Reviews of 'Being There'
Review from 'Regent's Reviews' (Regent's Park College, Oxford)
Michael Forster, Being There: The Healing Power of Presence (Stowmarket: Kevin Mayhew, 2015), 160pp.
As the title suggests, this is a book about the pastoral significance of being with and alongside others. Its fundamental thesis is that this is to be understood as an active presence, not simply a passive one, but where being may be more significant than doing. Recognising that there is no terminology to express this relationship that is problem free, Forster opts to describe this kind of presence as ‘pastoral companionship’, rather than either care or counselling, involving a companion (the one offering pastoral care) and an ‘other’, whose otherness is to be respected and cherished in the relationship.
It is written with a particular view to those engaged in pastoral work in a Christian context, but the author hopes it will be both accessible and helpful to all those involved in caring in some way. This diversity of readership comes from the author’s diverse background as a teacher, a minister in both Baptist and URC churches (having trained at Regent’s Park College, Oxford in the 1980s) and as a whole-time mental health chaplain in the NHS.
The book draws on a number of resources, but the majority of the material comes from the background of either counselling or biblical studies, and it is holding these two types of resources together that makes the book the particular contribution that it is to those in pastoral work. So the first three chapters reflect on the nature and possibility of ‘presence’ with another, drawing on both more general counselling experience about the way a companion will hold themselves in relation to the other (in terms often described as ‘active listening’) and in particular on the person-centred approach to psychotherapy connected with Carl Rogers.
After a short discussion of the nature of spirituality, which shapes the particular kind of companionship the author is seeking to address, we turn to five chapters that explore biblical texts with a particular desire to read these texts from the position, interests and questions of a pastoral companion. The biblical texts are chosen to represent a broad sweep of ‘salvation-history’, with chapters on Creation and Fall in Genesis, the Exodus event, Incarnation, Passion and Resurrection. There is then one final chapter which brings the book back to practicalities, considering issues such as confidentiality, safeguarding, supervision and referring on to others.
Forster writes clearly and compellingly, and one gathers a sense of someone behind the book who is himself a sensitive and positive companion, bringing much experience of life and presence with others to his writing. Some of the material should be familiar to those who have some pastoral training, but could be helpful reminders; the chapter that draws on Carl Rogers explores one particular approach in more depth than some would know. But the particularly
42
distinct aspect of the book is, as mentioned above, the desire to bring the overview of the biblical story, through studying key texts, into conversation with approaches to care and companionship. This adds particular biblical and theological depth and is a conversation that is not often found in this way in the literature of pastoral care or biblical studies. The texts used are well chosen are discussed with some theological rigour and offer very significant insight into how we might be actively present with others.
But Forster, of course, offers his own particular approach to and insights from the text, and it is here that some readers may struggle to journey with him. While wanting to reclaim Genesis 1-3 as full of truth, presented as myth (and he explains the meaning of the word), Forster suggests that perhaps the Fall was a necessary, even good thing, where we leave our ‘gilded cage’ - the example is given of wild animals kept as pets in cages - and ‘must leave the garden and live in the great, wide, adventurous, dangerous world beyond it.’ (p.76). There are some very helpful pastoral comments here about freedom, risk and failure even if some readers will want to read the story of the Fall in quite a different way.
Later, for example, Forster affirms the centrality of the Incarnation to the Biblical story and to Christian faith, in which there is much about hope and empowering others. He suggests that people ‘became convinced that in [Jesus] they had encountered the very heart of God’ (p.97) and that ‘his death set the seal on his life as a new revelation of God’ (p.98). Others would want to use language that affirms more strongly Jesus as God as well as revealing God and would look for a doctrine of the Holy Spirit as the power within the other who draws us into God. What God might be doing in the world through the Spirit seems to receive little, if any, attention, although there are significant ways in which the texts of Creation and Incarnation offer helpful resources. Asking more intentionally about God’s activity in our being present with others would add to the book.
Readers are bound to read these texts in a variety of ways, and this reader would want to interpret some of the texts differently, but two things are of value. There are pastoral insights that Forster offers which are helpful and can be taken even if the texts are read differently. There are, of course, some readings of Genesis 1- 3 that give little space for risk, and so would not be compatible with what Forster suggests, but there are other interpretations which can draw helpfully on Forster’s work here. Secondly, this book offers a valuable model for the way that pastoral care - although the model can be applied to other aspects of ministry - and the Bible can inform each other in valuable ways.
This is the kind of book to offer to those at the beginning of a college course on ministry, or those developing a pastoral ministry in a church context who have not had any training before. I will certainly be suggesting that others in college read it.
Anthony Clarke
Regent’s Park College, Oxford
Review in Regent’s Reviews, published by Regent’s Park College, Oxford
http://www.rpc.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/RR-April-2017.pdf
Neil Young, Company Director
I got your book and am currently reading it. I have to say it's brilliant I am not an overly religious person as you know but your book has meaning that can be carried across into so many other parts of life, even business.
Rev Dr Jan Berry, Head of Pastoral Studies at Luther King House, Manchester where the book is now a key text.
The book I wish I'd written - for years I have been teaching pastoral care to ordinands and other prospective church leaders, drawing on my pastoral experience and counselling training. Michael Forster's book brings together the best insights of person-centred counselling and pastoral wisdom in a book that is an invaluable resource for ministers and pastoral carers.
Rev. Dr Barbara Glasson, Methodist minister and Director of Touchstone, Bradford
In this exploration of what it means to be a pastoral companion, Michael Forster embraces both the wisdom of the counsellor and the insights of a practical theologian. With the insight born out of his own deep experience of both therapeutic and spiritual practice, Michael encourages the reader to be a faithful friend to others and in so doing to discover a process through which all can become more fully alive. He sees that this steadfast companionship enables deep resonance with Biblical story, wakens imagination and confirms that there is alway goodness and hope.
In a straightforward manner and with an exemplary lightness of touch, Michael explores the areas of personal choice and responsibility, regrets and disappointments, appropriate boundary setting and supervision. The book ree-visits some of the major themes of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament and discovers within them some timeless motifs for human flourishing. Michael also looks closely at some of his own pastoral encounters and highlights both the joys and pitfalls of such engagement.
This is a hugely positive and practical book, in which we are encouraged to grasp the foolish wisdom of God to stand alongside others, to keep hope alive and to trust God in the healing process of listening and attentiveness. Through this Michael returns us to to a new awareness of God, in humanity, fully alive. This is an important resource for pastoral workers, clergy and anyone who feels called to accompany another through difficult times.
James Poore, Supernumerary Minister, Newcastle upon Tyne West Methodist Circuit
Michael Forster, a minister in the United Reformed Church, now living in retirement in the Loughborough area, has a fascinating backstory. He grew up in an Anglican vicarage but, in due course, became a Baptist minister and then later transferred to the URC. As well as substantial pastoral experience in the life of various churches, he subsequently worked as a full-time chaplain in a mental health and learning disability NHS Trust. Along the way, he acquired a post-graduate diploma in counselling and psychotherapy. He is also a leading writer of modern hymns. I begin with this potted biography to illustrate something of the breadth and depth that Michael brings to this book.
In it, he seeks to serve the needs of all in Christian faith communities, ordained or lay, who wish to exercise a ministry of 'pastoral companionship'. The book has three main strands. The first is that of personal experience. Even those of us long in the tooth will benefit from some of the rich pastoral insights and stories contained here. Secondly, there is the counselling theory which has underpinned much of his practice of pastoral care. He draws primarily on the work of the American psychologist, Carl Rogers, known for his 'person-centred approach'. Rogers believed that the counsellor was someone whose task was to enable 'healing and positive change by providing the conditions in which the individual's actualising tendency can work unhindered' (p.53, Forster's summary). Finally, Michael offers Biblical and theological reflection, creatively addressing passages from Genesis and Exodus and then looking at the birth narratives of Jesus and at the accounts of his dying and resurrection ('dying' rather than 'death' is his preferred usage). It is sometimes the case that writers in the Christian tradition use scripture as mere ballast to justify their argument. Forster is refreshingly different in that the Hebrew and Christian texts illuminate what he has been seeking to share with us. His chapter on the Resurrection is particularly suggestive. It may be sermon-like in its frequent repetition of the phrase 'It doesn't have to be that way' but the sermon in question is a powerful one.
I recognise in Michael Forster that 'pearl of great price', a pastoral theologian. He has an eye (or ear) for a telling definition but also a gift for a pithy summary, as when he remarks that 'the creative heart of religion is not in dogmas and institutions but in story and storytelling' (p.67). I was reminded, too, when he speaks of the way the pastoral encounter can be a form of prayer, because of the quality of attention offered, that the great French philosopher and spiritual teacher Simone Weill regarded attention as the highest form of prayer. One of Michael's strengths is the capacity to stimulate the reader's own reflections. I should say that the book also contains guidance on good practice, ethics and safeguards plus a section on sources of professional support and a useful short list of references. It strikes me that the book as a whole could serve as the basis of a pastoral training course for those interested in exploring what it means to be a pastoral companion, how, in other words, 'to provide a psychological environment where [people are enabled to] find and come to trust their own resources for becoming' (p.22). Of course, this requires a willingness to 'trust the process' but what are we, if not a people of faith?
More 5-star reviews here
Review from 'Regent's Reviews' (Regent's Park College, Oxford)
Michael Forster, Being There: The Healing Power of Presence (Stowmarket: Kevin Mayhew, 2015), 160pp.
As the title suggests, this is a book about the pastoral significance of being with and alongside others. Its fundamental thesis is that this is to be understood as an active presence, not simply a passive one, but where being may be more significant than doing. Recognising that there is no terminology to express this relationship that is problem free, Forster opts to describe this kind of presence as ‘pastoral companionship’, rather than either care or counselling, involving a companion (the one offering pastoral care) and an ‘other’, whose otherness is to be respected and cherished in the relationship.
It is written with a particular view to those engaged in pastoral work in a Christian context, but the author hopes it will be both accessible and helpful to all those involved in caring in some way. This diversity of readership comes from the author’s diverse background as a teacher, a minister in both Baptist and URC churches (having trained at Regent’s Park College, Oxford in the 1980s) and as a whole-time mental health chaplain in the NHS.
The book draws on a number of resources, but the majority of the material comes from the background of either counselling or biblical studies, and it is holding these two types of resources together that makes the book the particular contribution that it is to those in pastoral work. So the first three chapters reflect on the nature and possibility of ‘presence’ with another, drawing on both more general counselling experience about the way a companion will hold themselves in relation to the other (in terms often described as ‘active listening’) and in particular on the person-centred approach to psychotherapy connected with Carl Rogers.
After a short discussion of the nature of spirituality, which shapes the particular kind of companionship the author is seeking to address, we turn to five chapters that explore biblical texts with a particular desire to read these texts from the position, interests and questions of a pastoral companion. The biblical texts are chosen to represent a broad sweep of ‘salvation-history’, with chapters on Creation and Fall in Genesis, the Exodus event, Incarnation, Passion and Resurrection. There is then one final chapter which brings the book back to practicalities, considering issues such as confidentiality, safeguarding, supervision and referring on to others.
Forster writes clearly and compellingly, and one gathers a sense of someone behind the book who is himself a sensitive and positive companion, bringing much experience of life and presence with others to his writing. Some of the material should be familiar to those who have some pastoral training, but could be helpful reminders; the chapter that draws on Carl Rogers explores one particular approach in more depth than some would know. But the particularly
42
distinct aspect of the book is, as mentioned above, the desire to bring the overview of the biblical story, through studying key texts, into conversation with approaches to care and companionship. This adds particular biblical and theological depth and is a conversation that is not often found in this way in the literature of pastoral care or biblical studies. The texts used are well chosen are discussed with some theological rigour and offer very significant insight into how we might be actively present with others.
But Forster, of course, offers his own particular approach to and insights from the text, and it is here that some readers may struggle to journey with him. While wanting to reclaim Genesis 1-3 as full of truth, presented as myth (and he explains the meaning of the word), Forster suggests that perhaps the Fall was a necessary, even good thing, where we leave our ‘gilded cage’ - the example is given of wild animals kept as pets in cages - and ‘must leave the garden and live in the great, wide, adventurous, dangerous world beyond it.’ (p.76). There are some very helpful pastoral comments here about freedom, risk and failure even if some readers will want to read the story of the Fall in quite a different way.
Later, for example, Forster affirms the centrality of the Incarnation to the Biblical story and to Christian faith, in which there is much about hope and empowering others. He suggests that people ‘became convinced that in [Jesus] they had encountered the very heart of God’ (p.97) and that ‘his death set the seal on his life as a new revelation of God’ (p.98). Others would want to use language that affirms more strongly Jesus as God as well as revealing God and would look for a doctrine of the Holy Spirit as the power within the other who draws us into God. What God might be doing in the world through the Spirit seems to receive little, if any, attention, although there are significant ways in which the texts of Creation and Incarnation offer helpful resources. Asking more intentionally about God’s activity in our being present with others would add to the book.
Readers are bound to read these texts in a variety of ways, and this reader would want to interpret some of the texts differently, but two things are of value. There are pastoral insights that Forster offers which are helpful and can be taken even if the texts are read differently. There are, of course, some readings of Genesis 1- 3 that give little space for risk, and so would not be compatible with what Forster suggests, but there are other interpretations which can draw helpfully on Forster’s work here. Secondly, this book offers a valuable model for the way that pastoral care - although the model can be applied to other aspects of ministry - and the Bible can inform each other in valuable ways.
This is the kind of book to offer to those at the beginning of a college course on ministry, or those developing a pastoral ministry in a church context who have not had any training before. I will certainly be suggesting that others in college read it.
Anthony Clarke
Regent’s Park College, Oxford
Review in Regent’s Reviews, published by Regent’s Park College, Oxford
http://www.rpc.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/RR-April-2017.pdf
Neil Young, Company Director
I got your book and am currently reading it. I have to say it's brilliant I am not an overly religious person as you know but your book has meaning that can be carried across into so many other parts of life, even business.
Rev Dr Jan Berry, Head of Pastoral Studies at Luther King House, Manchester where the book is now a key text.
The book I wish I'd written - for years I have been teaching pastoral care to ordinands and other prospective church leaders, drawing on my pastoral experience and counselling training. Michael Forster's book brings together the best insights of person-centred counselling and pastoral wisdom in a book that is an invaluable resource for ministers and pastoral carers.
Rev. Dr Barbara Glasson, Methodist minister and Director of Touchstone, Bradford
In this exploration of what it means to be a pastoral companion, Michael Forster embraces both the wisdom of the counsellor and the insights of a practical theologian. With the insight born out of his own deep experience of both therapeutic and spiritual practice, Michael encourages the reader to be a faithful friend to others and in so doing to discover a process through which all can become more fully alive. He sees that this steadfast companionship enables deep resonance with Biblical story, wakens imagination and confirms that there is alway goodness and hope.
In a straightforward manner and with an exemplary lightness of touch, Michael explores the areas of personal choice and responsibility, regrets and disappointments, appropriate boundary setting and supervision. The book ree-visits some of the major themes of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament and discovers within them some timeless motifs for human flourishing. Michael also looks closely at some of his own pastoral encounters and highlights both the joys and pitfalls of such engagement.
This is a hugely positive and practical book, in which we are encouraged to grasp the foolish wisdom of God to stand alongside others, to keep hope alive and to trust God in the healing process of listening and attentiveness. Through this Michael returns us to to a new awareness of God, in humanity, fully alive. This is an important resource for pastoral workers, clergy and anyone who feels called to accompany another through difficult times.
James Poore, Supernumerary Minister, Newcastle upon Tyne West Methodist Circuit
Michael Forster, a minister in the United Reformed Church, now living in retirement in the Loughborough area, has a fascinating backstory. He grew up in an Anglican vicarage but, in due course, became a Baptist minister and then later transferred to the URC. As well as substantial pastoral experience in the life of various churches, he subsequently worked as a full-time chaplain in a mental health and learning disability NHS Trust. Along the way, he acquired a post-graduate diploma in counselling and psychotherapy. He is also a leading writer of modern hymns. I begin with this potted biography to illustrate something of the breadth and depth that Michael brings to this book.
In it, he seeks to serve the needs of all in Christian faith communities, ordained or lay, who wish to exercise a ministry of 'pastoral companionship'. The book has three main strands. The first is that of personal experience. Even those of us long in the tooth will benefit from some of the rich pastoral insights and stories contained here. Secondly, there is the counselling theory which has underpinned much of his practice of pastoral care. He draws primarily on the work of the American psychologist, Carl Rogers, known for his 'person-centred approach'. Rogers believed that the counsellor was someone whose task was to enable 'healing and positive change by providing the conditions in which the individual's actualising tendency can work unhindered' (p.53, Forster's summary). Finally, Michael offers Biblical and theological reflection, creatively addressing passages from Genesis and Exodus and then looking at the birth narratives of Jesus and at the accounts of his dying and resurrection ('dying' rather than 'death' is his preferred usage). It is sometimes the case that writers in the Christian tradition use scripture as mere ballast to justify their argument. Forster is refreshingly different in that the Hebrew and Christian texts illuminate what he has been seeking to share with us. His chapter on the Resurrection is particularly suggestive. It may be sermon-like in its frequent repetition of the phrase 'It doesn't have to be that way' but the sermon in question is a powerful one.
I recognise in Michael Forster that 'pearl of great price', a pastoral theologian. He has an eye (or ear) for a telling definition but also a gift for a pithy summary, as when he remarks that 'the creative heart of religion is not in dogmas and institutions but in story and storytelling' (p.67). I was reminded, too, when he speaks of the way the pastoral encounter can be a form of prayer, because of the quality of attention offered, that the great French philosopher and spiritual teacher Simone Weill regarded attention as the highest form of prayer. One of Michael's strengths is the capacity to stimulate the reader's own reflections. I should say that the book also contains guidance on good practice, ethics and safeguards plus a section on sources of professional support and a useful short list of references. It strikes me that the book as a whole could serve as the basis of a pastoral training course for those interested in exploring what it means to be a pastoral companion, how, in other words, 'to provide a psychological environment where [people are enabled to] find and come to trust their own resources for becoming' (p.22). Of course, this requires a willingness to 'trust the process' but what are we, if not a people of faith?
More 5-star reviews here