Author: Dr Pieter Oldewage

He is the Registrar and Department Head for Pastoral Care & Counselling. He enjoys spending time doing oil paintings of nature scenes. His five grand-children are fixed on keep him young and up-to-date with what goes on in the rest of life. He is a family-man and loves spending time with them. And don’t forget a good old rugby game!

The voice of the Church

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The address given at the 2025 graduation ceremony of Auckland Park Theological Seminary.

My Journey from Non-religious to Pastoral Ministry

I was raised in an atheistic home without any exposure to the Bible or church life. Six months after my conversion, I applied to this seminary to pursue training as a full-time pastor. My application posed challenges for the screening committee due to my complete lack of biblical and church knowledge. Ultimately, my acceptance came with a clear caution: I was instructed to remain silent in class, listen attentively, and learn, mindful that I would represent God in pastoral ministry. This caution profoundly shaped my ministry and prompted a persistent self-reflection: Am I certain that what I proclaim truly represents Jesus Christ? Is the content of my preaching, teaching, and counselling congruent with the authentic voice of the Church? This led me on the path of enquiry in understanding what the voice of the Church is. By the voice of the Church, I do not mean the voice of any particular denomination but rather the voice of Jesus Christ—the voice of the Gospel.

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Pastoral Counselling: a one-on-many ministry

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Pastoral Counselling offers the Church an immense opportunity for diverse ministry within both the congregation and the broader community. Pastoral counselling is normally perceived as an action that takes place only in a counselling room or study. The perception is also that this interaction is limited to the counsellor (or pastor acting as counsellor) and the one or more individuals who face a counselling crisis. This limited view has deprived pastoral counselling of its tremendous contribution to an assembly’s ministry potential.

We face many challenges in the post-modern societies that we live in. It is not only financial constraints and unemployment that people have to deal with. There are numerous other social challenges that the church has to address. In an assembly in close proximity to ATS, the pastor has discovered that more than 75% of his female congregants were abused at some stage in their lives as children. This has a dire effect on their adult functionality and on their experiencing God as a loving Father. Trauma experiences are part and parcel of our post-modern society, resulting in Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome in many peoples’ lives. Intimate partner abuse and family violence is rife in too many communities. The list is almost endless, describing the post-modern life-style that both Christians and non-Christians have to cope with on a daily basis.

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