything that is against the Law of the land should be dealt with by the law of the land.

[Pastorj]

John81

I wasn't necesarily directing the post at you. Just a broad statement regarding counseling.

As to your specific question - it really depends on the circumstances. Here are a few examples where I had to reveal what I was told.
1. Battered woman - I called the police and had the husband arrested after I warned him that if he hit her again, I would make the phone call.
2. Teen Girl fondled - Brought parents into situation (even though the girl begged me not to), called the police (even though the parents also did not want to make the phone call). Afterwards, the family was very happy with the way it turned out.

[John81]

John81

I wasn't necesarily directing the post at you. Just a broad statement regarding counseling.

As to your specific question - it really depends on the circumstances. Here are a few examples where I had to reveal what I was told.
1. Battered woman - I called the police and had the husband arrested after I warned him that if he hit her again, I would make the phone call.
2. Teen Girl fondled - Brought parents into situation (even though the girl begged me not to), called the police (even though the parents also did not want to make the phone call). Afterwards, the family was very happy with the way it turned out.

It seems we certainly agree that where crimes are committed there should be no guarantee of privacy.

With regards to things that don't involve crime, I think most often counseling conversations between a pastor and someone should remain private...with room for exception in specific cases as the pastor may feel led.

[Anon]

As an update, he did convince the girl to make it right with her parents. Not sure exactly what all she told them, but she says she called them and told them...so its off our conscience, anyway.

[HappyChristian]

Making it right with her parents is of utmost importance - even if she is 18. I'm glad she agreed to do so.

[Pastorj]

I just don't agree that a pastor should force someone who is an adult to tell their parents of a sin. This is a very dangerous slope. At what age would you not force them? It is the pastor's responsibility to councel and preach the Word. It is the Holy Spirits job to bring conviction. I most certainly would have encouraged her to go to her parents, but I would not take the step of telling her that if she didn't, I would tell.

Hopefully it all works out.

[John81]

I just don't agree that a pastor should force someone who is an adult to tell their parents of a sin. This is a very dangerous slope. At what age would you not force them? It is the pastor's responsibility to councel and preach the Word. It is the Holy Spirits job to bring conviction. I most certainly would have encouraged her to go to her parents, but I would not take the step of telling her that if she didn't, I would tell.

Hopefully it all works out.

I agree on all counts.

[Anon]

I just don't agree that a pastor should force someone who is an adult to tell their parents of a sin. This is a very dangerous slope. At what age would you not force them? It is the pastor's responsibility to councel and preach the Word. It is the Holy Spirits job to bring conviction. I most certainly would have encouraged her to go to her parents, but I would not take the step of telling her that if she didn't, I would tell.

Hopefully it all works out.

PastorJ....maybe its different for us, but we have a teen pregnancy on our conscience. (Read OP) We couldn't get past the idea that we were hiding this thing from her parents, when we know her parents would NOT agree with what was done. Since we could not get it behind us, I assume God wanted us to take care of it. God leads each pastor to do different things with different people....

I can see and agree with what you are saying, but I don't believe its what God had for us in this particular situation.

[Anon]

I just don't agree that a pastor should force someone who is an adult to tell their parents of a sin. This is a very dangerous slope. At what age would you not force them? It is the pastor's responsibility to councel and preach the Word. It is the Holy Spirits job to bring conviction. I most certainly would have encouraged her to go to her parents, but I would not take the step of telling her that if she didn't, I would tell.

Hopefully it all works out.

Just as another note on this....one of the deciding factors for us was that, eventually, the parents could have very well found out. (Actually everyone in her family knew what happened except the parents). If the parents found out, and found out that we knew but hid it from them, it would have really upset them. Sometimes in each situation we have to really weigh all the options and decide what God wants done.

Again...I experienced this in a horrible way...when a girl confided in me....and she said she wasn't going to go back to the guy...so I never brought it up to the parents...a year later she was pregnant...and the parents were so VERY angry with me, and felt betrayed. I never purposely hid it from them...but when something like that happens, well, you tend to think twice about hiding information from parents like that. If that's never happened to you, then you probably wouldn't tend to look at a situation the same way.

[JerryNumbers]

I have not read all the post, but I have read down to Seth's 1st post. Seth hit the nail on the head, this young man did not want his parents to know so that he could avoid the consequence of his actions. He knew there would be consequences and he did not want to bear them

Which that is unusual. most of the time, we humans hate consequences for having done wrong, for even sinning against God. Who knows what the consequences would have been. Yet perhaps the boy over stated the consequences hoping that would keep you from telling his parents. He needed some consequences, don't we learn from punishment.

God said not to spare the rod. That in itself does not mean a whipping is necessary every time the child does wrong. It does mean the parents needs to punish when the children do wrong, and there is many forms of consequences besides a whipping. Sometimes the consequence of doing wrong is just telling ones parents of the wrong they did. And the consequences of telling the parents is sometime pretty rough consequences to go through.

[Pastorj]

Kitagrl,
I don't disagree with you and your husband often, but I do in this situation.

As to your previous situation. Was that girl an adult? If so, it is a totally different situation. What you should have done or did do should have no impact on this situation. This girl is an adult. If you feel obligated to tell the parents, go tell them. But to force an adult to do something which they do not want to do is not the role of a pastor.

[Anon]

Kitagrl,
I don't disagree with you and your husband often, but I do in this situation.

As to your previous situation. Was that girl an adult? If so, it is a totally different situation. What you should have done or did do should have no impact on this situation. This girl is an adult. If you feel obligated to tell the parents, go tell them. But to force an adult to do something which they do not want to do is not the role of a pastor.

I don't think of it as forcing. We never "forced" her. My husband felt led to stop hiding it from the parents. But he wanted to give her a chance to make it right with her parents first. We went all summer without it happening. We almost dropped it but then he saw on Facebook the potential problem had not been solved and he felt like he was covering up something that could become a problem again. So he told her he felt he needed to tell her parents but that she could do it instead and gave her a time limit. She much preferred to do it herself and did, in five minutes. Not sure why she could not have done that 4 months ago as suggested....oh well.

I dunno. If God told my husband that her parents should know...then it doesn't matter who disagrees. haha. (Not being sarcastic, just truthful). I hope we never have to face the situation again.

The Bible does say the Pastor watches for the souls of his people. While that does not mean micromanagement...I do feel that God leads pastors to intervene once in awhile in certain situations.

[Seth Doty]

As to your previous situation. Was that girl an adult? If so, it is a totally different situation. What you should have done or did do should have no impact on this situation. This girl is an adult. If you feel obligated to tell the parents, go tell them. But to force an adult to do something which they do not want to do is not the role of a pastor.

On the other hand it is not fair for an individual to put the pastor/pastors wife in the position of knowing they did something they should have confessed to their parents if they are not willing to do so. I would think that it would not be to much of a stretch to apply the second part of 1 Timothy 5:22 to a situation like this: "neither be partaker of other men's sins: keep thyself pure."

As you pointed out earlier a pastor is not the priest of the congregation. If someone has sin in their life and they are not willing to get it right and confess it to every party that has a right to know, then neither should they confess it to the pastor/pastors wife. Pastors should not let themselves be dragged into a situation where they become partakers of other peoples sins. Knowledge of a situation brings a certain amount of responsibility.

If I was a pastor I would not want to know a young lady in the church had "repented" of kissing some guy she was not married to if she was not willing to admit that to her parents. I would not want to know a man in the church was struggling with lust if he wanted to keep that secret from his wife. You get the point. If you let someone tell you something they should also tell someone else but are not willing to then you are allowing yourself to become an "accessory to a sin" so to speak. Pastors have enough to deal with without having a lot of burdens of that sort on their conscience.

[Anon]

Thank you Seth! That is EXACTLY how we feel about it. Very good illustration too about the man dealing with lust...the first step any pastor would tell the man to do is to confess to his wife and have her help him overcome the problem. If he is not willing to go to his wife, then he is not ready to make it right. Imagine a pastor having to face that poor wife while he's also trying to pastor HER, and knowing he knows something about her husband that she does not. You just can't pastor people when you are keeping secrets from them.