A Legacy Worth Preserving

What is the Wayne E. Oates legacy? Among other things it is a legacy that values: Growth and a commitment to lifelong learning, Disciplined academic study and professional preparation, Collaborative care for the whole person: mind, body, and spirit, and Every patient, client, or parishioner, regardless of their history, experiences, commitments, and faith traditions.

DR. WAYNE E. OATES

Wayne Oates showed us what a commitment to these values looks like.  He gave us a language, and models, and academic resources – so that we, too, can live these values. 

In 1947 Dr. Oates began teaching at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in the area of Psychology of Religion.  In that same year Wayne Oates was invited by Dr. Spafford Ackerly to serve as a theological consultant in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Louisville School of Medicine.  Through his consultation to medical students and faculty the door was open for Dr. Oates to teach and exercise his commitment to collaborative, compassionate care with professionals outside his primary field, while also teaching students in the seminary setting.  Early in his career Wayne Oates became known for his commitment to care for the whole person. However, the work to further that commitment was not easy.

Several years ago Mark Wingfield, former editor for the Kentucky Baptist paper, wrote, “The integration of theology and psychiatry not only was a new concept in the 1940s, but was considered heretical by some in the seminary community…”  Mark Wingfield went on to report that when it came to academics, Wayne Oates was a self-acknowledged task-master.  Oates once said, "I know God can forgive sin but I don't know about stupidity." 

Always reading, always writing, always creating…Wayne Oates coined the term “workaholic,” a phenomenon we already knew but did not yet have the language to name.  It was Dr. Oates’ practice to often reframe a question or see issues in a new light.  In 1998, following the Oates Institute’s first online annual conference, the Oates Institute’s board members were discussing whether or not chaplains and pastoral counselors and social workers would ever study on the Internet.  As part of the discussion, Dr. Oates simply suggested that this was the wrong question.  “Instead,” he said, “the question is how we can help them get there.  How can we teach them?”  The Wayne Oates legacy involves taking an innovative approach. 

Myron Madden, a major figure in pastoral care, recalled his early days of studying with Wayne Oates and the emerging tension of those days as he shared, "When I was in the seminary, the assumption was that you were given the Bible and that was enough." "But that's not enough. You've got to relate it.  What Oates advocated was putting feet to theology.”  

When people asked Dr. Oates if he was a “Freudian” or a “Rogerian” or a follower of some other figure in the world of psychiatry, Oates would always respond, "No, I'm a Christian pastor." 

Andy Lester, a colleague of Dr. Oates, said, “Wayne Oates was a pastor with a capital P. He's been their comforter, their counselor, their confessor, their priest. ... His ability to hear you out, to know where you're hurting and give the care you need is an unbelievable part of his legacy."

Recipient of the 2004 Oates Award, Dr. Roy Woodruff, said, "He [Wayne Oates] put together the practice of pastoral ministry, with the wisdom and resources of psychiatry and psychology, in a masterful way. He became bilingual, in theology and psychiatry, and could move back and forth with amazing agility." In forging this integration of theology and psychiatry, Wayne Oates was well ahead of the times.

When Wayne joined the faculty at the University of Louisville Medical School in 1974, he continued to combine his knowledge of Christian theology, his faith and identity as a Christian Pastor, and his psychiatric insights.  In 1984 the American Psychiatric Association conferred on him the Oskar Pfister Award for his contributions to the relationship between psychiatry and religion.

Wayne Oates was committed to a disciplined life of study to the end of his life.  In 1997, just 2 years before his death, Wayne announced that he was “rededicating his life to getting a heart of wisdom.”  He acknowledged that this was what Erik Erikson identified as the developmental task of later maturity and he quoted Proverbs 20:5, “Counsel in the heart of a person is like deep waters, but a person of understanding can draw it out.”  In this same presentation, at the Institute’s first annual gathering, Wayne said,

I hope and pray that pastoral counseling in the 21st century will be part of the normal outreach of the church to people whose wounds draw no blood but nevertheless can be literally the cause of death and figuratively the cause of the death of a marriage and the destruction of hope in children.  These wounds can be healed or prevented by a pastoral counselor who is disciplined in the truths of scripture, the lessons of church history, the substance of Christian ethics and the wisdom of dedicated psychotherapists and supervisors.

Today there are academic institutions preparing men and women for ministry that want to separate themselves from the study of the behavioral sciences.  There are institutions preparing men and women in the fields of psychology that have seen the result of “sick religion.”  We do not have to fear this integration of the Behavioral Sciences and Theology.  Dr. Oates was convinced that whether one serves as a generalist or a specialist, this preparation was important.

That is why I am pleased to announce the creation of the Center for Oates Studies: a Resource for Ministry in the 21st Century. This is how we can continue a legacy worth preserving. 

-- Vicki Hollon at the 2005 WEOI Annual Gathering

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