Shepherding According to God: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Pauline Pastoral Theology in Witness Lee’s Reading

Abstract

Contemporary pastoral theology has increasingly absorbed the categories and methods of counseling psychology, yet this turn often leaves unexplained the theological ontology of the pastoral caregiver. This article develops a constructive interdisciplinary dialogue between Pauline theology, counseling psychology, and the pastoral theology of Witness Lee (1905–1997), proposing an ontological-participatory account of Christian shepherding. After surveying the therapeutic turn and major psychology–Christianity integration models, the study examines Lee’s reading of Paul’s pastoral pattern—nursing mother, exhorting father, and slave of Christ—and his interpretation of “shepherding according to God” (κατὰ Θεόν) in 1 Peter 5:2 as participation in the life, nature, and shepherding activity of the Triune God. Building on Lee’s doctrine of practical deification—believers becoming “God in life, nature, expression, and function, but not in the Godhead”—this article argues that pastoral care is mediated through persons constituted with Christ who minister divine life through cherishing, nourishing, and mutual shepherding. Placed into dialogue with counseling psychology, this vision yields convergences in empathy, presence, and holistic care, alongside tensions concerning anthropology and the telos of human transformation. The article offers an ontological-participatory framework that situates the descriptive achievements of the human sciences within a richer Pauline vision of participation in the Triune God’s ongoing shepherding ministry.

1. Introduction

Contemporary pastoral ministry in North America—and increasingly across global Christian communities shaped by Western educational and therapeutic models—finds itself in a state of conceptual tension. During the “postsecular turn”1, Christian ministers are expected to speak on trauma, boundaries, emotional intelligence, and mental wellness while remaining preachers of the Word and overseers of congregational life. Pastoral identity thus frequently oscillates between two poles: on the one hand lies the therapeutic turn, in which pastoral care becomes functionally indistinguishable from counseling supplemented by religious language. On the other lies a form of pastoral ministry that minimizes psychological realities in favor of spirituality and moral exhortation. Beneath this tension lies a deeper question: what constitutes a shepherd in Christian theology? More fundamentally, what occurs when one person truly cares for another before God?

This article develops a constructive interdisciplinary study bringing theology into dialogue with psychology by engaging three discourses in sustained conversation: Pauline pastoral theology, contemporary counseling psychology, and the theological reading of the apostolic shepherding in Witness Lee (1905–1997). It explores how Pauline theology supplies conceptual resources for understanding pastoral care that are lacking in modern therapeutic models while remaining open to psychological insight. In particular, the study examines whether Christian shepherding can be understood not merely as a set of relational skills or ministerial techniques but as a mode of participation in the life and activity of God. Given the vastness of the two fields engaged here—psychologically informed scholarship on the Pauline letters and the broader dialogue between pastoral and psychological care—the treatment necessarily remains synthetic and generalizing, aiming at constructive orientation across the disciplines rather than exhaustive coverage of either.

This study takes 1 Peter 5:2, where church elders are charged to “shepherd the flock of God among you…according to God” (κατὰ Θεόν), as a key biblical lens to the inquiry and the illumination of Paul’s pastoral pattern. The apostle describes himself as gentle among the Thessalonians, as a nursing mother cherishes her own children and as a father exhorting and consoling his children (1 Thess 2:7–12); he reminds the Ephesian elders that for three years he admonished each one with tears (Acts 20:31); he tells the Corinthians that he will gladly spend and be utterly spent for their souls (2 Cor 12:15). Such texts portray an apostolic ministry that is profoundly personal, embodied, and transformative, characterized not merely by what the shepherd teaches or does but also by a mode of being marked by tenderness, sacrifice, affective presence, and formatively relational labor.

It is at this point that Witness Lee offers a striking yet largely unexplored contribution. Emerging from a non-Western ecclesial context that later shaped global Christian communities, Lee developed an account of pastoral theology—“shepherding according to God”—envisioning pastoral care through believers’ modeling after Christ, grounded in union and constituted with Him, and expressive of God’s life and attributes. Drawing on the classic Christian doctrine of deification (theosis), Lee proposes that shepherding is carried out through transformed persons who mediate divine life and love to others. In this framework, pastoral care is not merely imitation of Christ but participation in Christ’s ongoing shepherding ministry. Lee thus functions in this study as a sustained case study: the deeper interest lies in the participatory-ontological, Christological account of care instantiated in his ministry—an account inviting future comparison with other participatory theological and psychotherapeutic approaches to care.

The argument proceeds in four movements: first, it maps the therapeutic turn in pastoral care and surveys major psychology–Christianity integration models (Section 2); second, it reads the Pauline pattern of shepherding in light of Lee (Section 3); third, it develops the meaning of κατὰ Θεόν as an ontological-participatory mode of pastoral care grounded in practical deification (Section 4); and finally, it places this vision into constructive dialogue with contemporary counseling psychology, exploring its implications for pastoral theology and theology–psychology integration (Section 5).

2. The Therapeutic Turn in Modern Pastoral Care

Before turning to Pauline pastoral theology, the dominant modern models of Christian soul care require a historical survey.2 Over the last century, pastoral theology in many Western contexts has increasingly adopted the language, assumptions, and methods of clinical psychology and counseling.3 Ministers are now commonly trained in active listening, emotional attunement, family systems, trauma awareness, conflict resolution, and referral protocols. These developments have yielded benefits: correcting authoritarian ministry models, deepening sensitivity to suffering, and enhancing churches’ care for wounded persons. Yet they have also reshaped the grammar of pastoral ministry and identity. Pastoral caregivers4—designated in this article to include all who engage in pastoral care, not limited to the conventional understanding of “pastors”—are now frequently imagined less as shepherds of souls and more as therapeutic facilitators whose legitimacy rests on psychological competence. This section first traces the historical shift from the classical cura animarum (care/cure of souls [commonly translated from psyche in Greek and nephesh in Hebrew]) to contemporary counseling-oriented ministry and then surveys major psychology–Christianity integration paradigms to situate Lee’s pastoral theology within the broader contemporary conversation.

2.1. From Cura Animarum to Counseling

Historians of pastoral care have long observed that the church’s traditional understanding of care of souls underwent significant transformation in the modern era. In the classical Christian tradition, pastoral care concerned the moral, spiritual, relational, and ecclesial formation of persons before God. Sin, virtue, prayer, repentance, suffering, vocation, and communion with God constituted its basic coordinates. Gregory the Great’s (c. 540–604 CE) Book of Pastoral Rule (590), for example, is regarded as a milestone in pastoral care literature, presenting leadership as practical theology embodied in humility, discernment, and service, requiring shepherds to model the virtues they teach (Gregory the Great 2007):

The spiritual director should be the first in service so that by his way of life he might show the laity how to live, and so that the flock (which follows the voice and behavior of its shepherd) may advance all the better by his example than by his words alone. For indeed, the one who is compelled by his position to speak of the highest things is also compelled, by necessity, to show the highest things by his example. For his voice more easily penetrates his listeners’ hearts when his way of life commends what he says. Thus, what he enjoins by speaking he helps by showing how it is to be done.

(Gregory the Great 2007, bk. 2, chap. 3)

Though writing in a context very different from today’s, Gregory offers principles of pastoral care and emphasizes the personality, character, and disposition of shepherds as instruments of divine action and mediators of divine grace. Effective ministry depends not merely on shepherds’ sound instruction but more on their being. As Eric Johnson notes, if psychology is broadly defined as “a rigorous inquiry into human nature and how to treat its problems and advance its well-being,” Christians have been thinking about and practicing psychology for centuries. This tradition of soul care extended from Augustine and Aquinas through the Reformers, Catholic mystics, Puritans, Pietists, and Kierkegaard, reflecting the longstanding conviction that the care of souls is fundamentally a theological task (Johnson 2010, pp. 9–47, quotation at p. 14). Accordingly, pastoral caregivers were regarded as physicians of souls, guiding individuals toward holiness, reconciliation, and life in Christ.

Drawing on E. Brooks Holifield and others, Johnson summarizes that modern pastoral care gradually shifted from this theological horizon toward a more therapeutic and individualistic framework.5 In the twentieth century, psychoanalysis, humanistic psychology, and later counseling psychology introduced new categories for interpreting human distress, including maladjustment, anxiety, developmental deficits, dysfunctional relationships, unmet needs, and emotional trauma. Seminaries increasingly incorporated clinical pastoral education, psychological diagnostics, and counseling skills into ministerial training. Consequently, the language of sanctification, spiritual direction, and soul care was often supplemented—and at times displaced—by the language of mental health, personal growth, and self-fulfillment.

For Pauline pastoral theology, this shift raises important anthropological questions. Paul does not understand the human person as an autonomous self-seeking psychological equilibrium but as one whose deepest reality is determined by participation: in Adam or in Christ, in flesh or in Spirit, under sin or under grace. The self is not annihilated but radically relocated within God’s salvation. Hence, when modern pastoral care adopts secular therapeutic assumptions uncritically, it risks operating with an anthropology that differs significantly from Paul’s participatory vision of life in Christ. The central question, therefore, is not whether psychology may contribute to pastoral care, but whether psychological categories ultimately define the nature, goals, and practices of pastoral care itself. This leads to the following discussion on the psychology-faith relationship.

2.2. The Five-Views Taxonomy

A useful map of the contemporary psychology–Christianity landscape appears in Psychology & Christianity: Five Views, which organizes major approaches to the relationship between psychology and the Christian faith into five paradigms.6 Though schematic, the taxonomy clarifies the principal options available for contemporary pastoral theology and soul care.

First, the Levels-of-Explanation model, represented by David Myers, maintains that psychology and theology operate at different explanatory levels: psychology investigates empirical processes, while theology addresses meaning, morality, and divine realities. Second, the Integration model, associated with Stanton Jones, seeks a principled synthesis between psychological science and Christian theology, treating empirical findings and biblical truth as mutually informative. Third, the Christian Psychology model, represented by Roberts and Watson (2010), argues that Christian traditions already contain rich psychological resources and therefore seeks to develop psychology from theological sources rather than primarily integrating secular theories. Fourth, the Transformational Psychology model, associated with Coe and Hall (2010), emphasizes the counselor’s own spiritual formation and union with God as central to care. Lastly, the Biblical Counseling model, classically represented by Powlison (2010), grounds pastoral care in Scripture and theological categories while often critiquing secular psychology as anthropologically inadequate.

Not easily reducible to any of these models, Lee’s pastoral theology shares with Transformational Psychology the conviction that the caregivers’ own spiritual constitution is decisive, resonates with Christian Psychology in deriving its primary categories from Scripture and Christian traditions, and overlaps with Biblical Counseling in its Christological orientation and its critique of the autonomous conception of the self (see Powlison 2010). However, Lee’s framework is more explicitly Christological and ontological-participatory: the caregiver is not merely spiritually mature, biblically informed, or ethically integrated but a living vessel or channel constituted with God in Christ and understood to minister divine life to others. This article does not claim that Lee’s framework is superior or inferior to participatory alternatives but instead advances two modest claims. First, Lee renders theologically explicit, in Trinitarian and participatory terms, an ontology of the caregiver. Second, as a largely overlooked, oftentimes misrepresented, non-Western voice, Lee’s Pauline reading broadens the theology–psychology conversation by expanding its repertoire of theological grammars. This distinctive grammar—neither simply integrationist nor anti-psychological—will become clearer in the following sections.

2.3. Counseling-Psychology Constructs Most Relevant to Shepherding

Several developments in counseling psychology bear directly on any contemporary account of shepherding. As a founder of contemporary humanistic psychology, Carl Rogers’s “core therapeutic conditions” of empathy, congruence, and unconditional positive regard, together with common-factors theory’s emphasis on trust, alliance, hope, and the credibility of the helper, highlight the centrality of relational presence in human change/transformation.7

Christian integrationists such as Mark McMinn and David Benner have further sought to incorporate theological resources, including spiritual practices such as prayer, Scripture reading, confession, forgiveness, discernment of sin, and themes of redemption—into counseling practice.8 Meanwhile, Gerd Theissen’s psychologically informed interpretation of Paul demonstrates that interdisciplinary engagement need not be reductionistic (see Theissen 1987).

That the effectiveness of care is inseparable from the being of the caregiver is precisely where a Pauline pastoral theology may reopen the conversation. For Paul, pastoral ministry is not reducible to skill but a mode of being: the apostle declares that “Christ lives in me” (Gal 2:20); he “lives Christ” (Phil 1:21a) in his body; he labors on others until Christ is formed in them (Gal 4:19); he ministers not himself but Christ (2 Cor 4:5–12). It is into this conceptual gap that Lee’s articulation of “shepherding according to God” speaks: those who shepherd are constituted with God in life and nature so that God’s own cherishing, nourishing, and shepherding may flow through them into others. The following sections develop this participatory vision in detail.

3. The Pauline Pattern of Shepherding in Witness Lee’s Reading

Having surveyed the therapeutic landscape, we now turn to the Pauline pattern of shepherding as interpreted by Lee. Before examining his reading of Paul, a brief biographical sketch helps situate his pastoral theology within a lifetime of shepherding ministry and ecclesial practice.

Born in 1905 in Chefoo (today Yantai), Shandong, in northern China, and raised in a third-generation Christian household, Lee experienced a dynamic conversion in 1925. Following the 1932 visit of Watchman Nee (1903–1972) to Chefoo, the first local church there was raised up under Lee’s labor. In 1933, at Nee’s encouragement, Lee entered full-time ministry and moved to Shanghai the following year to co-labor under Nee’s mentorship, later extending his service to other churches in the country. After relocating to Taiwan in 1949, Lee raised and shepherded hundreds of churches across the island and cared for them throughout Hong Kong, the Philippines, and other regions of Southeast Asia. In 1962, he shifted the center of his ministry to the United States, from which he continued to minister to churches across North America and eventually six continents until his passing in 1997.9 Although neither a conventional biblical scholar nor a systematic theologian in academia, Lee was a sustained biblical expositor, theological thinker, and pastoral practitioner for more than six decades. His pastoral theology, preserved in the 139 volumes of The Collected Works of Witness Lee (CWWL), containing over 78,000 pages, is therefore best understood as the reflective product of a lifetime of ecclesial labor and shepherding practice.10

Lee’s understanding of shepherding is neither a modern counseling manual nor a purely theological abstraction. Rather, it constitutes an ecclesiology of pastoral care rooted in Scripture, especially in the ministries and patterns of Jesus Christ and the apostle Paul. These two paradigmatic figures provide its governing pattern: Christ, the Good, Great, and Chief Shepherd, establishes the divine model of care through both His earthly ministry (from His incarnation to crucifixion) and heavenly ministry (from His ascension into eternity). Paul, in turn, embodies Christ’s shepherding life according to His earthly pattern and participates in His ongoing heavenly ministry to take care of God’s flock, the church, issuing in the building of the Body of Christ (Lee 2004–2020, CWWL 1994–1997, vol. 4, pp. 446–48).

Shepherding, for Lee, is fundamentally more than governance, oversight, preaching, or corrective discipline; it is comprehensive care for God’s people. Drawing on Christ’s commission to Peter, “Feed My lambs…Shepherd My sheep” (John 21:15–17), and Paul’s exhortation to the Ephesian elders to care for the church of God (Acts 20:28), Lee defines shepherding as taking “all-inclusive tender care” of the flock, entailing every need of the sheep (Lee 2004–2020, CWWL 1994–1997, vol. 4, p. 447). Just as sheep require more than instruction—they need guidance, protection, healing, nourishment, and companionship—so shepherds attend to the whole person—spiritually, emotionally, relationally, and practically. Accordingly, Lee resists reducing ministry to institutional administration or managerial leadership, insisting instead that shepherding lies at the heart of Christian life and service, personally and corporately.

A further key to Lee’s understanding of shepherding is Ephesians 5:29, where Christ is said to “nourish and cherish” the church, His Body. From this verse Lee derives two fundamental elements of genuine shepherding in participatory ecclesial practice: cherishing and nourishing (Lee 2004–2020, CWWL 1986, vol. 3, p. 86; 2023a, msgs. 53–54). “Cherishing” refers to tender human care that comforts, warms, and restores people, making them happy, pleasant, and comfortable; “nourishing” refers to feeding people with the all-inclusive Christ as spiritual food for growth, transformation, and maturity (Lee 2004–2020, CWWL 1994–1997, vol. 5, p. 151). Together, these categories provide a holistic account of soul care that invites dialogue with counseling psychology while remaining decisively Christological, participatory, and ecclesial.

3.1. Cherishing and Nourishing as the Two Basic Elements of Shepherding

The first basic element is cherishing. Recognizing that people often carry burdens of fear, shame, loneliness, exhaustion, and various forms of wounds, Lee maintains that they first need to be cherished—the warming, comforting, and soothing dimension of pastoral care—before they can receive deeper spiritual nourishment (Lee 2004–2020, CWWL 1994–1997, vol. 5, p. 152). Cherishing involves making oneself approachable and accessible in every circumstance so that others experience acceptance, attentive listening, encouragement, and reassurance of their worth before God. Such a dimension of care requires emotional sensitivity, hospitable presence, and the willingness to descend to another’s level in loving contact.

Yet, cherishing is more than a relational skill; it is grounded in the incarnational pattern of Christ Himself, who consistently approached people with tenderness, compassion, and personal concern (cf. Matt. 9:10; Luke 7:34; John 1:45–51; 4:3–14; 8:3–11). Here Lee’s understanding converges with counseling psychology’s emphasis on empathy and the therapeutic alliance, while differing in its theological grounding: cherishing is not merely a technique for establishing rapport, but the human expression of Christ’s own tender care mediated through His people.

The second basic element is nourishing. If cherishing addresses a person’s immediate human condition, nourishing addresses the deeper need for spiritual life and growth. Lee understands nourishment as feeding people with the “all-inclusive Christ” (Matt 24:45–47),11 who is not merely the object of faith but the heavenly, living, true “bread of life (ζωή)” (John 6), the inward life supply, to people. To nourish, therefore, is not simply to convey information, even though biblically and doctrinally sound, nor merely to offer moral exhortation but to minister Christ Himself through Scripture, prayer, fellowship, and Spirit-filled speaking so that people receive, experience, and grow in the divine life. The goal is spiritual maturity within the Body of Christ: as believers grow “to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Eph 4:13–16) and progress from infancy to maturity (Heb 5:12–14), eventually becoming those who can nourish and care for others in turn.

Closely related to cherishing and nourishing in Lee’s pastoral vocabulary is “fostering,” which he likens to the raising of children (Lee 2023c, pp. 94–95). Drawing on Paul’s shepherding pattern to the young Thessalonian believers (1 Thess 1:5; 2:1–12; 2 Thess 3:9), Lee argues that fostering occurs primarily through patterning: “the proper way to foster them [the new and young ones] is to show them a pattern. By showing them a pattern, [we] water them, nourish them, and cherish them. This is fostering” (Lee 2023c, p. 108). Shepherding therefore takes place not only through instruction but also through embodied examples. Whether found in caregivers, biblical figures, or exemplary believers throughout church history, such patterns function as formative models through which believers are nurtured and invited to imitate and follow (Phil 3:17; 1 Tim 1:16, 4:12; 1 Pet 5:3). In time, they themselves become patterns for others to imitate (1 Thess 2:14) (Lee 2023c, pp. 108–9).

In Lee’s reading, cherishing and nourishing are two inseparable elements of genuine shepherding. Authentic pastoral care unites humanity and divinity, tender care and spiritual nourishment, instruction and embodied example. Believers are not merely taught but fostered toward maturity through contact with persons whose lives have been constituted with Christ and increasingly express His life. This helps understand why Paul can exhort believers, “Be imitators of me, as I also am of Christ” (1 Cor. 11:1), and why he presents himself as a nursing mother, an exhorting father, and a slave of God and of Christ—images to which the following sections now turn.

3.2. Christ’s Model: Cherishing in Humanity, Nourishing in Divinity

For Lee, all Christian shepherding originates in the ministry of Jesus Christ. Before Paul becomes an apostolic exemplar, Christ stands as the original and normative Shepherd. Lee reads the Gospel narratives as paradigms of pastoral care in which Christ cherishes people in His humanity and nourishes them in His divinity. The former emphasizes His incarnational tenderness; the latter, His life-imparting divine supply (Lee 2004–2020, CWWL 1994–1997, vol. 5, pp. 133–37).

Christ’s cherishing, in Lee’s reading, is considered His nearness to those who were socially neglected, condemned, or excluded. He reclines with tax collectors and sinners (Matt 9:10) and is called “a friend of tax collectors and sinners” (Luke 7:34). He speaks patiently with the Samaritan woman, crossing ethnic, gender, and moral boundaries (John 4:3–14), and restores the woman caught in adultery without either condoning her sin or crushing her dignity (John 8:1–11). He welcomes children and blesses them (Matt 19:13–15), demonstrating an attentiveness often overlooked by others (Lee 2004–2020, CWWL, 1994–1997, vol. 5, pp. 147–50). This cherishing continues after the resurrection when He prepares breakfast for His disciples by the sea before commissioning Peter to shepherd His flock (John 21:9–15). As Lee observes, “Christ expressed His aromatic [human] virtues by which He attracted and captivated people” (Lee 2004–2020, CWWL 1994–1997, vol. 5, pp. 224–27).

Christ also nourishes in divinity. For Lee, nourishing means more than emotional support or moral instruction; it communicates ζωή, the divine life itself. Christ imparts Himself as the divine life into people to feed them and be their inward life supply. In John 10:9–10 Christ leads His sheep into Himself as their pasture, becoming their source of life, security, and sustenance, while imparting life to them abundantly (Lee 2004–2020, CWWL 1994–1997, vol. 5, p. 137). Christ’s nourishing continues in His ongoing heavenly ministry. In Revelation 1:12–13 the ascended Christ serves as the High Priest walking among the lampstands—the local churches—and caring for them. Drawing upon the imagery of the priest tending the lampstand in the tabernacle (Exod 25:38; 30:7), Lee reads that Christ continues to cherish the churches in His humanity by caring for their condition and addressing their shortcomings through His speaking, while simultaneously nourishing them in His divinity with His divine love and with the Spirit as the golden oil (Zech 4:12–14) (Lee 2004–2020, CWWL 1994–1997, vol. 5, pp. 152–58).

Christ’s shepherding, therefore, did not cease at His ascension but continues through His present speaking to the churches (Rev 2:1, 7). With this view, the work of elders and overseers is not an independent activity but a participation in Christ’s ongoing shepherding activity. All authentic pastoral care remains derivative, participatory, and Christ-centered because the church’s shepherds care for others as they participate in the ministry of the Good, Great, and Chief Shepherd.

3.3. Paul’s Pattern as Nursing Mother and Exhorting Father

If Christ is the original Shepherd, Paul is, for Lee, the shepherd who participates in, embodies, and extends Christ’s shepherding ministry. Paul’s ministry demonstrates how Christ’s cherishing and nourishing become concrete in his ecclesial labor. Most notably, he describes himself in familial terms: “as a nursing mother” cherishing believers and “as a father” exhorting, consoling, and testifying to them (1 Thess 2:7–12). Lee reads these descriptions not merely as rhetorical metaphors but as constitutive features of pastoral ministry itself—maternal in tenderness and paternal in formative guidance (Lee 2004–2020, CWWL 1989, vol. 1, pp. 321–22).

Lee’s instinct here finds strong support in Pauline scholarship. In a classic study, Abraham Malherbe demonstrated that Paul’s nurse imagery participates in a well-established Greco-Roman convention: the first-century philosopher Dio Chrysostom describes the ideal philosopher as one who deals with his hearers “gentle as a nurse,” in contrast to the harsh Cynics of the marketplace (Malherbe 1989, pp. 35–48). Paul adopts this psychagogic convention but transposes it into a gospel-shaped register: unlike philosophers whose gentleness expressed their self-sufficiency, Paul imparts to the Thessalonians “not only the gospel of God but also our own souls” (1 Thess 2:8). Malherbe further shows that Paul’s paternal exhortation follows the philosophic practice of adapting παράκλησις (παρακαλέω) to each person’s condition—“each one of you, as a father with his own children” (1 Thess 2:11); “admonish the disorderly, console the fainthearted, sustain the weak, be long-suffering toward all” (1 Thess 5:14)—making exhortation, consolation, and admonition a differentiated pastoral art rather than undifferentiated moralism (Malherbe 1987, pp. 56, 75, 81–94). Malherbe therefore describes this Greco-Roman psychagogy as “a well-developed system of pastoral care… which included what we mean by spiritual exercises, psychotherapy, and psychological and pastoral counseling” (Malherbe 1987, p. 81). Both dimensions, nursing and exhorting, rest on firm exegetical and history-of-religions foundations while corresponding to Lee’s categories of cherishing and nourishing.

Lee further integrates these maternal and paternal dimensions through the concepts of pattern and fostering. The best way to shepherd, Lee argues, is to present believers with proper patterns, just as the apostle presented himself as an exemplar for believers to imitate (1 Thess 1:5–7; 2 Thess 3:9; 1 Cor 11:1; 1 Tim 4:12). Fostering is the comprehensive activity under which cherishing and nourishing operate: bringing up, nurturing, cultivating, and promoting growth and development, whereby the apostle imparts to believers not just the gospel but “his own soul” (1 Thess 2:8) (Lee 2023c, pp. 102–3). As Victor Copan observes, Pauline imitation (μίμησις) in its Greco-Judaic context refers not to mechanical replication or merely intellectual learning but to a process of embodied character formation, usually within close relational contexts such as parent–child relationships. Accordingly, believers are shaped through intimate identification with living models (Copan 2007, pp. 69–70, 246–53).

Susan Eastman presses this insight further: reading Philippians 2:6–11, she argues that the incarnation is “mimetic participation”—Christ’s own entry into the human condition—so that believers’ imitation of Christ is not external copying of a distant model but participation in Christ’s movement toward them (Eastman 2011, pp. 1–22). In her later anthropological work, Eastman argues that for Paul the person is constitutively “second-personal”—formed in relations of address and response rather than as a self-enclosed individual—so that transformation occurs through embodied relationships with others and, above all, with the divine Other (Eastman 2017, pp. 13–16, 63–84; on Phil 2 as divine participation, pp. 126–52). Lee’s account of pattern and fostering converges with both insights while pressing them more ontologically: the pattern forms others because the shepherd has been constituted with Christ, while the indwelling Spirit makes the shepherd’s embodied presence a channel of the divine life it mediates.

Paul’s pattern is further reflected in his pastoral practice. He reminds the Ephesian elders that he taught both “publicly and from house to house” and that he for three years “did not cease admonishing each one with tears” (Acts 20:20, 31). Such ministry combined public instruction with personal care, teaching with relational shepherding, forming the basis of his charge: “Take heed to yourselves and to all the flock, among whom the Holy Spirit has placed you as overseers (ἐπίσκοποι) to shepherd (ποιμαίνειν) the church of God, which He obtained through His own blood” (Acts 20:28). For Lee, this verse indicates three inseparable dimensions of eldership (plurality): the commissioning of the Holy Spirit, the responsibility of oversight, and the vocation of shepherding (Lee 2004–2020, CWWL 1960, vol. 2, p. 223). Eldership, therefore, is not primarily an administrative office but a participatory calling in which Spirit-appointed leaders cooperate with Christ’s ongoing shepherding of the church, the flock of God obtained by His own blood.

3.4. Paul’s Pattern as Slave of God in Shepherding the Flock of God

The third image that captures the apostolic pattern in Lee’s reading is Paul’s own designation: a slave of God and of Christ. If the metaphors of the nursing mother and exhorting father emphasize the relational dimensions of pastoral care, the slave metaphor discloses the underlying form of life from which such care flows. Following Jesus, the Servant of Jehovah, who emptied Himself and assumed the lowest social position by taking the form of a slave, came not to be served but to serve, being obedient to God even unto death on the cross (Isa 52:13–53:12; Mark 10:45; John 14:30–31; Phil 2:5–11), Paul likewise identifies himself as “a slave of Christ Jesus” to adopt the same cruciform life (Acts 20:19; Rom 1:1; Titus 1:1). For Lee, this slave-form is characterized by a threefold disposition: the spirit of a slave—open, humble, loving, non-self-seeking; the love of a slave—the motive and prerequisite of all services (Eph 5:2; Rev 2:4–5); and the obedience of a slave—the outworking of love toward God and His people (Phil 2:8). Paul’s identity as a slave is not merely rhetorical but constitutive of the very mode by which divine life is communicated through his shepherding (Lee 2014a, p. 1053; 2022a, pp. 451–53).

This slave-shepherding is evident throughout Paul’s life. First, it is marked by kenotic empathy and voluntary self-emptying: “Though I am free with respect to all, I have enslaved myself to all … to the weak I became weak” (1 Cor 9:19, 22). Paul bears the anxieties of the churches and experiences the stumbling of others as his own burden (2 Cor 11:28–29), reflecting Christ’s self-giving descent (Lee 2004–2020, CWWL 1973–1974, vol. 2, pp. 553–54; CWWL 1994–1997, vol. 5, p. 115). Second, it is characterized by sacrificial expenditure: “I will most gladly spend and be utterly spent for your souls” (2 Cor 12:15). Like a willing bondslave, he pours himself out for the faith and growth of others (Phil 2:17; cf. Exod 21:1–6) (Lee 2022b, pp. 498–99; 2023b, pp. 782–88; 2023e, pp. 113–20, 428). Third, it is sustained by an enlarged heart. Drawing on 2 Corinthians 6:11–13, Lee argues that effective shepherding requires a broad capacity to receive and care for others, a capacity that grows out of deeper reconciliation with God. Narrowness of heart, by contrast, inevitably constricts pastoral care (Lee 2022b, pp. 354–55; 2004–2020, CWWL 1960, vol. 2, pp. 156–60).

Lee further illustrates this pattern through several recurring themes in Paul’s ministry. Paul lives and serves in and by the Spirit who indwells his human spirit (Gal. 5:16, 25; 2 Cor. 3:3, 6, 8), ministers within the church as a nurturing household, a healing hospital, and an edifying school (Eph 2:19; 1 Thess 5:14; 1 Cor 14:31), and presents himself as both a pattern for believers and “the least of all saints” (1 Tim. 1:16; Eph 3:8). These themes underscore that shepherding is not a specialized function reserved for a clerical elite but an expression of the divine life available to every regenerated believer. Above all, Paul’s ministry reveals that love constitutes the affective grammar of shepherding. Knowledge may build arguments, and techniques may improve methods, but only love builds up (1 Cor 8:1; 13:4–8a; Eph 4:15–16), a theme further elaborated in Section 4 (Lee 2004–2020, CWWL 1994–1997, vol. 5, pp. 119–27).

Lee’s reading of Pauline pastoral patterns may be situated in dialogue with contemporary Pauline scholarship on servant-leadership. For example, Andrew Clarke presents servant-leadership as a third model alongside hierarchical leadership and egalitarianism. Clarke argues that explicit δοῦλος language for Christian leaders denotes a mode of leadership characterized by humility, vulnerability, and service without eliminating authority (Clarke 2008, pp. 95–103). Dale Martin interprets Paul’s self-designation as a slave of Christ against the backdrop of Greco-Roman managerial slaves who exercised delegated authority on behalf of their masters (Martin 1990, esp. chs. 2–3).

Lee converges with both scholars in recognizing the paradoxical union of humility and authority in Pauline ministry but extends their social and functional analyses through a participatory Christological framework. For Lee, Paul’s self-emptying service (1 Cor 9:22; 2 Cor 12:15) is not merely exemplary behavior or rhetorical adaptation of contemporary social roles but an expression of participation in Christ’s own kenotic life (Phil 2:5–8) (Lee 2014b, vol. 1, p. 3116, vol. 2, p. 3820). These dialogues suggest various dimensions to deepen the understanding of Paul’s pastoral care—social, rhetorical, and theological (within a participatory ontology of life in Christ). The following section develops this theological framework more fully.

4. “According to God”: Shepherding as Practical Deification

This section turns to the climax of Lee’s pastoral theology, namely, his account of shepherding κατὰ Θεόν (“according to God”) in 1 Peter 5:2, where elders are charged to shepherd the flock of God. For Lee, the phrase indicates more than conformity to divine commands; it suggests a participatory mode of ministry—shepherding carried out in union with God, through participation in God’s life, and in expression of God’s attributes.

4.1. The Person of the Shepherd Preceding the Practice of Shepherding

Lee applies this participatory vision to pastoral ministry, maintaining that the efficacy of shepherding depends primarily on the degree to which shepherds have been constituted with God in His life and nature. Ministry is determined less by what one does than by who one is, for one cannot minister beyond the measure of one’s spiritual constitution. Only persons whose inward being has been renewed and transformed, and whose hearts have been reordered, can become genuine channels of blessing to others (Lee 2004–2020, CWWL 1960, vol. 2, pp. 143–56; CWWL 1955, vol. 4, p. 468). In this respect, Lee develops an emphasis already present in Watchman Nee:

God cares much more for what we are than for what we do. The real work is the outflow of life; the countable service is always Christ living out. To offer ourselves to God is not to work for God but to let God work.

(Lee 1991, p. 87; 2022b, pp. 335–36)

This understanding shapes Lee’s interpretation of the exhortation to shepherd “according to God.” While the phrase elsewhere in the New Testament can denote what accords with God’s will, purpose, or character (Rom 8:27; 2 Cor 7:9–11; Eph 4:24),12 Lee interprets it with a distinctly participatory significance. To shepherd according to God is to shepherd in a manner governed by what God is and His goal in His economy—His holy nature, righteous way, loving concern for humanity, desire for the building up of Christ’s Body, life-imparting work, and ultimate glory. Apart from such participation, ministry inevitably would proceed according to self-preference, natural disposition, personal ambition, hidden pride, or individual temperament (Lee 2010, vol. 3, pp. 20–21). Even though it may be active, sincere, energetic, or even doctrinally correct, it falls short of God’s intention and standard.

For Lee, such shepherding ministry presupposes the knowledge and experience of God Himself as the Shepherd. Throughout Scripture, God reveals Himself as the Shepherd of His people, a theme that reaches its fulfillment in Christ’s full ministry (Ps 22–24). In His earthly ministry, Jesus unveiled the seeking and saving love of the Triune God for sinners (Luke 15). As the Good Shepherd, He came with the Father and by the Spirit (John 10:9–17) to seek the lost, lay down His soul-life for the sheep, impart His divine life into them, and gather them into one flock under one Shepherd. In His heavenly ministry, He continues as the Great Shepherd, the Chief Shepherd, and the Shepherd of believers’ souls (Heb 13:20–21; 1 Pet 2:25, 5:4; Rev 2:27, 7:14), shepherding His church toward its consummation as the New Jerusalem in fulfillment of God’s eternal economy. The church’s shepherding is never independent but always a participation in and cooperation with His ongoing shepherding, a dimension that is often overlooked (Lee 2004–2020, CWWL 1980, pp. 66–67; CWWL 1994–1997, vol. 4, pp. 446–49, 452–53; vol. 5, pp. 13–14).

Such participation also requires a true knowledge of the self, as John Calvin recognizes that the knowledge of the self and the knowledge of God are inseparably related (Calvin 1960, 1.1.1). Lee similarly argues that genuine and fruitful shepherding requires that shepherds recognize and deal with their own natural disposition—the fallen self expressed through the soul-life, the old man, and natural strength (Matt 16:24–26; Rom 6:6; Gal 2:20). An unbroken, untransformed disposition not only hinders growth in the divine life but also frustrates pastoral care. Indifference toward others, narcissism, an inability to accommodate different personalities, or a tendency to care only for those who match one’s taste often reveal the persistence of the natural self. Genuine shepherding therefore requires transformation in disposition through the application of Christ’s cross by the Spirit (Lee 2004–2020, CWWL 1973–1974, vol. 2, pp. 541–45, 548–49, 553–56, 574–78, 595–97). Such transformation exposes ambition, pride, and self-justification while cultivating the loving and forgiving heart of the Father and the seeking and shepherding spirit of Christ, whose goal is always to gain people for God (Lee 2004–2020, CWWL 1994–1997, vol. 5, pp. 27–37, 261–88). Otherwise, ministry risks becoming little more than the projection of natural peculiarities and untransformed dispositions.

Read through this participatory framework, Lee’s categories of cherishing and nourishing assume a deeper theological significance of participatory acts. Cherishing manifests Christ’s humanity in acts of compassionate presence, such as a listening ear, a shared meal, a tear shed, or a gentle tone, through which divine consolation is conveyed. Nourishing imparts Christ as ζωή, the divine life, through timely words, scriptural encouragement, prayerful conversation, or speaking of words of grace, truth, spirit, and life (Luke 4:22; Acts 20:32; Eph 4:25, 29; Col 4:6; John 6:63). Shepherding thus becomes a participatory act in which Christ continues His own cherishing and nourishing work through those united with Him.

This perspective reorients the fundamental question of shepherding. Rather than asking merely, “How should we shepherd?”—what skills, methods, or strategies should be employed—the questions become, “Who are we becoming before God in the act of shepherding?” Do we minister simply from natural zeal, personal ambition, giftedness, or the pursuit of success, or from a life increasingly permeated with Christ and constituted by His divine life? Such questions move beyond the concerns of the therapeutic turn discussed in Section 2 and return pastoral theology to the ontology of the shepherd.

4.2. Practical Deification: Participation in God’s Life, Nature, Expression, and Function

In his later ministry, Lee increasingly integrates shepherding with the biblically grounded, historically orthodox doctrine of deification (theosis), broadly understood as “the spiritual journey of believers from their baptism/initiation into the Christian tradition to a state of greater holiness in union with God, where they become in their personhood like God.” (Peters 2011, pp. 392–94) Christian deification is rooted in the biblical teaching that humankind was created in the image and likeness of God (Gen 1:26–28), that believers have become “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Pet 1:4), that they are being transformed into the same image “from glory to glory” by the Lord, who is the Spirit (2 Cor 3:17–18), and that believers are being conformed to the image of Christ (Rom 8:29).

Contemporary Pauline scholarship on theosis is, however, far from monolithic. Approaches range from Gorman’s (2009, 2011, 2019) kenotic-narrative account of cruciform theosis and Blackwell’s (2016) patristically informed “christosis,” through Litwa’s (2012) history-of-religions reading of deification in its Greco-Roman context, to pneumatological–relational accounts locating transformation primarily in the Spirit’s work through relationships. The latter stream merits particular attention here. Rabens argues for “the relational-mystical dynamics of transformation that are more explicitly at work in Paul” (Rabens 2010, pp. 25–120; 2025, p. 475). Reading 2 Corinthians 3:18—the very text deification grammar usually relies—Rabens shows that “it is the Spirit who transforms believers relationally through beholding the glory of the Lord with an unveiled face,” so that believers are “transformed by the relational work of the Spirit for religious-ethical life and mystical-mimetic assimilation to God” (Rabens 2016, pp. 187–220; 2025, p. 469); “the relational dynamics of an intimate encounter with the divine are the secret of mystical transformation,” with the Spirit as “the facilitator of this relational dynamic” (Rabens 2025, p. 476). Rabens concludes that “the result of this assimilation to God may be comprehended as near-divinization or attributive deification in both Philo and Paul” (Rabens 2025, p. 473). This perspective echoes Ferguson’s argument that Pauline anthropology is itself relationally constituted, with the Spirit as the constitutive agent of personhood-in-relation (Ferguson 2020).

This emphasis on the Spirit’s transforming work through relationship, though distinct, parallels Lee’s account of transformation through union with Christ. As Rabens argues, the Spirit transforms and empowers believers for religious-ethical life “primarily through deeper knowledge of, and an intimate relationship with, God, Jesus Christ and with the community of faith” (Rabens 2010, p. 123). Lee’s practical-deification grammar stands closest to this relational–pneumatological stream: transformation is effected by the indwelling Spirit through union, constitution, and communal participation. Lee articulates this pastorally: the shepherd is transformed through beholding and union and then mediates that same transforming relationship to others. It is this relational and experiential dimension of deification—rather than its metaphysical speculation—that grounds Lee’s pastoral application.

Building upon the tradition of theosis, Lee reformulates the classical patristic axiom as “God became man that man may become God in life, nature, expression, and function.” (Lee 2004–2020, CWWL 1994–1997, vol. 5, p. 349; 2014b, vol. 3, p. 4373) At the same time, Lee consistently qualifies the statement within the boundary that believers never become God in the Godhead,13 nor do they become objects of worship. Rather, they participate only in God’s communicable attributes, such as love (Rom 5:5; 1 John 4:8, 16), light (1 John 1:5, 7), and holiness (1 Pet 1:15–16; 2:5, 9; 3:5; Heb 12:10), and share in His life through union with Christ and the indwelling Spirit.

Lee translates deification from a primarily doctrinal category into a practical and pastoral one. Deification is not merely the goal of salvation but the mode of Christian living and, consequently, of Christian shepherding. In his exposition, Lee argues that believers must “live God,” or “live Christ” (Phil 1:21a; Gal 2:20) in order to shepherd κατὰ Θεόν. Shepherding becomes the spontaneous outflow of a life that receives God as its source, content, and moment-by-moment supply (Lee 2023c, pp. 86–87, 103). As Lee explains,

According to God means that we must live God. …When we are one with God, we become God. Then we have God and are God in our shepherding of others. To shepherd according to God is to shepherd according to what God is in His attributes [who] is love, light, holiness, and righteousness.

(Lee 2004–2020, CWWL 1994–1997, vol. 5, p. 114)

Although such deification language may sound foreign to many Protestants, its underlying logic stands firmly within orthodoxy and the broader Christian tradition of participation in God.14 Applied to pastoral ministry, it is this practical dimension of deification that grounds Lee’s understanding of pastoral care and unfolds in four interrelated aspects: in life, nature, expression, and function (Lee 2004–2020, CWWL 1994–1997, vol. 5, p. 349; 2014b, vol. 3, p. 4373).

(a)

Sharing in and Filled with His Divine Life

First, Lee highlights that believers are qualified to share in the divine life by drawing on verses such as John 4:14, which describes Christ to be a fountain springing up into eternal life within them, and Colossians 3:4, which declares Christ to be their life. To shepherd κατὰ Θεόν involves more than passing on doctrinal knowledge or natural compassion; shepherds must inwardly and continually receive Christ as their source and supply of life. Ministry thereby becomes an overflow of divine life rather than the product of mere human effort.

(b)

Partaking of His Divine Nature

Second, as partakers of God’s divine nature (2 Pet 1:4), believers can experience and enjoy God’s (communicable) attributes as realities expressed in pastoral acts. For instance, divine love is manifested in patience and sacrificial care; light in discernment and truthfulness; righteousness in fairness and moral integrity; and holiness in consecration and purity. As William of Saint-Thierry (c. 1075/85–1148) famously notes, “man becomes through grace what God is by nature.”15 Lee’s restriction of deification to God’s communicable attributes corresponds closely to what Rabens terms “attributive deification” (Rabens 2025, p. 473)—expression of God’s attributes rather than absorption into His Godhead (Θεότητος, Col 2:9). For Lee, since the nature of God’s essence is love (1 John 4:8, 16), believers are becoming what God is—love (Armstrong 2025, p. 83)—as they mutually abide in God/Christ and His love (John 14:20, 15:4; 1 John 4:16) in their spirit indwelled by God’s Spirit (1 Cor 6:17).

(c)

Becoming the Expression of Christ

Third, the shepherds are becoming the visible expressions of Christ as the self is replaced by Christ. Genuine pastoral care expresses Christ’s slave-service in humility, truthfulness, tenderness, warmth, and self-giving love: “We need to be saturated and soaked with Christ inwardly and outwardly. In this sense we become Christ and eternal life … Our going out as Christ to give people life and truth will attract and convince them. We need to be discipled to be such a Christ” (Lee 2004–2020, CWWL 1994–1997, vol. 5, pp. 108–9), what Lee terms “reproductions” of Christ functionally. Here Lee’s practical deification echoes Martin Luther’s well-known description of believers as “Christs to their neighbors.”16

(d)

Participating in God’s Shepherding

Fourth, transformed believers can participate in God’s own shepherding of His flock to accomplish His economy. Acts such as encouraging the discouraged, reconciling estranged members, or restoring the backslidden transcend merely coping with life’s difficulties; they serve as participation in God’s greater plan of building up of Christ’s Body and its eschatological consummation—the New Jerusalem (2 Cor 1:3–4, 2:10, 13:14).

These four dimensions may be summarized in a sixfold grammar of practical deification: (1) becoming one with God, (2) being constituted with God, (3) living God, (4) expressing God, (5) representing God, and (6) ministering God (Living Stream Ministry 2025, pp. 252–53). Shepherding emerges organically from this union. It emerges not from believers’ responding to external obligation nor from believers themselves, but from the Christ formed within them (Gal 4:19) shepherding others through them. The more believers are constituted with Christ, the more spontaneously they live a shepherding life and are burdened to take care of others. In this sense, practical deification provides the theological grammar of pastoral ministry: the shepherd shares in the divine life, partakes of the divine nature, expresses Christ, and participates in God’s shepherding function.

4.3. Ecclesial Embodiment: Mutual and Universal Shepherding as Body Life

Lee’s pastoral theology does not leave shepherding at the level of individual spirituality or a ministerial practice reserved for a select few. Rather, pastoral care take visible shape within the church as a communal organism, making shepherding inherently mutual, universal, and woven into the daily life of the Body of Christ. This vision of Lee rests on two main convictions: first, every believer has been regenerated into a holy and royal priesthood (1 Pet 2:5, 9; Rev 1:6). Accordingly, Lee rejects the hierarchical practice of professional clergy or hiring an ordained pastor for a congregation. Second, the divine life imparted into believers in their regeneration enables them both the capacity and responsibility to serve and care for others within the Body (Eph. 4:15–16). Every believer is qualified and called to live a daily life of shepherding by taking practical responsibility for the spiritual well-being of others (Lee 2004–2020, CWWL 1973–1974, vol. 2, pp. 608–10).

Such shepherding is mutual and universal also because every member of Christ’s body remains both needy and gifted, both a recipient and provider of care. Recognizing each member’s limitations, weaknesses, shortcomings, and defects (simul iustus et peccator), Lee rejects a condemnatory posture and instead urges believers to shepherd one another in humility and in recognition of God’s mercy. He suggests mutual shepherding beginning among elders’ families: they shepherd one another and care for one another’s children. In this way, mutual shepherding becomes the ecclesial embodiment of Jesus’ command to love one another (John 13:34; 1 John 4:10–11, 21; cf. Jude 12a), becoming a model of the Body life.

For Lee, such mutual care is fundamentally Christocentric, flowing out from participation in the “inward parts of Christ” (Phil 1:8). As believers are progressively constituted with Christ’s affections, tender mercies, feelings, and concerns for other members (Phil 1:7–8; Phlm 7, 12, 20), they become increasingly conscious of the Body (1 Cor 12:25–26; Rom 12:15) and spontaneously minister His care to fellow members. This corporate consciousness deepens through the continual enjoyment of Christ as the Head (Col 2:19), making shepherding the organic circulation of divine life within the fellowship (κοινωνία) of the Body rather than the fulfillment of an institutional obligation.

Practically, Lee offers a number of practical points to equip believers in learning this shepherding life, including attentive listening, discerning the needs of others, not making decisions for others, and cultivating trust in those under their care (Lee 2004–2020, CWWL 1973–1974, vol. 2, pp. 610–16). In the later years of his ministry, he implemented this vision through “vital groups”—small, relationally intensive gatherings devoted to prayer, confession, gospel labor, accountability, and reciprocal care. Functioning as living cells of Body life and bearing some resemblance to the Methodist bands, vital groups facilitate the mutual shepherding of believers and serve the fulfillment of Christ’s commission (Matt 28:19–20) (Lee 2004–2020, CWWL 1994–1997, vol. 5, pp. 95–102). Yet Lee’s rationale was fundamentally theological rather than strategic: divine life seeks expression and circulation through many members, each functioning simultaneously as sheep and shepherd. He regards such mutual, universal, and daily shepherding as the most effective and enduring means of church revival. With an eschatological expectation, Lee believes that as believers follow in the footsteps of the Triune God in loving, seeking, and caring for people, a genuine spiritual revival would emerge among God’s people, preparing the church for Christ’s return (Lee 2004–2020, CWWL 1994–1997, vol. 5, pp. 92–93; cf. CWWL 1994–1997, vol. 1, pp. 523–24).

4.4. Prevailing Love as the Most Excellent Way

Though promoting vital groups as a communal practice of shepherding, Lee takes it not as a method but emphasizes the intrinsic element that must permeate all shepherding—love. Drawing on Paul’s description of love as “the most excellent way” (1 Cor 12:31b; 13), Lee maintains that divine love (ἀγάπη), not natural love, is the source, atmosphere, and governing principle of all Christian shepherding (Lee 2004–2020, CWWL 1994–1997, vol. 5, pp. 119–26).

This divine love is exemplified both in Paul’s willingness to become weak for the weak (1 Cor 9:22) and in Christ’s compassionate treatment of sinners (John 8:1–11). Such love covers weaknesses, restores the fallen, and ministers divine life. As both Christ’s Body and Bride, the church is the object of God’s cherishing love and divine romance (Eph 5:2, 25–29). Lee highlights Paul’s word in Acts 20:28, where the church is portrayed as God’s flock, purchased by His own blood and entrusted to the Holy Spirit’s care. Shepherding is therefore fundamentally relational, rather than legal. Shepherds need such a vision and love concerning the church, and shepherding is deepened when they love the church as God and Christ love her (Lee 2004–2020, CWWL 1991–1992, vol. 1, pp. 144–47; 2022a, pp. 452–53, 461).

At a deeper level, Lee identifies love with participation in God Himself, for “God is love” (1 John 4:8, 16). Genuine shepherding arises from divine love imparted through regeneration and ongoing union with Christ. Because believers have been born of God as God’s “species” (John 3:6) and share in His life and nature (John 1:12–13), they are called to practice and embody it. This love originates in God’s initiative—“We love because He first loved us” (1 John 4:19)—and grows as believers abide in Him (Lee 2004–2020, CWWL 1994–1997, vol. 5, p. 121; 2023d, pp. 307–12).

This insight is further developed along three lines. First, divine love is infused by the Spirit into the believers’ spirit as the spirit of love (2 Tim 1:7) by which believers love Him and one another (1 John 4:19–21). Second, this love operates through the law of the Spirit of life, producing shepherds who participate in the same “loving and forgiving heart of the Father and the shepherding and seeking spirit of the Savior” (Rom 8:2; Luke 15:3–7; John 21:15–17). Third, it is universal and indiscriminate, reflecting the Father’s love and Christ’s redemptive concern even for His enemies (Matt 5:43–48; Luke 23:42–43) (Lee 2004–2020, CWWL 1994–1997, vol. 5, pp. 123, 126, 132).

Love therefore functions not merely as an accompaniment to shepherding but as its atmosphere and substance in the building up of the Body (Eph. 4:16; Gal. 5:6; 1 Tim. 1:14). Accordingly, the church functions not as a police station or a law court but as a loving home that nurtures, a hospital that heals, and a school that educates and edifies (Lee 2004–2020, CWWL 1994–1997, vol. 5, pp. 126–27). Properly exercised by all members, such shepherding in love becomes the most excellent way to build up the church as the organic Body of Christ. Ultimately, shepherding according to God is envisioned as participation in the Triune God’s own life of love, expressed through believers for the building up of Christ’s Body.

5. Constructive Integration of Counseling Psychology and Pastoral Theology

While counseling psychology and Christian pastoral theology arise from different disciplinary traditions, both seek to understand human flourishing and the processes by which persons experience healing, growth, and transformation. A growing body of scholarship has argued that Christian theological insights and psychological theory can be brought into constructive dialogue for understanding persons and fostering healing and growth.17 Building on this interdisciplinary conversation, this section brings these fields into constructive dialogue through Lee’s Pauline theology of shepherding. Counseling psychology offers valuable descriptive accounts of human lives and their relational dynamics, helping improve their well-being and bring about therapeutic change (American Psychological Association 2022), whereas Lee supplies an ontological-participatory framework that interprets pastoral care as participation in the Triune God’s own shepherding activity.

Methodologically, this section adopts Entwistle’s (2015) “Allies” approach to theology–psychology integration, which views Scripture and creation as complementary sources of truth under a single divine authorship.18 Building on Entwistle’s emphasis on worldview and anthropology, together with McMinn’s (2011) integration model, Johnson’s (2010) five-views taxonomy, and Coe and Hall’s (2010) transformational-psychology proposal, this section explores convergences where psychological insight confirms pastoral wisdom, tensions where assumptions diverge, and implications for future theology-psychology integration.

5.1. Convergences

(a)

Empathy and Compassion

One of counseling psychology’s most influential concepts is Carl Rogers’s notion of sensitive and accurate “empathy” (Rogers 1961, pp. 39–58, 265, 284–85). The helper seeks to understand another’s inner world and communicate that understanding without domination or judgment. Empathy reduces defensiveness, builds trust, and fosters growth. Functionally, this concept seemingly resonates with Paul’s pattern: “To the weak I became weak” (1 Cor 9:22); “Who is stumbled, and I myself do not burn?” (2 Cor 11:29b). He bears the churches’ anxieties, identifies with others’ stumbling, and adapts himself for their sake.

A conceptual caution is nonetheless in order: whether “empathy” is the best category for Paul’s stance is debatable. Philosophical literature distinguishes compassion from related phenomena—sympathy, pity, empathy, mercy, and care (Price and Caouette 2018, pp. ix–xii). Empathy involves sharing another’s emotion, whatever its valence—one can empathize with another’s joy, gratitude, or sorrow—whereas compassion responds specifically to another’s suffering and, unlike empathy, “implies a concern for the sufferer and hence a desire or wish to help them” (Price and Caouette 2018, p. x). Compassion is further distinguished from sympathy, which it exceeds both in the seriousness of the suffering to which it responds and in its orientation toward action, and from pity, which implies a condescension toward the sufferer that compassion lacks (Price and Caouette 2018, pp. x–xi).

Measured against these distinctions, Paul exhibits both phenomena. His rejoicing with those who rejoice and weeping with those who weep (Rom 12:15) matches the emotion of the other in either valence—empathy in the philosophers’ sense—while his σπλάγχνα (inward parts/tenderheartedness) language (Phil 1:8; 2:1; Phlm 7, 12, 20) and his readiness to be “spent” for the churches (2 Cor 12:15) display precisely the action-oriented, self-expending concern for sufferers that marks compassion. The functional convergence with Rogers therefore holds at the level of entering another’s experience, but the Pauline pattern is better described as compassion: a suffering with and for the other that results in sacrificial action. This distinction clarifies what pastoral care receives from the therapeutic tradition (the discipline of accurate understanding) and what it contributes beyond it (a suffering-with orientation to sacrificial action).

The theological ground, however, differs. Rogersian empathy rests largely on confidence in persons’ intrinsic growth potential under appropriate relational conditions. By contrast, Pauline compassion is Christologically patterned: Philippians 2:5–8 narrates Christ’s self-emptying in servant form, and Paul’s pastoral descent imitates this kenosis. Lee interprets it as a participatory nearness reflecting Christ’s condescension, describing it as “coming down to the level” of those being shepherded (Lee 2004–2020, CWWL 1994–1997, vol. 5, p. 115). In Lee’s understanding, such descent becomes possible when shepherds participate in and are constituted with the kenotic Christ. Compassion, then, is not a technique to be acquired but the manifestation of Christ’s self-giving life within the helper—God’s own compassion in the suffering Christ, extended through persons united to Him.

(b)

Therapeutic Relationship and Pastoral Presence

A second convergence appears in common-factors research, which identifies the therapeutic relationship as one of the strongest predictors of positive counseling outcomes (see Altmaier and Hansen 2012, pts. III–IV). Alliance, trust, warmth, hope, and the credibility of the helper often matter more than specific technique. The Pauline letters exhibit a strikingly similar conviction about the weight of personal presence: Paul imparts to the Thessalonians “not only the gospel of God but also our own souls” (1 Thess 2:8); torn away from them “in face, not in heart,” he prays “night and day” that he might see their face and sends Timothy as his emissary until he can come (1 Thess 2:17; 3:2, 10); he longs for the Philippians “in the inward parts of Christ Jesus” (Phil 1:8); he expects mutual encouragement from being personally among the Romans (Rom 1:11–12); he wishes he could be present with the Galatians to “change my tone” (Gal 4:20)—an acknowledgment that embodied presence communicates what letters cannot. Malherbe observes that Paul’s pastoral method was precisely “to gather converts around himself and by his own behavior to demonstrate what he taught,” echoing the philosophic conviction—voiced by Seneca—that “the living voice and the intimacy of a common life” benefit more than written instruction (Seneca 1917, Ep. 6.5, quoted in Malherbe 1987, p. 52); even 1 Thessalonians itself functions as a “surrogate for his presence,” portraying Paul as the nurse and father who “understands and in the deepest sense sympathizes with them” (Malherbe 1987, p. 75).

This Pauline conviction parallels Lee’s insistence that the shepherd’s person, not merely method, is the primary medium of change. For Lee, what a shepherd does cannot be separated from what a shepherd is. Eastman’s “second-personal” reading of Paul explains why such presence is formative: persons are constituted and transformed in relations of embodied address and response, not by information transfer alone (Eastman 2017, pp. 63–84). Lee’s practical-deification grammar further proposes that pastoral presence matters because the helper becomes a vessel of divine life through whom grace is mediated—the relational dynamic that, as Rabens argues, is the very mode of the Spirit’s transforming work (Rabens 2010, p. 123).

(c)

Whole-Person Care

A third convergence concerns holistic anthropology. Counseling psychology increasingly employs biopsychosocial-spiritual frameworks, recognizing the bodily, emotional, relational, cognitive, and spiritual dimensions of human flourishing. Johnson likewise argues that Christian soul care must engage the whole person (Johnson 2017, esp. pts. III–IV). Such a holism is already Pauline. Paul prays that “your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved complete” (1 Thess 5:23); he differentiates care according to each person’s condition—admonishing the disorderly, consoling the fainthearted, and sustaining the weak (1 Thess 5:14); and he attends to bodily existence as the site of consecration (Rom 12:1; 1 Cor 6:19–20), to the renewing of the mind (Rom 12:2), to the burning in spirit (Rom 12:11), to the strengthening of the inner man (Eph 3:16; 2 Cor 4:16), to the emotional weight of anxiety and the ministry of comfort (Phil 4:6–7; 2 Cor 1:3–7; 7:5–7), and even to the practical–economic life of the community (1 Thess 4:11–12; 2 Thess 3:10–12). Malherbe demonstrates that this differentiated attention to persons’ psychological and social conditions places Paul’s care within the ancient psychagogic tradition—a tradition that, in his words, “included what we mean by spiritual exercises, psychotherapy, and psychological and pastoral counseling” (Malherbe 1987, pp. 81–94, quotation at p. 81). Eastman further shows that Pauline participation is irreducibly corporeal—“embodied and embedded”—rather than a privately spiritual interiority (Eastman 2017, pp. 85–108).

Lee’s pastoral vision resonates with this holistic approach by caring for believers physically, psychologically, and spiritually, corresponding to their σῶμα, ψυχή, and πνεῦμα. His dual categories of cherishing and nourishing likewise reflect whole-person care: cherishing addresses embodied and emotional needs through warmth, comfort, practical help, and social belonging; nourishing fosters spiritual growth by ministering Christ, renewing the mind, strengthening the inner person, and maturing believers for corporate life (cf. Eph 4:13–16).

5.2. Tensions

Despite these convergences, significant tensions remain between counseling psychology and Lee’s Pauline pastoral theology. Before naming them, an important qualification is necessary: the contrast drawn here is not between a “deep” theology and a “shallow” psychology. Many psychotherapeutic traditions posit an existential ground deeper or broader than the empirical ego—the Self in Jungian analysis (Jung [1951] 1968) and in Internal Family Systems (Schwartz and Sweezy 2020), physis in Transactional Analysis (Clarkson 1992), the unconditional positive regard of Rogerian therapy (Rogers 1957), whose Christian resonances are arguably underappreciated (Oden 1966), the Real in Lacanian psychoanalysis (Lacan [1973] 1978, pp. 53–64), and even Eros in the classical Freudian tradition (Freud [1920] 1955)—and clinical formation likewise requires therapists to undergo the transformations they hope to facilitate (Geller et al. 2005). The tensions named below therefore concern not the presence of depth, self-transcendence, or therapist-formation in psychology, but the identity and direction of that depth: whether the ground of care is an intrapsychic or impersonal dynamism, or the personal, Triune God in whose own life and shepherding activity the caregiver consciously participates.

(a)

Self-Actualization vs. Christ-Formation

The first tension concerns the telos of the self. Much contemporary psychology, influenced by Carl Rogers, Abraham Maslow, and later expressive individualism, centers the autonomous self’s movement toward authenticity, self-esteem, or self-actualization; Rogers names the therapeutic goal as becoming “that self which one truly is”—the “fully functioning person” (Rogers 1961, pp. 163–96). Growth is often understood as becoming more fully oneself. The Pauline model, however, relocates the human fulfillment from the old “I” in Adam to the new “I” in Christ (Gal 2:20; Phil 1:21). The goal of apostolic labor is not the completion of the client’s self-project but “until Christ is formed in you” (Gal 4:19; cf. Rom 8:29; 2 Cor 3:18). On this account, personhood is “constituted in the self-donation of Christ” and “grounded in gift” rather than in self-generated achievement (Eastman 2017, p. 14). Human maturity is not autonomous self-expression but Christ formed within believers. The self is not erased or annihilated but transformed through participation in the divine life in Christ. Consequently, counseling directed primarily toward preference satisfaction or expressive authenticity may at times conflict with pastoral care oriented toward conformity to Christ; yet the conflict, indeed, is not between flourishing and repression but two accounts of where the true self is found.

(b)

Individual Care and the Body Life

A second tension concerns the social form of care. Professional counseling rightly emphasizes confidentiality, privacy, and carefully bounded relationships, particularly in situations involving trauma, abuse, or vulnerability (see Benner 2003, pp. 147–48). Pauline pastoral theology, however, envisions care within a faith-community characterized by mutuality (one another) in such as love (Rom 13:8; 1 Thes 3:12, 4:9; 2 Thes 1:3), receiving (Rom 15:7), caring (1 Cor 12:25), serving (Gal 5:26), burden-bearing (Gal 6:2; Eph 4:2; Col 3:13), speaking (Eph 5:19), considering (Phil 2:3), forgiving (Col 3:13), admonishing (Col 3:16), and comforting (1 Thes 5:11). While the protections of privacy are ethically necessary, excessive privacy may isolate care from the community life. Wise pastoral practice must therefore distinguish harmful exposure from healing communal honesty.

This Pauline communal vision also raises a tension with professional care: prioritizing the integrity of the whole Body could, if distorted, marginalize or exclude individuals perceived as threatening the community (1 Cor 5:2, 11, 13; 2 Thess 3:6–15; Titus 3:10; cf. Rom 15:17–18). By contrast, the psychotherapeutic ethic typically remains unconditionally committed to the individual client, even when the client’s conduct may have been adversely affecting the wider community. Three clarifications are thus necessary. First, the danger lies in distortion, not in the vision itself. In Paul’s Body imagery, the individual is never expendable but indispensable: the weaker members are even more “necessary” (1 Cor 12:22–26). Properly understood, the Pauline Body safeguards rather than threatens the individual.

Second, in participatory pastoral theology, Lee insists that the church is not a police station to arrest sinners or a law court to condemn them but a home to nurture, a hospital to heal, and a school to educate (Lee 2004–2020, CWWL 1994–1997, vol. 5, pp. 126, 263, 277; CWWL 1986, vol. 2, p. 146; CWWL 1989, vol. 2, p. 341; CWWL 1991–1992, vol. 1, p. 161), and mutual shepherding is directed especially toward the weak and failing. Third, the contrast with professional care should not be overstated. Psychotherapy also recognizes limits through referral, termination, and legally required breaches of confidentiality when others are endangered. The real lesson is therefore one of ecclesial discipline: care for the Body is not to abandon any member. Even where correction is necessary, the goal remains restoration (Gal 6:1), reaffirming love lest the offender “be swallowed up with excessive sorrow” (2 Cor 2:6–8).

(c)

Specialization versus Universal Functioning

A third tension concerns expertise. Counseling psychology increasingly operates through professional specialization, licensure, and evidence-based practice—developments particularly valuable in addressing severe mental illness, trauma, addiction, and suicidality. Paul, in contrast, addresses his exhortations to shepherding not to a clerical or expert class but to whole congregations: “encourage one another and build one another up” (1 Thess 5:11); “admonish the disorderly, console the fainthearted, sustain the weak”—addressed to the brothers at large (1 Thess 5:14); “you who are spiritual, restore such a one” (Gal 6:1); “bear one another’s burdens” (Gal 6:2); “you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge, able also to admonish one another” (Rom 15:14). Paul nevertheless preserves differentiation: God appoints diverse gifts (Rom 12:4–8; 1 Cor 12:4–11, 28), including “shepherds and teachers,” who equip the saints for ministry unto the building up of the Body of Christ (Eph 4:11–12).

Malherbe argues that this democratization was deliberate: Paul transfers his individualized care to the congregation so that they “now, in effect, follow his example” (Malherbe 1987, p. 81). The Pauline idea, in Lee’s reading, suggests that shepherding is the vocation of every believer, as 1 Corinthians 12 and Ephesians 4 portray the Body life as mutually ministering. Gifted members perfect all members for shepherding, such as visiting, praying, encouraging, nourishing, and restoring, not to replace their functions. The tension with professional specialization is therefore real but not zero-sum. Churches that reject trained clinical care may fail the severely wounded, while those that outsource soul care to specialists abdicate the universal vocation Paul assigns the whole Body. The Pauline model instead suggests differentiated care: universal mutual shepherding for ordinary care and support, with specialized referral where clinically necessary. Professionals function like gifted members whose expertise serves rather than supplants the Body’s mutual ministry.

Taken together, these convergences and tensions suggest that counseling psychology and Pauline pastoral theology are not competing but complementary disciplines. Perhaps Lee’s most distinctive contribution to this interdisciplinary dialogue is an ontological-participatory and pneumatologically rich grammar of care that supplies a theological account of what counseling research often observes: why the helper’s presence matters. Whereas counseling psychology identifies the caregiver as a primary medium of change, Lee grounds such effectiveness in participation in the Triune God, through whom grace is mediated by persons constituted with divine life and living by the Spirit. In this way, empathy, relational presence, and whole-person care are situated within the broader vision of divine participation, mutual shepherding, and ecclesial formation, rather than the autonomous self or clinical professionalization alone, thereby broadening the theology–psychology conversation.

5.3. Implications and Future Directions for Theology-Psychology Integration

This interdisciplinary study opens several avenues for future research. First, regarding ministerial formation, if pastoral ministry involves mediating divine life through constituted persons, what forms of ministerial formation best cultivate shepherds, and how might such formation be assessed?19 Second, concerning congregational practice, how might an ontological-participatory model of mutual shepherding function across diverse ecclesial traditions and cultural settings? Third, what collaborative frameworks can appropriately distinguish yet coordinate pastoral care and licensed counseling, particularly in cases involving severe mental illness, trauma, addiction, or suicidality?

More broadly, the participatory framework raises methodological questions for theology–psychology integration. How might empirical findings concerning helper presence, empathy, and relational influence be interpreted theologically through divine participation? Conversely, how might participatory pastoral theology engage empirical research? Future work may also benefit from dialogue with other ecclesial and Majority World traditions that likewise prioritize participation in God and communal life. Such engagement could foster a broader global conversation beyond current models of theology–psychology integration.

6. Conclusions

This article has argued for an ontological-participatory theology of shepherding developed through dialogue between Pauline theology and counseling psychology, with practical deification serving as its theological imagination. Read through Witness Lee’s Pauline pastoral theology, the charge to shepherd “according to God” (κατὰ Θεόν) in 1 Peter 5:2 denotes more than a pastoral command; it names a participatory mode of shepherding. To shepherd according to God is to shepherd in union with the Triune God through participation in the divine life, expressing divine attributes through transformed humanity, cooperating with God’s own cherishing and nourishing work, and serving His ecclesial purpose. Such a reading reorients the pastoral question from merely what ministers do to who they are becoming in Christ as they offer care.

This participatory reading also reframes the understanding of Paul’s pastoral ministry. The apostle’s self-descriptions as a nursing mother, an exhorting father, and a slave of God and Christ are not isolated metaphors for relationality but complementary expressions of a single pastoral ontology. Cherishing and nourishing, patterning and fostering, self-emptying and sacrificial love all arise from participation in Christ’s own shepherding ministry. Paul’s labor is therefore not merely exemplary, functional, or relational; it is participatory, embodying Christ’s continuing care for His church and providing a pattern for Christian shepherding.

From this theological interpretation emerges a constructive dialogue between Pauline pastoral theology and counseling psychology. Contemporary therapeutic traditions rightly highlight empathy, relational presence, therapeutic alliance, and whole-person care, while Christian integration models incorporate spiritual practices such as prayer, Scripture, and forgiveness into clinical work. Lee’s Pauline reading supplies an ontological grammar for what counseling research consistently observes: the person of the caregiver profoundly shapes the effectiveness of care. Pastoral care becomes genuinely transformative when God ministers His life through persons who are becoming one with God, being constituted with Him, living, expressing, representing, and ministering Him to others—participating in the Triune God’s own shepherding activity.

In this light, the horizon of shepherding is ultimately ecclesial and eschatological. As the ascended Christ continues His heavenly ministry by shepherding His people toward maturity and consummation, the church becomes a shepherding community in which every member both receives and ministers divine life through mutual care. Shepherding according to God is understood beyond one pastoral practice among many, but participation in the carrying out of God’s economy, through which the Body of Christ is built up in love and consummated as the New Jerusalem under Christ, the Good, Great, and Chief Shepherd. By bringing Pauline theology, counseling psychology, and a participatory vision into sustained conversation, this study seeks to contribute to a more global and interdisciplinary pastoral theology for the postsecular age, imagining a Christian theology of shepherding grounded in participation in the life of the Triune God, who remains the ultimate Shepherd of His people.